Not many people outside of Chicago know that the city doesn't actually have an officially sanctioned list of neighborhoods like, say, New York. Instead, the city has 77 community areas—which encompass various neighborhoods.
That being said, locals clearly have their own opinions on where neighborhood borders begin and end, whether it's Pilsen, Wicker Park or Andersonville, among many others.
A relatively new study by researchers at the University of Chicago takes the very concept of neighborhoods to the next level. Between November 2023 and April 2024, the experts reached out to thousands of residents, collecting 5,500 responses that identified specific neighborhoods in Chicago.
The result of the Chicago Neighborhood Project is an unofficial map of the city's geographical makeup that feels more official than the one drawn in the 1920s. After all, what could be more Chicago than a map created by the very people who call it home and traverse it daily?
“I’m hoping it will bring some wider recognition to the nuance of the many neighborhoods within the city,” Crystal Bae, one of the researchers, said to Block Club Chicago, who originally published the map. “It gives us more information than a label like ‘the Near West Side,’ which is just a cardinal direction and does not actually show all the unique neighborhoods that exist within it.”
Feel free to browse through the project right here on Block Club Chicago—and let us know whether or not you agree with the general geographical boundaries produced by locals.