New York City is great for kids, even if it might not look like it because of the tall towers and busy streets, but really, there are 11 best New York neighborhoods to live in with families and kids.
The American Dream has long been associated with moving your family out of the city. Raising a family conjures notions of white picket fences surrounded freshly mowed lawns. Urban gridlines are replaced with the checkerboard of split-levels and colonials. Modern stereotypical wisdom is that children need a cul de sac to ride their bikes and a city is a place for single grownups to do business.
However, cityscapes have certainly been revitalized in the last generation. Crime which spiked in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s has swiftly plummeted. In 2014, the city reported the lowest number of homicides since 1963. Violent crime in New York City was below the average for large cities in 2015 and The Economist ranked it in the Top 10 safest cities.
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Of course, crime is not the only component to take into account when considering raising a child in New York. There are cultural palaces here in the form of museums, parks, theaters, libraries, street corners–wide opportunities for exposure to a global array of experiences all in one place. The quality of a child’s life could be enriched in ways not available elsewhere, and often for very little money. However, New York certainly is expensive in many ways. Time and energy are often required to access discount, free, and low-cost offerings. Time and energy–resources in and of themselves–are also things in addition to money that many parents do not have at a surplus.
Still, it’s possible that in New York parents could be making a higher salary than elsewhere. New York has long been famous all over the world because it is the central business district in America. Once you’ve made the decision to live in New York–you still need to decide which neighborhood is right for you. If you don’t want to live in New York anymore, but wish to keep your job there, you might be interested in reading about the 6 Easiest Towns to Commute to NYC.
We have scoured data on the 11 best New York neighborhoods to live in with families and kids, using a three-point criteria: Cost of Living Index, to know if raising families in these cities are indeed sustainable, Crime Rate, because an unsafe city is not one for raising a family and Median Home Prices, to know if you can afford to own a family home. Information for the first two criteria was obtained from Aeravibes.
