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.
A full list in numerical order and map is available below.
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Areas
Following is a list of the Chicago Community Areas by community area number (see map).
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." Some of these designations have come into common parlance as developers have used them to market new gentrifying areas such as "St. Ben's", a neighborhood found on the Chicago Realtor Association's official Chicago Neighborhood map. Chicago's 'Polish Patches' are also named after the historically Polish church located in the vicinity.
Wards
Since 1923, the City of 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.
Notes
- ^ "Encyclopedia of Chicago Government, City of Chicago". Chicago Historical Society. Retrieved on 2007-01-18.
External links
- City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development
- City of Chicago Website
- Chicago Area Geographic Information Study (CAGIS)
- Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission
- MCIC (Metro Chicago Information Center)
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- This page was last modified on 26 November 2008, at 16:13.
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