How two sociologists carved a city into 77 permanent identities

History · Published 19 October 2026 · Updated 20 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Chicago is famously a city of neighborhoods, but the boundaries you see on a map aren't always the ones people feel in their hearts. In the 1920s, a team of researchers sought to create a 'natural' way to organize the urban chaos, resulting in a static grid that still defines the city's data today.

To find a simpler method for studying the city than the 'arbitrarily-designated' census tracts used then, the University of Chicago's Social Science Research Committee looked for alternatives during the 1920s. Led by sociologists Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess, the committee aimed to identify 'natural' areas. Park believed that physical contingencies—like the Chicago River or railroads—would inevitably form distinct areas with common identities. Burgess was the primary architect of this system, initially identifying 400 neighborhoods before trimming them down to 80, and finally grouping them into the 75 community areas first presented to the Chicago Department of Public Health.

Unlike the city's 50 wards, which are redrawn every decade to account for population shifts, these community areas were designed for stability. Their boundaries have remained largely unchanged for nearly a century, with only two major exceptions: the creation of O'Hare in 1956 to manage the international airport and the 1980 separation of Edgewater from Uptown. This permanence allows for long-term statistical comparisons, but it also creates friction. Critics argue that the static boundaries fail to reflect major 20th-century shifts, such as the construction of expressways that physically bisected neighborhoods without moving the official lines.

The system also highlights the gap between data and cultural identity. For instance, the area known as New City was a deliberate choice by Burgess to avoid the stigma of 'Back of the Yards,' a name made notorious by Upton Sinclair's 1904 novel The Jungle. While these areas serve as the backbone for urban planning, charity work, and reporting, they don't always align with popular imagination. Some residents may identify with a specific neighborhood name, while the city's data remains tied to the rigid, academic boundaries established a century ago.

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