…and about South Loop. Nobody seems to agree what that is.

September 28, 2015 6:15 AM

This is where Chicagoans say the borders of their neighborhoods are. Crowdsourced cartography from residents asked to draw their neighborhood.

The city's Office of Tourism, which morphed into the nonprofit Choose Chicago, has its own neighborhood map … that serves the basis for guides posted on Downtown streets.

The organization has no plans to embark on making official neighborhood maps.

"So everybody can be mad at us?" said Melissa Cherry, who oversees cultural tourism and neighborhoods at Choose Chicago. "No."

posted by nebulawindphone (24 comments total)

Here's the same sort of thing for Boston, done a couple of years ago.
posted by briank at 6:17 AM on September 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

I love this kind of thing. Perhaps the reason that drawing borders is so difficult is because neighborhoods do not have distinct boundaries but rather merge onto each other [or overlap like the example of Boystown and Wrigleyville]. These intermediate zones could be considered by part of one neighborhood or another depending on how much of the essential character a person sees in that area.

Or it could just be the realtors trying to make an area seem more appealing by including it in part of a trendy neighborhood.
posted by nolnacs at 6:42 AM on September 28, 2015 [5 favorites]

"Or it could just be the realtors trying to make an area seem more appealing by including it in part of a trendy neighborhood."

Ding! Ding! Ding!
posted by MrJM at 6:48 AM on September 28, 2015 [7 favorites]

Saying that there's practically no data for the South Side is about as tautologous as saying that the sun rises in the east, but who the hell said that Bronzeville consists of all of southwest Chicago?
posted by J.K. Seazer at 6:59 AM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would go draw borders but as a person who has thoroughly read the wikipedia entries for each of Chicago's 77 community areas and all the related neighborhood articles I feel it would skew the crowdsourced nature of the results.


Or it could just be the realtors trying to make an area seem more appealing by including it in part of a trendy neighborhood.

See also: realtors trying to make "East Pilsen" a thing. I have a friend who lives at about 19th and Sangamon, and she says they're making a big push to make her side of the neighborhood feel more exclusive (read: white) than the rest of Pilsen while still banking on the cache of a vibrant (read: Mexican and artist) community. Evidently they were very upset when Nightwood closed this summer.
posted by phunniemee at 7:19 AM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've spent a lot of time playing Click That Hood, but drawing in the actual street boundaries by hand is still pretty challenging.
posted by onehalfjunco at 7:39 AM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm intrigued by the fact that there really isn't much debate over what the Loop is (thankfully, that would be dumb), but then there's so much debate about where the Directional Loop neighborhoods are. Like, if the Loop ends at Congress, and South Loop begins at Roosevelt (which seem to be the most common views), what the hell is the space in between? (Where I live.) Same for West Loop between Canal and the expressway.
posted by protocoach at 7:53 AM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Previously, for NYC
posted by miguelcervantes at 8:02 AM on September 28, 2015

What google maps calls the neighborhood I grew up in was what we called the neighborhood 2 or maybe 3 neighborhoods to the south back when I was living there; (not Chicago but a different not-quite-as-big city).
posted by bukvich at 8:18 AM on September 28, 2015

For two neighborhoods that don't officially exist, according to the city, Ravenswood and Andersonville have somewhat clear borders, according to readers.

Okay Chicago why are you spending money on things like this then.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:21 AM on September 28, 2015

If you like this, you might enjoy a book from the 1950's called The Image of the City, in which the author uses mental maps of Boston and other cities to derive a sort of design language of the urban landscape. I think it's one of the main texts on city planning, even now, but really it's just a fun and interesting read that also changes the way you perceive your environment.
posted by swift at 8:22 AM on September 28, 2015

The City of Chicago website has a PDF map of neighborhoods (8.5MB) here based on survey data from 1978. It's interesting to compare the maps. From anecdata, I'm under the impression that in 1978, the gentrification of the North Side only went as far as Lincoln Park, which would explain all the little neighborhoods there.
posted by conic at 8:22 AM on September 28, 2015

Who are these people excluding Lucky Horseshoe and the IHOP from Boystown.
posted by PMdixon at 8:25 AM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Like, if the Loop ends at Congress, and South Loop begins at Roosevelt (which seem to be the most common views), what the hell is the space in between? (Where I live.)

Printers' Row?
posted by kickingtheground at 9:07 AM on September 28, 2015

Printers' Row is a piece of it, but it's a pretty tiny piece of a decently-sized area.
posted by protocoach at 9:18 AM on September 28, 2015

The answers are different depending on the goal. "These streets are quintessentially neighborhood XYZ" and "all streets must be part of a neighborhood" are two different things.

I personally live in the No Man's Land between the general agreement of Ravenswood and Andersonville (which totally exist, wtf article). Just don't call it Uptown....
posted by travertina at 9:30 AM on September 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Between Congress and Roosevelt is absolutely the South Loop. I've never heard it called anything else. I work in that area, and we consider it to be South Loop. It must be people who aren't in that area that can't distinguish.
posted by MythMaker at 10:07 AM on September 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

The neighborhood I lived in while in college isn't even a named option, Juneway. It's that little pale tab sticking up to the north of the dense red of actual Rogers Park way up north.
posted by ursus_comiter at 10:50 AM on September 28, 2015

For most neighborhoods they didn't get down to the microneighborhood level, so Juneway and other tiny niches didn't get covered. I would find it fascinating to see how everyone defines their own little part of the city, though; it's something I've always found fascinating.

I wonder if EveryBlock's data on people's personal news zone would get at some of that.
posted by me3dia at 11:47 AM on September 28, 2015

South Loop might as well not be called anything now that Cal's Liquors is gone.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:01 PM on September 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

I personally live in the No Man's Land between the general agreement of Ravenswood and Andersonville (which totally exist, wtf article). Just don't call it Uptown....

I found it odd that the map the city drew, which claimed Andersonville and Ravenswood didn't exist, was overlaid over the Google Map that literally has the words "Andersonville" and "Ravenswood" on it. You'd think at least one person might say "hey it looks like these are things, since they're on the actual map."
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:56 AM on September 29, 2015

That Choose Chicago neighborhood map limning Printers Row is nuts. It goes (went) from Congress to Polk. Most of south of Polk was railroad land, no printers there. (Sigh), now I'll have to find whoever it is I have to pay off at City Hall to get it redrawn.
posted by Chitownfats at 3:05 PM on September 29, 2015

Like, if the Loop ends at Congress, and South Loop begins at Roosevelt (which seem to be the most common views), what the hell is the space in between? (Where I live.)

Dearborn Park, at least from Polk south.
posted by Chitownfats at 4:19 PM on September 29, 2015

There's a handful of other cities where this being implemented, including aforementioned NYC, Boston as well as Burlington, VT Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland.

I launched Cleveland and Akron's crowdsourced neighborhood map about a couple weeks ago.

..."but is holding off on unofficial neighborhoods like South Loop and Bronzeville, because those borders get "dicey.""
Well, maybe this is me being flippant after a long day, but yes, duh. Neighborhood boundaries are subjective and vary from person to person.
posted by fizzix at 5:37 AM on September 30, 2015