StreetAdvisor Blog

What do you love about your San Francisco Bay area neighborhood?

In my last post I wrote about exploring the San Francisco Bay area. StreetAdvisor is receiving lots of reviews in the area, and these are some of the comments StreetAdvisor community members are making about what they love about their neighborhoods.

At College Terrace, Palo Alto, California (Overall Score 72.00), swtbabydoll126 says:

College Terrance got its name because its right next to Stanford University. My friend goes to school at Stanford, and rents a house here in this neighborhood with a few roommates. I have stayed over night before with her, and there isn't a problem at all with the noise level.

At Crocker Highland, Oakland, California (Overall Score 83.95), mwg says:

We moved here in 1992 based on it's easy access to I-580 in order to commute to Silicon Valley. At the time, there wasn't much to do in the shopping district and we didn't have kids. But now! The area has been so revitalized!!! This neighborhood has a very strong and active community involved in improving the area. There is now an incredible Farmers Market at Splashpad, right off the freeway, every Saturday.

At East End, Alameda, California (Overall Score 78.55), Alchemist says:

The banks of the San Leandro Channel provide for great fishing and catching the cool breezes that can't be found in the middle of the East End.

At Central East Castro Valley, Castro Valley, California (Overall Score 90.00), urbantrend says:

Central East Castro Valley is a trendy and modern neighborhood in the Castro Valley area. The apartments sort of resemble modern and upscale Euro style apartments with a touch of sophistication.

At Temescal, Oakland, California (Neighborhood Rank in Oakland #2, Overall Score 64.09), idonttwitter says:

If you want to hang out in the newest areas of Oakland then you need to head over to Temescal. Temescal offers easy access to the Groove Shafter Freeway (24) which makes it quick and easy to come or go. Telegraph Ave is the best street in the Temescal area in my opinion. The street is lined with new shops that are bursting at their seams with retail goods.

At Hayward Park, San Mateo, California (Neighborhood Rank in San Mateo #3, Overall Score 55.57), andrewlglass says:

I lived in Hayward Park for about 2 years, but decided to move back to the city life. I have to say that if you want to raise a family, this place wouldn’t be a bad choice. It is quiet, mostly friendly people and lots to do outdoors. One of the things I loved the most about Hayward Park is that the grocery stores are very environmentally friendly. Instead of using countless numbers of grocery bags from the store, they allow you to bring your own bags.

At South Shore | Shoreline, Alameda, California (Overall Score 81.96), Gooberthemighty says:

Some people who have lived in Alameda gripe about South Shore because of the construction and traffic, but what you're really getting is small town living with nice, suburban amenities. You can walk on the beach or go windsurfing, or just enjoy a picnic at the Crab Cove park.

There's obviously lots to like about neighborhoods in the Bay area. What do you love about where you live? Log in to StreetAdvisor today and tell us about it!

Exploring the San Francisco Bay area

There's more to the Bay area in California than San Francisco itself. While landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge capture the hearts of tourists, for current and potential California residents the issue of finding an affordable and enjoyable place to live is probably more important.

Despite its fame as a city, San Francisco itself does not score very highly as a city (San Francisco, California, City Rank in California #60, Overall Score 65.14).

San Francisco is ranked similarly to smaller cities in the Bay area like Sunnyvale, California (Overall Score 65.45) and Redwood City, California (City Rank in California #61, Overall Score 63.41).

Scores and ranks for the neighborhoods in these areas are starting to fill out. For example, the third best neighborhood in Redwood City is Oakwood, Redwood City, California Neighborhood Rank in Redwood City #3, Overall Score 63.28).

Scores are lower in the area immediately south of San Francisco, such as San Mateo, California (City Rank in California #77, Overall Score 49.19), Daly City, California City Rank in California #81, Overall Score 45.34) and South San Francisco, California (City Rank in California #83, Overall Score 41.27).

In the east the scores are mixed. San Leandro, California (City Rank in California #79, Overall Score 47.55) is at the low end and Oakland, California (City Rank in California #78, Overall Score 54.78) is not much better. The high end is dominated by Alameda, California (City Rank in California #4, Overall Score 84.07).

Scores are generally higher in southern part of the Bay area, also known as Silicon Valley. Mountain View, California (City Rank in California #30, Overall Score 74.52) scores the highest, followed by Santa Clara, California (City Rank in California #49, Overall Score 68.66) and Palo Alto, California (City Rank in California #51, Overall Score 67.40).

What do you think of these scores and ranks? How does your neighborhood or city rank? Contribute your own reviews, comments, forum topics and lists to StreetAdvisor today and influence the scores and ranks of these places.

The StreetAdvisor guide to the 5 boroughs of New York City

In StreetAdvisor we classify the 5 boroughs of New York City as cities. In descending order, the 5 boroughs hold the following ranks among cities in the state of New York.

New York (Manhattan), New York (City Rank in New York #12, Overall Score 63.30) is the highest ranked borough in NYC.

The top neighborhood in Manhattan is the Meatpacking District, New York, New York (Neighborhood Rank in New York #1, Overall Score 87.75).

