How we score a neighborhood

WalkabilityOur read

Whether the week's errands — bakery, verdulería, pharmacy, a chino on the corner, somewhere to sit with a coffee — happen on foot within a few blocks, and whether the streets are pleasant enough to want to. A grid with a little of everything scores above an avenue with everything; a barrio you cross by bus scores low. Scored by walking it, not imported from a walkability index.

Cost valueData

The average asking rent for a one-bedroom against the city average (Q2 2026, city statistics office), using sale price per m² only when rent is unavailable. Where neither exists, value stays unknown and is excluded from fit.

TransitData

Subte, train, Metrobús and Ecobici stops per km², weighted 3 · 2 · 1 · ¼, against the median barrio. This counts stops inside each boundary, not service frequency or nearby stops across the border.

ParksData

Square metres of parks, plazas and gardens per resident (road medians excluded), against the median barrio. Agronomía and Parque Chas share pooled population and park totals; this is area, not walking access or opening hours.

Food & cafesOur read

The restaurants, cafés and bars a resident would use on a Tuesday night and a Sunday afternoon, counted for range as well as number: specialty coffee, more than one cuisine, places open past midnight. A dozen parrillas and nothing else sits around a 5; a dense mix across a dozen blocks is a 9. Tourist traps count for nothing.

CultureData

Cultural centres, theatres, museums, cinemas and popular libraries within walking reach, from the national Ministry of Culture's cultural map (1,201 spaces in the city and the near suburbs, each layer dated 2022–2024): every space counts, weighted by kind and management — a public theatre or museum above a private sala or collection, a cinema or a popular library below — and discounted by straight-line distance (e-fold every 1.5 km), against the best-served barrio. It counts rooms, not programmes, and misses the newest independent spaces. Where the map lists fewer than 8 spaces within 2 km of a place's centre (6 places) we keep our own read of it, labelled as such on the page.

QuietOur read

Residential calm at night and at the weekend: traffic on the block, buses under the window, bars below the balcony, construction next door. A 9 means you sleep with the window open; a 3 means you learn to. The nightlife lens reads this dimension backwards and rewards the low scores.

English & expatsOur read

How far English carries in daily life — clinics, landlords, gyms, cafés, a vet — and how many foreigners already live there, which decides whether the landlord has seen a foreign passport before. A convenience for the first year, not a virtue: the finder weighs it only under First landing.

HealthcareData

Distance from the barrio's centre to the nearest hospital or clinic on our healthcare map, plus a bonus for the ones inside the barrio. Our list is selective; distance is straight-line, not travel time or a measure of quality, coverage or availability.

SchoolsData

An approximate access index using 19 schools in our list, discounted by straight-line distance from barrio or suburb centres. It is not travel time, an admissions check, or a complete school census. St. George's College is excluded until its separate campuses are mapped.

ClubsData

An access index over the 39 member sports clubs in our registry — the multi-sport social clubs, the Zona Norte river and rugby clubs, the football clubs' socio sedes and the barrio clubs, weighted in that order — discounted by straight-line distance from barrio or suburb centres (fading every 2 km, as a club is a weekly trip). Gyms are not clubs and are not counted. It is not travel time, a measure of a club's quality, or a promise that it will take you: each place page lists its clubs and how joining works.

SafetyData

Reported robberies and thefts per 1,000 residents in 2025 (the city's crime map over the 2022 census), against the city rate of 32.2. It measures what reaches the police, and it counts residents only — six central barrios (the office core, the terminals, San Telmo, Puerto Madero) put far more people on their streets than live there, so these rates cannot estimate an individual resident’s risk. The city baseline includes reports without a barrio assignment; the local counts do not.

City barrios

The city statistics office's average asking rents, Q2 2026: a studio, a one-bedroom (a 43 m² two-ambientes) and a two-bedroom, converted to dollars at the quarter's bank rate.

Zona Norte

The Zonaprop listings index, Aug 2026: the average asking rent for a 50 m² two-ambientes, quoted only for some localities and only for one bedroom, converted at the month's bank rate.

What they are not

Standard used-apartment benchmarks, not furnished short-stay quotes. Building fees and utilities are extra, and an average does not guarantee an available apartment at that price.

Fit

A weighted average of the marks a lens cares about, as a share of the maximum. The dimensions a lens ignores do not dilute it, and a missing mark drops out of the average rather than counting as neutral — a barrio with no usable price is ranked on the rest, and a value-only comparison shows “No data” for it.

Bands

The finder, the compare view and the pill on each page print a band, not the number: 80 and above is strong, 65 to 79 good, 50 to 64 fair, below 50 weak. The number still drives the ranking and the map; we keep it off the page because “92% fit” claims a precision that 1–10 marks, half of them opinion, do not have.

The overall read

The pill at the top of each page is the band for an even weighting of every dimension that has data — twelve for a barrio with a price, eleven for one without, eleven for a Zona Norte locality. “Strongest on” lists the marks of 8 or more, up to three; “weakest on” the marks of 5 or less, up to two. In the six commuter-hub barrios the reported-crime rate stays out of both lists, because it counts people who do not live there.

