Plenty nearby, easy to get around
This lens weights lifestyle and location access together: how much there is within walking distance, and how easy the surrounding streets are to move through without a car. It is the closest thing in the index to conventional urban density.
The lifestyle measure counts named places from OpenStreetMap across each hexagon and its immediate neighbours, covering restaurants, cafes, groceries, parks and gyms, and rewards variety as well as volume so one dense restaurant strip does not carry an area on its own.
Same weighting, on a map of all 7,644 areas, where you can change the balance and see every measure behind a place.
Liveliest, most connected areas
Mean score across every measured cell in each neighborhood, ranked against 263 neighborhoods. Names carried by fewer than three measured cells are left out, as are the cluster names this project invented where no established neighborhood name existed.
| # | Neighborhood | Combined score | Median rent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Koreatown | 88 | $1,575/mo |
| 2 | West Hollywood | 86 | $2,225/mo |
| 3 | Westlake | 86 | $1,375/mo |
| 4 | Chinatown | 85 | $1,600/mo |
| 5 | Hollywood | 85 | $1,850/mo |
| 6 | East Hollywood | 85 | $1,625/mo |
| 7 | Pico-Union | 85 | $1,275/mo |
| 8 | Fairfax | 84 | $2,525/mo |
| 9 | Beverly Grove | 83 | $2,350/mo |
| 10 | Palms | 83 | $2,175/mo |
| 11 | Downtown LA | 83 | $1,425/mo |
| 12 | Mid-Wilshire | 83 | $2,100/mo |
| 13 | Santa Monica | 83 | $2,400/mo |
| 14 | Sawtelle | 82 | $2,400/mo |
| 15 | Little Saigon | 81 | $1,900/mo |
| 16 | Del Rey | 80 | $2,225/mo |
| 17 | Hermosa Beach | 80 | $3,025/mo |
| 18 | Highland Park | 80 | $1,750/mo |
| 19 | Lawndale | 79 | $1,875/mo |
| 20 | Lomita | 79 | $1,725/mo |
| 21 | Old Towne Orange | 79 | $2,125/mo |
| 22 | Exposition Park | 79 | $1,475/mo |
| 23 | Century City | 79 | $3,125/mo |
| 24 | Silver Lake | 78 | $1,900/mo |
| 25 | Westwood | 77 | $2,750/mo |
Place counts depend on how thoroughly an area has been mapped in OpenStreetMap. Well-surveyed neighborhoods can look busier than comparably provisioned ones that nobody has mapped in detail.
Use this data
Free to reuse with credit, including commercially.
How this is measured
- Lifestyle 45%. OpenStreetMap place counts (restaurant, coffee, grocery, park, gym)
- Location access 35%. EPA Smart Location Database walkability, transit access, density
- Affordability 10%. ACS B25064 median gross rent (block group)
- Environment 10%. CalEnviroScreen 4.0 diesel PM + traffic proximity, NLCD tree canopy
Every measure is a percentile rank from 0 to 100 against all 7,644 populated cells in Los Angeles and Orange County, so a score describes how an area compares within the region rather than against a national baseline. This lens scores 7,644 of them. Block-group figures are blended onto the grid by distance-weighted nearest centroids.
Data compiled 2026-08-20, methodology v1. Free to reuse with credit under CC BY 4.0; place counts come from OpenStreetMap and carry share-alike. Full terms, column definitions and limitations are on the data page.
Other ways to read the index
- Compare two places side by side
Every measure at once for up to four areas, each drawn against the whole region.
- Where rent goes furthest
Neighborhoods across LA and Orange County ranked by median rent against every other area in the region, using ACS block-group data.
- Cheap rent without needing a car
Neighborhoods in LA and Orange County that combine low rent with walkable streets and transit access, ranked from block-group and EPA walkability data.
- Low rent and clean air together
Where lower rent overlaps with cleaner air in LA and Orange County, using CalEnviroScreen diesel particulate and traffic data alongside ACS rents.
- Tree cover, clean air, little traffic
LA and Orange County neighborhoods ranked on air quality, traffic exposure and tree canopy, from CalEnviroScreen and national land-cover data.
- Where home prices go furthest
LA and Orange County neighborhoods ranked by ACS median home value, showing where buying costs least relative to the rest of the region.
- The areas with no affordable escape from pollution
LA and Orange County areas where high environmental exposure coincides with high rent burden, combining CalEnviroScreen with ACS rent-to-income data.
- Where police report the fewest incidents
LA and Orange County neighborhoods ranked by police-reported violent and property incident rates, from LAPD, LA County Sheriff and CA DOJ records.
- Where growing up led to higher adult earnings
LA and Orange County neighborhoods ranked on Opportunity Atlas outcomes: what children raised in each area earned as adults, from Census-linked tax records.