Demographics & Crime in Chicago's Community Areas


This interactive dashboard displays the number of crimes committed in Chicago's 77 community areas. Use the menu options below to filter the data you want to see. When you select a demographic group, you may also select a cutoff value. Community areas with values above the cutoff value will have a thick, black border on the map or will be to the left of a black vertical line of the scatter plot. If you click on a community area, detailed information about that area will appear to the right. For details about the data sources, please click the About tab above.






Demographics & Crime in Chicago's Community Areas

About

We have all heard the term Black-on-Black crime , but Blackness does not cause someone to kill another human being. Rather than focus entirely on race, this work intends to draw attention to socioeconomic characteristics, like household income and level of education, that might serve as better indicators of why people commit crimes. Another important goal of this interactive tool is to demonstrate that violent crime in Chicago is a community-bound issue and not citywide.

Next Steps

  • First, real estate sales data will be added to help the viewer more fully understand the communities in Chicago and to assess the relationship between crime and property value.
  • Next, a feature to drilldown to the block level will be included so users can better examine crime rates in Chicago.
  • Lastly, a data analysis will be conducted to determine whether there is a correlation between changes in property value over time and hotspots for looting and rioting during the George Floyd protests.

Data sources

  • The shapefile for the community area map was provided by the Chicago Data Portal and can be found here.
  • Chicago crime data was provided by the Chicago Data Portal and can be found here.
  • The demographic data was provided by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) and can be found here.