The maps below present a classification of Chicago’s residential census tracts based on multivariate analysis. This approach (sometimes called social area analysis or factorial ecology in geography and sociology) is often used to classify small areas in cities. The ten neighborhood types identified on the maps were derived through a two-step process. First, the TRYSYS program was used to factor 34 important tract-level census variables by the Tryon “key-cluster analysis” method. The data come either from the 2010 census or from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey. Three oblique dimensions were identified. Then each tract was scored on the three dimensions (using a simple sum of standardized scores), and tracts were cluster-analyzed using TRYSYS‘s iterative partitioning method. Robert B. Dean did the statistical analysis.
These maps are comparable to those generated for 1990 and 2000 data when I was working at the University of Chicago Library. Essentially the same variables were used, and nearly the same geographic area was covered. The three dimensions (or clusters) are very similar to the first three dimensions found in the 1990 and 2000 data (although the order of the first two is different). In both 1990 and 2000, a fourth dimension was identified, associated with family type and age. A similar dimension in the 2010 data is not at all significant, and, in conjunction with this, the geographical pattern of neighborhood types has changed in some small ways. For example, the well-off/young-adult/non-family area roughly along North Halsted Street that was identified in the 2000 census analysis has vanished in 2010, mostly subsumed into areas classed as very well-off and very urban (type 1). But, in general, the broad pattern of Chicago’s social geography appears to have changed only in subtle ways in the first decade of the 21st century. The area of gentrification on the North Side has clearly moved west and north from Wicker Park and Bucktown, into Ukrainian Village, Logan Square, and even Humboldt Park. Gentrification has also moved west from downtown. Click here for some maps that demonstrate that there was a considerable amount of ethnic-specific internal migration in the area. Note that, because the classifications have changed, the color schemes of the 1990, 2000, and 2010 neighborhood-type maps, while similar, are not completely comparable.
No claim can be made that this is a definitive analysis of neighborhood types in Chicago. It is in the nature of this kind of analysis that a change in the variables selected or in the parameters set by the analyst can change the results significantly. There is also the issue that the 2008-2012 ACS data are not likely to be as reliable as earlier long-form data. The best that can be said is that the maps may provide one useful way of analyzing the differences in Chicago’s residential areas.
Here is a map showing neighborhood types in Chicago and its inner suburbs. Nominal scale is 1:250,000. (Click here for key.)
Here is a map showing neighborhood types in the Chicago region. Nominal scale is 1:700,000. (Click here for key.)
