Community areas of Chicago

Community areas of Chicago

The city of Chicago is divided into seventy-seven community areas. Census data are tied to the community areas, and they serve as the basis for a variety of urban planning initiatives on both the local and regional levels.

The University of Chicago defined seventy-five community areas during the late 1920s, which at that time corresponded roughly to neighborhoods within the city. In the 1950s, with the city's annexations for O'Hare airport, a seventy-sixth community area was added. Other than the creation of the seventy-seventh community area in 1980 (by separating #77 Edgewater from #3 Uptown), boundaries have never been revised to reflect change but instead have been kept relatively stable to allow comparisons of these areas over time.
Today many of the community areas no longer correspond to any single neighborhood, and some community area names have fallen out of colloquial use. In many cases, the actual character of the community area is quite independent of that of the individual neighborhoods which comprise it.

Community Area designations are useful more than merely as a historical curiosity because they are considered more durable than the names of neighborhoods, which can change over time due to urban redevelopment, gentrification and the constant shuffle and absorption of the immigrant population.

Alternate geographic breakdowns

Parishes

Another method of neighborhood nomenclature in heavily Catholic neighborhoods of Chicago has been to refer to communities in terms of parishes. For example, one might say, "I live in St. Gertrude's, but he's from Saint Ita's."

Wards

Since 1923 Chicago has been divided into 50 City Council Aldermanic wards.[1] Each of the 50 areas is represented on the City council by one Alderman and in many social, political and economic contexts, it is reasonable to describe what part of Chicago one is from by who one's alderman is or what ward one lives in. However, using wards as the basis for comparing areas of the city over time has limited utility, due to the fact that the wards need to be redistricted every ten years. The current ward boundaries are mapped here

External links

City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development
Community Area Demographics
Community Area Maps
Chicago Area Geographic Information Study (CAGIS)
Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission
Census 2000 Chicago Community Area Profiles
MCIC (Metro Chicago Information Center)
Metro Chicago Facts Online