Whenever I come across a “these are the hot Chicago neighborhoods” article/blog post, I usually just sort of glance over them. They are all the same, talking about the same "hip," popular neighborhoods, and they don’t really have anything new to say.

But every once in a while, an article throws me for a loop. Like this recent Chicago Tribune piece ( Read more... )

A few months ago, my mom and I were at Chicago History Museum to see an exhibit. Looking at one of the old Chicago demographic maps, I noticed something that shouldn't have been there - a concentration of African-American population near 95th and State streets. In the time period this map depicted, African-Americans were restricted to a few ( Read more... )

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Over the years, I visited many parts of Chicago that, quite frankly, most white people avoid. Some of those places are actually fairly safe - or, at least, no more dangerous than North Side lower-income neighborhoods that white people pass through all the time. Others actually are a bit more dicey. During the course of my visits, I developed a set ( Read more... )

With the 2010 census results slowly trickling in, we are finally getting some sense of how the population changed in the Windy City over the past ten years. It's something I've been looking forward since... well, since before the census started, really. And so I has very happy to see the Tribune publishing a graphic about the the population changes ( Read more... )