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# Rats, Potholes & Graffiti?
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/nate-silver-nyc-ranking/
- Published: 2010-04-14T17:03:41.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:03:16.000Z
- Description: In his recent categorization of New York neighborhoods, statistician Nate Silver grouped graffiti with rodents and potholes. It was a criteria he used to gauge the Health & Wellness of a neighborhood.
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: Opinion, #image-position-hidden, Graffiti, Williamsburg, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-11-17 09:23 (2009-2011)

I like Nate Silver’s work, I really do. His blog FiveThirtyEight.com kept me sane for most of the 2008 election cycle, particularly when the results were far from certain. His latest project for *New York Magazine* to [statistically rank the city’s neighborhoods](http://nymag.com/realestate/neighborhoods/2010/65374/?ref=hyperallergic.com) has all of New York in a frizzy as partisans argue that their neighborhood was robbed of the title (West Village ranked #24 and Chelsea #26), while others have been surprised (ummm…Sunnyside is #3 and Greenpoint is #5?).

But true to form, statistician Silver was thorough and exacting in his work and he used a varied group group of criteria, including housing, schools, crime, nightlife, to devise his list — tony Park Slope comes in at number one.

Williamsburg, where I live, clocked in at #20, probably because the boundaries Silver chose were just plain bizarre (when did the Morgan Avenue L stop become Williamsburg?) … but that’s another argument.

Yesterday, he [posted the specific measures](http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/additional-information-on-new-york.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) he used in each category but one bullet point in particular in the “Health and Wellness” category jumped out at me.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2010/04/screen-shot-2010-04-14-at-11-23-23-am-e1271262321276.png "Screen shot 2010-04-14 at 11.23.23 AM")

Between “street cleanliness” and “frequency of pedestrian & bicycle accidents” is this: “counts of rodents, potholes and graffiti.” *What!?* Graffiti is being lumped in with potholes and rodents? Are you kidding me?

I moved to Williamsburg partly because of the excellent street art (which I’m sure the city’s bureaucracy groups together with graffiti) and here he groups it together with vermin and a road nuissance (is that the city’s categorization too?).

It made me realize that those of us who champion street art — and its contribution to the cultural texture of the city — have a lot of work to do.