Midtown-Midtown South Ranks the Healthiest NYC Neighborhood

Happy 2020! What are your new year’s resolutions for this new and exciting year? Do you want to focus on better work-life balance or save more money? Or maybe, you’re more interested in exploring the world in 2020. With the stress and anxiety caused by the modern busy lifestyle, it is not surprising that many of us choose to focus on health and fitness as our new year’s resolutions. But the question is, how?

The answer lies in where you live and where you spend your time. Chances are if you live in a healthy neighborhood, you will more likely achieve your new year’s health resolutions. What’s better than being surrounded by yoga studios and vegan restaurants if your goal is to go green, celebrate #Veganuary, and improve your posture?

To help you follow through your new year’s resolutions, we at RentHop ranked all NYC neighborhoods by their health score by looking at the number of gyms, yoga studios, other types of fitness facilities, vegetarian and vegan restaurants, as well as juice bars. Since 2020 is also the year of perfect vision, we thought we’d include park coverage by neighborhood in our metrics, as greens are not only for your stomach, they are also for your eyes.

NYC Neighborhoods Ranked

The map below illustrates the “healthiness” of each neighborhood. The greener the shade, the higher the total health score. We also included the rental rates to better assist readers with their apartment search.

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Here are the 10 Healthiest Neighborhoods in New York City

Midtown-Midtown South wins the title “the Healthiest Neighborhood” in NYC with the most plant-based food establishments and gyms. The neighborhood earned a 100 veggie score with 30.1 vegetarian/vegan restaurants per 10K households, and 100 fitness score with 36.3 gyms per 10K households. However, it is not cheap to live in Midtown-Midtown South. With a median 1BR rent of $3,950, it is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the Big Apple.

People living in Williamsburg (or North Side-South Side according to the Neighborhood Tabulation Areas) should not be surprised to find out that the neighborhood is the fifth healthiest neighborhood. After all, Williamsburg, in recent years, has gone through a striking transformation. It is now one of the most popular and hip neighborhoods in the City of New York.

Todt Hill-Emerson Hill-Heartland Village-Lighthouse Hill in Staten Island made it to our list thanks to its perfect park score. Around 32% of the neighborhood is covered by the park. While the neighborhood performs poorly when it comes to the veggie score, it does have five gyms, making it No. 10 in our study.

Is embracing a plant-based diet your top new year’s resolution? Jumpstart a better lifestyle by celebrating #Veganuary in these neighborhoods.

1. Midtown-Midtown South – 48 Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants, or 30.1 per 10K households
2. SoHo-TriBeCa-Civic Center-Little Italy – 29 Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants, or 15.5 per 10K households
3. Battery Park City-Lower Manhattan – 18 Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants, or 9.5 per 10K households
4. Prospect Heights – 8 Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants, or 8.5 per 10K households
5. East Village – 18 Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants, or 8.1 per 10K households
6. Glen Oaks-Floral Park-New Hyde Park – 7 Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants, or 7.6 per 10K households
7. West Village – 27 Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants, or 7.3 per 10K households
8. Chinatown – 13 Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants, or 7.2 per 10K households
9. North Side-South Side (commonly known as Williamsburg) – 12 Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants, or 6.3 per 10K households
10. Clinton (commonly known as Hell’s Kitchen) – 16 Vegetarian/Vegan Restaurants, or 6.3 per 10K households

Want to stay fit in the year 2020? The neighborhoods below have the highest number of gyms on a per 10k household basis.

1. Midtown-Midtown South – 58 Fitness Studios/Clubs, or 36.3 per 10K households
2. DUMBO-Vinegar Hill-Downtown Brooklyn-Boerum Hill – 40 Fitness Studios/Clubs, or 26.5 per 10K households
3. Battery Park City-Lower Manhattan – 46 Fitness Studios/Clubs, or 24.3 per 10K households
4. SoHo-TriBeCa-Civic Center-Little Italy – 45 Fitness Studios/Clubs, or 24.0 per 10K households
5. Hudson Yards-Chelsea-Flatiron-Union Square – 90 Fitness Studios/Clubs, or 23.0 per 10K households
6. North Side-South Side (Williamsburg) – 40 Fitness Studios/Clubs, or 20.9 per 10K households
7. Charleston-Richmond Valley-Tottenville – 15 Fitness Studios/Clubs, or 19.7 per 10K households
8. Brooklyn Heights-Cobble Hill – 18 Fitness Studios/Clubs, or 15.9 per 10K households
9. Greenpoint – 24 Fitness Studios/Clubs, or 15.9 per 10K households
10. West Village – 52 Fitness Studios/Clubs, or 15.9 per 10K households

Methodology

To conduct this report, we first calculated the number of plant-based food establishments and gyms in each neighborhood using publicly available data. Plant-based food establishments include juice bars, salad shops, vegetarian restaurants, and vegan restaurants. Gyms include fitness centers, boxing gyms, yoga studios, Pilates studios, rock climbing facilities, and other types of fitness facilities. We then geocoded each location using the coordinates. The rental rates were calculated using RentHop listings from Jan 2019 to Dec 2019.

The neighborhoods adopted in this study are the “Neighborhood Tabulation Areas”, and the household counts are based on the information included in the Demographics and Profiles at the NTA level. Note that to fairly rank the neighborhoods, we normalized the numbers by the household counts. The park coverage data, however, is not normalized. It is calculated as a percentage of the size of the neighborhood as a whole using the park and NTA shapefiles via the NYC OpenData portal.

Note that since we analyzed the data using the Neighborhood Tabulation Areas, the neighborhood “Williamsburg” is in fact “North Side-South Side” on the map and our list. The “Williamsburg” neighborhood on the map consists of South Williamsburg and Broadway Triangle.