If you're weathering the summer in New York City, consider spending most of your time in Fort Greene, Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill.
Those neighborhoods won the highest "summer scores," calculated by such factors as sidewalk cafe concentration and park coverage, in a new study by the apartment rental listings website RentHop.
The study assigns each New York neighborhood a score based on "the things that make a summer day awesome and not-so-awesome," according to its authors. Falling under the "awesome" category are bike paths and Citibike stations for cycling, sidewalk cafes for al fresco dining, parkland for picnicking, and trees for shade. Under the "non-so-awesome" banner, earning demerits: dog poop.
Results can be accessed through the interactive below.
Top performers Fort Greene and Brooklyn Heights offer roughly equivalent park access and cycling opportunities. Fort Greene presents more outdoor dining options, but the number of 311 complaints about poop in each neighborhood suggests you're less likely to encounter it in Brooklyn Heights. Tree coverage is also more ample in Brooklyn Heights.
In Manhattan, your summer is best spent in the environs of Soho, TriBeCa, Little Italy and Civic Center, where sidewalk cafes and Citibike stations are plentiful.
Data presented in the RentHop study was culled from the NYC Department of Transportation, business licenses obtained from the Department of Consumer Affairs, the 2015 Street Tree Census, Parks Department maps and 311 complaints addressed by the city's Canine Task Force.
The poop penalty, our favorite variable in the "Summer Score" equation, takes into account complaints filed from 2010 to 2015, determining the average per year per square mile. The five neighborhoods with the highest incidence of poop complaints were located in The Bronx. We advise you to look down at the pavement when walking around Soundview.
