The test every neighbourhood takes
Every month we rebuild each city from OpenStreetMap and put every named neighbourhood near its sights through the same seven tests. A neighbourhood is recommended only if it passes all seven. Nobody can pay to pass, and nobody is passed by hand.
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It is close to the sights
One street back means close. The neighbourhood must be within 15 minutes of one of the city's main sights, on foot or by one short ride on a bus, tram or metro. In the largest cities, such as London, Paris, Prague and Tokyo, where the centre itself is bigger, the limit is 20 or 25 minutes.
Further out: not measured.
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It is not the tourist core
Anywhere within a five-minute walk of the main sights is the tourist core, however many shops it also has. It is never recommended.
Too close: On Watch.
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Everyday life outweighs visitors
This is the main test. Within 800 m of the neighbourhood's centre, measured in a straight line, we count two kinds of place. On flat, connected streets that is about ten minutes on foot. Where a river, railway or main road cuts across the circle, the real walk is longer; we are working on measuring along the streets instead.
Places for visitors: hotels, guesthouses, hostels and holiday apartments, souvenir shops, and the well-known sights and museums.
Everyday shops: bakeries, grocers, butchers, supermarkets, delis, pharmacies, hairdressers, hardware shops, newsagents, launderettes and dry cleaners.
Then we divide the first by the second. Below 0.6 visitor places for every everyday shop, the neighbourhood passes. From 0.6 it goes On Watch. At 1 or more, visitors outweigh everyday life and it is lost.
Neighbourhood Visitor places Everyday shops Result Gràcia, Barcelona 35 471 Passes Trastevere, Rome 68 60 Lost Medina, Marrakech 401 35 Lost The verdict is a balance, not a count. Gràcia has visitors, but it has so much everyday life around them that they make little difference.
Close to the line: On Watch. Over it: lost.
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There is enough daily life to live on
A neighbourhood can pass the balance test simply by being empty. So we also score its daily life out of 10, from what is within the same 800 m: bakeries (6 gives full marks), food shops (15), cafés (15) and places to eat (40), plus a point for a market. It needs 6 out of 10.
Below 6: not recommended (thin daily life).
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There is somewhere to stay
At least two hotels, guesthouses, hostels or holiday apartments must be mapped within 1.2 km, about fifteen minutes on foot. A lovely street with nowhere to sleep is no use to someone booking a trip.
Fewer than two: not recommended.
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There is life in the evening
Somewhere to stay should also be somewhere to spend an evening. Within the same 800 m there must be at least two bars, or at least two places mapped as open at 23:00 on a Friday.
Quieter than that: not recommended (quiet evenings).
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The after-dark test
Would we be comfortable sending a friend here for dinner and having them walk back to where they are staying afterwards? A neighbourhood can pass every test of everyday life and still be somewhere we would not send them.
We check police and city information, government travel advice, local press and residents' forums, in the local language and in English. One alarming story is not enough, and neither is a reputation. We look for specific, recent evidence from independent sources. Several sites repeating the same story count as one. Poverty, immigration or being unfamiliar to visitors are not evidence of risk.
Each neighbourhood gets one of four results.
Pass Recent sources discuss the area and none shows a serious concern. Pickpockets and busy nightlife are a pass. Caution A credible concern about one street, park or station, or certain hours. The neighbourhood stays, and the warning is shown on it, naming the place. Removed At least two independent, recent sources show serious risk to visitors: violent crime, robbery, open drug dealing or persistent harassment. Not verified Too little reliable, recent reporting to judge. Silence is not proof of safety, so we say so on the neighbourhood. The research is done with an AI assistant that searches, reads and cites the sources, under these rules. A removal it asks for with fewer than two independent sources becomes a caution. Every result is recorded with its sources and dated. Every city is checked again every four months, and whenever its neighbourhoods change. No desk check can promise that a street is safe, and we do not claim to.
Serious, corroborated risk: removed. A named street or place: caution, shown.
Order of the list
Every neighbourhood that passes all seven tests is local by our measure. Among them, a local and lively place should come before a local and sleepy one. So we rank them on three things, each compared with the rest of the same city: the balance of everyday shops to visitor places, the same measure as test 3 (45%), street life, meaning bars, cafés and places to eat (40%), and places open at 08:00 on a Tuesday (15%). The balance is a ratio, not a count of visitors: Gràcia, busy with visitors but with 471 everyday shops around them, is recommended in Barcelona. Ties go to the shorter trip to the sights.
The dentist test
On each neighbourhood we also show the places nobody needs on holiday: dentists, doctors, vets, schools, driving schools, opticians, repair shops. If a street has a dentist, a vet and a driving school, people live there. This is shown to help you judge a place. It does not change the result.
When a city has too few
If fewer than three neighbourhoods pass in a city, we look up to 15 minutes further out by bus, tram or metro and add up to three that pass every other test, after the after-dark test. Some cities still have nothing: in Venice, Bruges, Dubrovnik, Marrakech, Cusco and Cartagena, nothing near the sights passes. That is the finding, not a gap.
What the test cannot see
Holiday flats rented through Airbnb and similar sites are mostly not on the map, so where they are common we understate visitors. Mapping is fuller in some cities than in others. A 400-room hotel counts the same as a three-room guesthouse. If you know a neighbourhood and the result looks wrong, fix the map or tell us. Every city is rebuilt on the 1st of each month.