Chicago Neighborhoods

A leafy, lakefront community area on Chicago's North Side anchored by DePaul University, the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Lincoln Park Conservatory, and one of the city's busiest theater and dining strips along Clark, Lincoln, and Halsted. Home to historic brownstones, the park itself, North Avenue Beach, and the ongoing tug-of-war over housing density, preservation, and small-business churn that defines North Side politics.

A storied South Side community area anchored by the University of Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry, bordered to the east by the lakefront and to the west by Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance, and now being reshaped by the Obama Presidential Center and the 53rd Street commercial corridor. A dense, transit-oriented mix of Gothic stone campus buildings, Prairie-style homes, public housing, and small businesses where longtime residents, students, and hospital workers collide over affordability, zoning, and the future of the South Side.

A North Side community area hugging Lake Michigan from Diversey Parkway north to Irving Park Road, anchored by Wrigleyville around the Cubs' ballpark, the longtime LGBTQ center of Boystown along Halsted, and the Southport corridor's restaurants and shops. Walk-up three-flats, the Lakeview Athletics Center, the Music Box Theatre, the Belmont Harbor yacht club, and a constantly contested bar and nightlife scene define a dense, transit-oriented stretch where CTA Brown and Purple Line crowds, lakefront trail traffic, and small-business churn collide over density, affordability, and Wrigley rooftops.

A Northwest Side community area centered on the Logan Square traffic circle and the Milwaukee Avenue corridor, anchored by the historic Logan Theatre, the Illinois Centennial Monument, and a dense strip of late-night bars, music venues, taquerías, coffee shops, and walk-up three-flats stretching south into Avondale and east into Bucktown and Humboldt Park. As the Blue Line terminus gentrified, raised the stakes on displacement, small-business churn, and the long-running debate over the 606 trail and the kimball-larabee industrial corridor, it has become a bellwether for Northwest Side politics, Latino community change, and the city's reckoning with density and affordability.