The second highest ranked borough in NYC is Staten Island, New York (City Rank in New York #16, Overall Score 60.69).

The best neighborhood in Staten Island according to StreetAdvisor community members is Huguenot, Staten Island, New York (Neighborhood Rank in Staten Island #1,Overall Score 85.49).

Next is Brooklyn, New York (City Rank in New York #18, Overall Score 58.65).

Brooklyn's best neighborhood is Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, New York (Neighborhood Rank in Brooklyn #1, Overall Score 79.51).

Queens, New York (City Rank in New York #22, Overall Score 54.18) does not score quite as well as Brooklyn.

However, the best neighborhood in Queens scores almost as well as the best neighborhood in Brooklyn: Neponsit | Belle Harbor, Queens, New York (Neighborhood Rank in Queens #1, Overall Score 78.00).

The lowest ranked borough is The Bronx, New York (City Rank in New York #31, Overall Score 43.47).

The best neighborhood in The Bronx is Country Club, Bronx, New York (Neighborhood Rank in Bronx #1, Overall Score 69.71), which would not even place it in the top five neighborhoods in most of the other boroughs.

As you can see, there is huge diversity in the borough and neighborhood scores in New York City. How does your neighborhood rate? What do you think of the different ranks of the boroughs? Log into StreetAdvisor.com today and let the world know.

StreetAdvisor adds Local Lists to user profiles

StreetAdvisor has today released a fantastic new feature in its user profiles. Now community members can create, edit and share Local Lists of anything they want. You can make a list of your favorite restaurants or stores, places you visit regularly, or the special places you go to on vacation.

StreetAdvisor Local Lists have two special features. First, when you make a list it is automatically added as a forum topic for the city or state you locate it in, which makes it easy for you to share your list with friends and neighbors.

Second, you can map the places in your list and build you own map of favorite places! To create your own list, start in your user profile. Click the 'Local Lists' tab then click the 'Create a New List' button.

To map items in your list, first add some text describing the list item to an item box. A 'Map this item' link will appear below the item box. Click this link and it will open a floating map window.

In the search field type the street address of the place you want to map. When you're happy that the pin appears on the map in the correct place, click 'Save'. Alternatively you can simply drag the cushion to the exact location you are after.

Once you've finished mapping items, you can view the finished complete with map ready to share with your friends.

Below is a Local List I made of cafes in the hipster neighborhood of Fitzroy in Melbourne Australia.

And this is how a Local List appears in the Victorian forum page.

 

What's important to you in your neighborhood? Start using StreetAdvisor's great new Local Lists to collect and share your favourite things today.

StreetAdvisor starts tweeting in Australia

With new technologies and tools being created and added to the internet all the time, it's difficult to know which ones are essential. Twitter is growing in popularity, and StreetAdvisor has added it to our set of communications tools. We're tweeting in Australia now, with the US to follow soon.

StreetAdvisor.com.au is now tweeting from twitter.com/StreetAdvisorAU. Come and join us! Tell us what you'd like to hear about the best places to live, hyperlocal news, real estate or anything else. Suggest Twitterers for us to follow and start following twitter.com/StreetAdvisorAU as we send out samples of the latest contributions on StreetAdvisor and other social media recommendations.

The StreetAdvisor guide to San Francisco neighborhoods

Since StreetAdvisor introduced over 12,000 neighborhoods to its US maps recently, the site has received many neighborhood reviews. It's been fascinating to watch the scores building and to see the rankings of neighborhoods in different cities rising and falling.

Each time you write a street or neighborhood review in StreetAdvisor, you contribute to its overall score and rank.

Furthermore, all the scores of the streets that have been reviewed within a neighborhood contribute to the score and rank for that neighborhood.

A particularly positive or negative review of a street or neighborhood can make a drastic impact on a neighborhood's rank.

When we introduced neighborhoods a month ago, Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco was ranked as the second best neighborhood in the city. Now it's only ranked the fifth best neighborhood, with Lincoln Park, Sea Cliff and Saint Francis Wood rising to the top.

Like tennis rankings, the time a neighborhood spends at the top of the rank table in its city may be brief, before a negative review reduces its score and rank, or because another place starts to receive more positive reviews and its score and rank begin to rise.

If you think the score or rank for a street or neighborhood is not accurate, write a review and explain why. Give your review a more realistic score. Maybe you think Central Waterfront has been judged too poorly by previous reviewers, or that Bernal Heights is boring and its score is too generous.

StreetAdvisor's guides to the neighborhoods of San Francisco are your guides. You write them and you control them.

You get to influence the score and rank of every street and neighborhood by sharing your opinions about places on StreetAdvisor. Log in to StreetAdvisor.com today and start finding out more about your favorite places.

StreetAdvisor puts your neighborhood on the map

StreetAdvisor knows that streets are important to people, and we feature thousands of pages of street reviews. We also have pages for cities and states. But cities are sometimes too big for many people to care about so much. People care about their neighborhoods far more than they do their cities.

