Community Area Geographical Definitions? (Chicago, Greenwood: fit in, neighborhoods, university)

[marothisu]

Is there an official source out there about which geographical units make up each community area. I'm talking about Census blocks/tracts or something like that. I can't find it for some reason...

[EJ3791]

I don't know about the Census data, but I seem to recall there being an official map showing the community areas somewhere on the city website. The Wikipedia articles for each area usually link to a detailed map of that area.

[tribecavsbrowns]

Google Maps also has correct community area boundaries from what I've seen. They also take precedence over neighborhood boundaries, for example, if you type in "Logan Square, Chicago," a map pops up with the boundaries of the entire Logan Square community area, which includes the Bucktown neighborhood.

There's probably a better way, but what I would do to find what Census tracts make up the community areas is have Google Maps open in one window and the 2010 New York Times Census map open in another and just write down all the tracts that fit in each community area.

[JBVirtuoso]

This is fairly easy with a GIS. There are a few open source versions available. If I recall, you're a software developer, so you should have no problem figuring that part out. All you'd need to do is get city data for census tracts and community areas, and then you can match them up pretty easily. I'm not sure it's necessarily true that census tracts fit into community areas exactly. I believe that was true in the past, but it may not be anymore.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by JBVirtuoso

This is fairly easy with a GIS. There are a few open source versions available. If I recall, you're a software developer, so you should have no problem figuring that part out. All you'd need to do is get city data for census tracts and community areas, and then you can match them up pretty easily. I'm not sure it's necessarily true that census tracts fit into community areas exactly. I believe that was true in the past, but it may not be anymore.

I am. Yeah I am look more for a list of tracts and not necessarily anything else. I did find one source, albeit unofficial, but it does kind of seem official and he cites the census..

[Larry Siegel]

The "official" community areas map, created by the department of sociology at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and later adopted by the city government, is somewhat faithfully reproduced at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...of_Chicago.svg This version is not the original one, which was drawn before Edgewater got a divorce from Uptown (the huge single area was called "Uptown") and before O'Hare was annexed. There may also have been some other annexations that I am forgetting - maybe Mount Greenwood.

Later maps show a proliferation of neighborhoods, some of which are coextensive with community areas, but most of which are smaller and unofficial.

[paytonc]

The community area boundary shapefiles are readily downloadable from
https://data.cityofchicago.org/browse?tags=shapefiles
...from which you can drag-and-drop the file into a map project in ArcGIS or QGIS (free/open source). With a little more work, you can match the community area boundaries to Census tract boundaries and get lots of wonderful demographic information from the Census.