First landingLens

Walkable, transit-rich, English-friendly, food and culture on tap — with reported crime included in the comparison. Weighs walkability, transit, food & cafes, culture, english & expats, safety.

With kidsLens

Schools and healthcare first, then the clubs, safety, parks, quiet and walkable streets. Weighs schools ×2, healthcare, clubs, safety, walkability, transit, parks, quiet.

On a budgetLens

Lower asking prices first, with transit, walkability and reported crime in the mix. Weighs cost value ×2, transit, walkability, safety; floors the fit when transit is below 5.

Creative & nightlifeLens

Culture, food and walkability — and the louder, the better. Weighs walkability, food & cafes, culture; rewards a low quiet mark.

Quiet & greenLens

Calm streets and green space, with reported crime and asking prices in the mix. Weighs parks ×2, quiet ×2, safety, cost value.

Car-freeLens

Transit and walkability only — live here without ever owning a car. Weighs walkability, transit; floors the fit when transit is below 6.

Fine-tuning

Adjusting the weights switches to a custom mix of positive weights only: the preset inversions and transit floors come off, so what you see is exactly the dimensions you asked for.

The 12 Zona Norte localities sit in the Province of Buenos Aires, where the city's open data does not reach. They are ranked on the same twelve dimensions so the finder can set Olivos next to Belgrano, with these differences:

Value

The Zonaprop listings index for Greater Buenos Aires (Aug 2026) against the same report's city average, so both sides of the ratio come from one source: the average asking rent for a 50 m² two-ambientes where Zonaprop quotes the locality, otherwise the asking sale price per m² for the locality or, failing that, its partido. Each page says which it used.

Schools, healthcare, clubs and culture

Measured exactly as for the barrios — straight-line distance from the locality's centre to the schools, hospitals and member clubs on our lists and to the cultural spaces on the national map, normalised against the best-served barrio — so a Zona Norte school, club or culture score means the same thing as a Belgrano one.

Transit and parks

Our read, not data: the city publishes stop and green-space files for its 48 barrios only. We score the suburbs by hand from the train lines, the Tren de la Costa and the river parks, and label them as opinion.

Safety

Not scored. The province records crime by partido (municipality), not locality, through the national SNIC panel (Sistema Nacional de Información Criminal, the Ministry of Security's yearly statistics). Province-wide, reported robberies and thefts run at 10.6 per 1,000 residents against the city's 32.2 — a recording gap as much as a safety gap — so each locality page prints its partido's rate, its rank among the 24 Greater Buenos Aires partidos (median 11.2) and the city rate side by side, and leaves the 1–10 scale to the barrios. The SNIC count for the city itself agrees with the city crime map to within 1%, so the two sources count the same things.

Culture and the clubs

The national cultural map crosses the General Paz, so Culture is measured here too, and the suburbs score low on it honestly: a casa de la cultura, a municipal theatre and a museum or two against the city's hundreds of rooms. Where the map lists fewer than 8 spaces within 2 km of a locality's centre we keep our own read, labelled as such. The sports clubs that carry Zona Norte's social life are deliberately not folded into Culture: they are member institutions, not public culture. They have their own mark, Clubs, measured from our registry, and each locality page lists them with how joining works.

Boundaries

OpenStreetMap administrative boundaries for ten localities; Martínez and Acassuso have none, so theirs are the San Isidro partido minus its mapped localities, split between their official centres — approximate, and flagged on the map.

City barrios

Mapa del delito 2025 (reported crimes, city open data) · Subte stations (city open data) · Railway stations (city open data) · Metrobús stations (city open data) · Ecobici docking stations (city open data) · Public green space polygons (city open data) · Censo 2022 population by barrio (INDEC) · Asking rents and sale prices by barrio, Q2 2026 (IDECBA). Measurements compiled 2026-09-22; rents converted at the Banco Central de la República Argentina (BCRA, Argentina’s central bank) retail seller rate, Q2 2026 average (ARS 1433.5 per US$).

Zona Norte

SNIC crime statistics by department, 2025 (Ministerio de Seguridad, national open data) · Censo 2022 population by partido (INDEC) · Asking rents and sale prices, Zonaprop Index GBA report, Aug 2026 · Locality boundaries, OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Measurements compiled 2026-10-06; rents converted at the Banco Central de la República Argentina (BCRA, Argentina’s central bank) retail seller rate, August 2026 average (ARS 1521.6 per US$).

Culture

Mapa Cultural: Espacios Culturales (SInCA, Ministerio de Cultura de la Nación; CC BY 4.0), 1,201 spaces after folding duplicates; compiled 2026-10-26.

Clubs

Our own registry of 39 member sports clubs with OpenStreetMap coordinates; compiled 2026-10-25.

Exchange rate

The central bank's retail seller average for each table's period.

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