Community Areas Chicago 1990

Since the 1920s Chicago has been officially divided into "community areas" of which there are now 77. The sociologists of the Chicago School who divised the community areas attempted to create socially homogeneous regions. In practice, some of the community areas have coincided more clearly with widely recognized neighborhood boundaries than others, and, with time, certain community areas have come to seem particularly artificial. Nonetheless, the City of Chicago compiles many statistics by community area. This file consists for the most part of consolidated tract polygons. Boundaries for those parts of the city--near O'Hare and in two small areas on the South Side--where the tract boundaries do not coincide with community area boundaries have been corrected. Shapefile name is chicomm.shp