Creating a family-friendly neighborhood is something of a virtuous cycle: parents move into an area for the schools, parks, large apartments, and/or kid-friendly amenities, only to attract more parents, whose presence often spurs the improvement of local schools and parks, the construction of more large apartments, and the opening of even more kid-friendly amenities. And then all of a sudden, you’re Park Slope.
If you want to skip this whole chicken-and-egg process, you could simply move to a place that is already full of kids. After all, what good is, say, a building with a playroom, if there's nobody there for your tots to play with? According to AddressReport, which crunched the numbers on Manhattan households with at least one child under 18, you could do worse than Battery Park City, where 36 percent of homes have under-18 kids. East Harlem (32 percent), Harlem (29 percent), Tribeca (26 percent) and the Lower East Side (20 percent) rounded out the top five. (So, basically, just avoid the whole middle part of Manhattan.)
Interestingly, the traditional bastions of family-friendly living--the Upper East and Upper West Sides--were nearer to the middle of the pack, with 15 and 18 percent, respectively. Which just goes to show you that the presence of children is not the only marker of a family-friendly area.
For more, take a look at our ranking of kid-friendly neighborhoods, which is arguably more subjective, but takes into account things like tree-lined streets, crime, and prices.
H/t to Curbed for the link.
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