Here are maps showing the change in Chicago-area population by “race” and Hispanic/Latinx status between 2010 and 2020. The numbers are from the 2010 Census and from the 2020 redistricting data released by the Census Bureau on August 12, 2021.1
These maps are comparable to the 2000-2010, 1990-2000, and 1980-1990 maps that I made while I was running the University of Chicago Library’s Map Collection.2
The latest maps suggest that there has been a continuation of many of the trends that date back at least to the 1980s.
There has been continued growth of white population near the Loop and on the North Side of Chicago—and a substantial decline of white population just about everywhere else except some outer suburbs. “White flight” from Chicago’s inner city is generally a phenomenon of the past.
There has also been a further loss of African-American population in certain poverty-stricken neighborhoods on the South and West Sides, Chicago’s close southern suburbs, and extreme Northwestern Indiana. African-American population has been growing in many other places. The Chicago region is—slowly—becoming a less segregated place.
Unlike non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic African-Americans, Asians have been increasing in number in the Chicago area. Asians have been moving in large numbers into the neighborhoods southwest of Chinatown as well as to numerous mostly well-off neighborhoods on the city’s North Side and in its northern and western suburbs.
Hispanic/Latinx population has also been going up. While it’s been shrinking in some traditionally Hispanic neighborhoods, it’s grown substantially in many other places, for example in some of the suburbs where white population has been declining.
The “race” figures used to compile these maps include only people who reported that they were white, African-American, Asian, or Pacific Islander alone. People who told the Census Bureau that they were of more than one race are excluded. While it is probably true that there are actually increasing numbers of “multi-racial” people in the United States, there seems to be a feeling that census respondents (no matter what their racial background) were far more likely in 2020 to check two, three, or four race boxes than in earlier years. Thus, it’s probable that some of the decline of white and African-American population shown on these maps is a result of a change in how people identified themselves to the Census rather than an actual shift in population ethnicity. (The problem is: if one’s interest is comparing data from different years, it’s not altogether clear what the best way to count multi-racial people is.)
Here are maps of Chicago and vicinity showing population change between 2010 and 2020 by “race” and Hispanic/Latinx status.
And here are analogous maps for the Chicago region:
- The tract boundaries used are for 2010. Where 2010 tracts have been split into several new tracts in 2020, data from the latter have been consolidated to 2010 boundaries. In the very few cases where two 2010 tracts have been merged to form a single 2020 tract, 2020 data have been distributed among the corresponding 2010 tracts. Boundary changes between 2010 and 2020 affected fewer than 3% of Chicago-area census tracts, so any dubious data manipulation would be all but imperceptible on these maps. Note that the thin black lines on the Chicago-and-vicinity maps are tract boundaries; the thick black line represents the Chicago city limits; the blue lines indicate freeways; and the location of dots within tracts is random. ↩
- The maps are also comparable to the ACS-based 2010-2014/2018, 2010-2013/2017, 2010-2012/2016, and 2010-2011/2015 maps that I put on this blog in 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017. But maps generated from data reported in two succeeding censuses are likely to be more accurate than maps generated from ACS data, since the numbers underlying the maps come from a 100% count rather than a sample survey. ↩
These maps are terrific!
I love your content and have been going back and reading it, but please stop implying that “Latino” is a slur. At the very least, use Latin@ or just Latin if you want to be inclusive (the former is much more popular in actual Spanish).
Julia, Thanks for your comment. I’ve never thought (or, I hope, implied) that “Latino” was a slur—but it’s a word that could be construed as referring mostly to males. “Latinx” and “Latin@” are attempts to create an ungendered alternative; I’ve also seen “Latino/a” and other variants. Unfortunately, it’s not clear how any of these proposed replacements should be pronounced.
Chris
En el español no se piensa así. Las palabras de género masculino son otra cosa que humanos de cualquier genero. Nadie cree que una silla es una mujer o un tenedor es un hombre, y cuando se habla de un grupo de personas de varios géneros se puede decir “latinos” sin implicar que la mayoría son hombres. Y si tuviste que usar el traductor de Google para leer lo que escribí, recomiendo aprender un poquito del español para entender como hablamos 😉 Hispanic/Latin respetan mejor nuestro idioma si quieres aplicar las reglas inglesas al español
Hello Julia,
I don’t usually need Google Translate to read Spanish. But hey, I’m not writing in Spanish, I’m writing in English, where “Latinx” has become a pretty standard way of referring to a certain group of people. I acknowledge that it seems to be an American invention, as is “Latino” with its current U.S. meaning of “person of Latin American [but not Haitian or Anglo- or Dutch- or French-Caribbean or Guyanese] descent.” Let me add that my understanding is that many native speakers of languages with grammatical gender (i.e., Spanish and most European languages) have become increasingly uncomfortable with the use of masculine adjectives to refer to people of all genders. Hence o/a, @, French “(e)”—and the occasional use of x in Spanish (“amigxs”!). I wouldn’t use “Latin” in this sense while writing in English—that’s a language. “Hispanic” does avoid the problem, but all these terms feel a little uncomfortable to me. Again, I appreciate your comment.
C