People are often familiar with many of the streets in their neighborhood, and they identify with their neighborhood. Streets may have flavor, but neighborhoods have personality. StreetAdvisor is pleased to announce that it now features over 12,000 neighborhoods across the US.

Features

• Over 12,000 neighborhoods everywhere from big cities to smaller towns
• Green map pins display neighborhoods
• Green shaded outlines show the area covered by each neighborhood
• Ability to write neighborhood reviews (as well as street and city reviews)
• Neighborhood rankings - how does your neighborhood rank in your city?
• View the best streets in your neighborhood

Overview

At the  top of each neighborhood overview page is the same scorecard you see on  StreetAdvisor street or city pages. But there is one major difference. The  neighborhood is displayed as a green shaded outline in the scorecard,  so you can see exactly where it is.

Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, California

Also in  the scorecard is a ranking number, showing how your neighborhood compares to  other neighborhoods in the city. On the right hand side of the page is a box  displaying (up to) the top 5 neighborhoods in each city (depending on  availability). Is your neighborhood in the top 5?

The best  streets box will display the top ranked streets (in descending order) from  within the neighborhood, and if there are less than 5 it will include streets  from the surrounding area.

When you  click to 'Browse Map', you will see that StreetView is enabled on neighborhood  pages (subject to availability). You can browse around by clicking on the  green neighborhood pins to view the names and scores of different  neighborhoods. The neighborhood area is shown as a green shaded outline.

Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, New York

Central Boston, Boston, Massachusetts

Start  exploring your neighborhood today at StreetAdvisor.com. Write a neighborhood or street review, post a neighborhood forum topic and start participating in  your local community online.

StreetAdvisor and Realestate.com.au rollout begins in South Australia

The partnership between StreetAdvisor and and Realestate.com.au to provide street and suburb reviews on Australia’s leading real estate site has begun its rollout in South Australia.

StreetAdvisor’s unique scorecards will be featured throughout realestate.com.au adding a touch of genuine local flavour to property listings.

So how will it look? Here's one example. This listing for Third Avenue Glenelg East features a scorecard that looks like this:

Users can click through to StreetAdvisor to write a review, read further reviews or explore streets with StreetView level mapping. With the initial launch being only for select properties in South Australia, a national rollout is planned for early 2009.

So if you have some local knowledge about real estate, you can now add it to StreetAdvisor knowing that your reviews will help thousands of Australian choose the best place to live.

Eating garbage, collapsing houses and other tough tales from the streets

Some of the street reviews posted on StreetAdvisor.com recently paint a grim picture of life. Houses are collapsing and sliding down hills and people seem to be eating garbage and rebelling against suburban conformity. Life is tough out there on the streets!

Photo by Aaron G Stock - Creative Commons license

At Lyell Avenue, Rochester, New York (StreetScore 53.58), wanda01 says:

"I wouldn't want to live on Lyell Ave. This area is a very bad section of the city. There is a lot of crime and drug activity in this area. There is even a strip club or two on this road. One thing that is good is the Garbage plates" that are made on Lyell. If you're not from Rochester your probably wonder what is a garbage plate. I know it sounds awful but really does taste good. You get a burger with macaroni salad, chili cheese fries and sauce piled on one plate. You eat this mixture but it actually really good. Rochester is famous for them. You can get them at almost every restaurant."

Photo by Knile - Creative Commons license

At Swainland Road, Oakland, California (StreetScore 28.52), Swainland says:

"I used to live on the 6200 block of Swainland. As a general matter the street is lacking in city services and the infrastructure is crumbling, all thanks to the city of Oakland's budget problems. More important, though, is the fact that homes have been built on this hillside without adequate planning. The streets are about a car and a half wide and there is virtually no way to get by when people park on the streets (which is often). The storm drains are always clogged and there are mass problems with drainage.

We had flooding on our lot every winter and it got worse with each year, as more homes were built upslope. The city engineer even admitted that the hillside was unstable and floods and landslides would be common on Swainland in the near future, but since it was all private property it was up to the landowners to fix these problems.

So after the last nearly catastrophic flood in 2003, we sold the house and moved. Be warned, Swainland is a street that has serious problems with floods and slope instability, in addition to the well known fire problems."

At NW 57th Court, Pompano Beach, Florida (StreetScore 17.64), sirrufuswilkins says:

"I really can’t blame the street for this. Maybe it’s the fault of the state. Maybe the conspiracy to make this place a hellhole goes all the way to the top. Whoever’s to blame, this entire city is a suburban hell of cardboard cutouts and Tetris piece housing. Don’t move here."

What local phenomenon would you warn prospective new neighbors about? Share your news on StreetAdvisor.com - write a review or post a forum topic today.

StreetAdvisor has made it even easier to review your favorite places

StreetAdvisor has made a minor revision to our homepage to add a 'Write a Review' button to the top menu bar.

Now it is even easier for you to review your favorite places. Click the button to visit our new review page, where you can follow three simple steps to create a review of your street or city:

1. Search for a place
2. Select from the list
3. Write your review

You can of course continue to browse our site and then review places you find that way. What local news do you have to share today on StreetAdvisor.com?