Cross between New York City neighborhoods and you’ll be transported. Parents crowd Park Slope’s stroller-lined streets, where the child-to-adult ratio is rising–defying citywide trends in other affluent areas. Earlier waves of immigration shaped a historically Polish Greenpoint, while Jackson Heights’ Middle Eastern and Indian communities contribute to Queens’ reputation as a culinary melting pot. Novelist Hisham Matar captures this feeling in My Friends, romanticizing London as a city of “distinctions and barriers, where, between one street and the next, the entire world can be remade.”
In metropolises, socioeconomics, demographics, and the built environment shape geographic identity–even stepping across neighborhoods can feel like “the entire world [has been] remade.” In 2015, researchers also found that personality traits vary geographically across Greater London. Big Five personality traits, the most clinically accepted framework for understanding personality, clustered across neighborhoods and by proximity to the city center. These results beg the question, does New York, too, vary geographically in personality type?
To test this theory, I recreated the BBC London survey and shared it across every NYC neighborhood subreddit. Curiosity alone drove more than 2,500 people to take the survey, resulting in enough data to surface early insights. These results revealed two key takeaways: (1) neighborhood personalities differ significantly from the citywide average and (2) neighborhoods are distinct from one another–though more data is needed to sharpen the picture. New Yorkers can see their results by taking the survey now.
The above map shows the correlation between NYC neighborhoods, Big Five personality traits, and life satisfaction, with color signifying how far a neighborhood’s traits differ from the citywide mean. Note that (1) some, but not all, of these differences are statistically significant, and (2) the results may shift as the dataset becomes more complete. This early evidence encourages me to continue filling out the map.
When used ethically, data like this has a wide range of applications from location-based marketing, retail site selection, or even building a StreetEasy competitor that connects people with neighborhoods based on personality.
I’m keeping the survey open and actively seeking more responses. You can check back here to see how the results evolve over time.
Shreya Jaiswal
I’m a UX researcher and data journalist with a background in primate research. Outside of work, I dig into ancient food history, play the harp, create 3D cake art, and immerse myself in board and video games.
