Neighborhoods of Chicago

Chicago contains some of the most culturally rich communities in the United States. Each neighborhood maintains a strong identity and because of this, two different neighborhoods could seem like different parts of the world. One neighborhood might have multi-million dollar condominiums with a yuppie population, and another bordering neighborhood could have an impoverished immigrant ethnic contingent with street side fruit and vegetable marketplaces.

Chicago cartographers distinguish between neighborhoods and community areas. Both are defined below, but this page is concerned primarily with neighborhoods.

In the late 1920s, the Social Science Research Committee at the University of Chicago subdivided the city into 77 distinct community areas for a long-term population study. The boundaries are clearly defined, allowing for good year-by-year comparisons and statistical analysis. However, the ever-changing nature of a city means that several of the designations given in the 1920s are no longer in common use.

Unlike the well-defined community areas, Chicago neighborhood names, multiplicity, and boundaries are notoriously dynamic and fuzzy^[1]. A semi-official neighborhood map still in use by the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development was created in the 1970s by researchers who went from door-to-door asking "What neighborhood is this?"^[2] A current version of this map may be found online.

Neighborhoods are often renamed and redefined by realtors, landlords, and developers for marketing purposes^[3]. The boundaries may also change as a result of gentrification and immigration. Often, two residents of the same neighborhood, will describe different neighborhood boundaries, which may be based on zip codes, ethnic groupings, oral history, or simply personal opinion.

There are 215 neighborhoods listed below.

References

1. ^ "Neighborhood identity crisis". Red Eye. 2009-07-21. http://redeye.chicagotribune.com/features/red-072109-neighborhoods-main,0,5757084.story. Retrieved 2009-07-24. 
2. ^ City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development
3. ^ "Developers eye new name for South Loop". Crain's Chicago Business. http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=20408. 

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