Talk:Community areas of Chicago

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How about adding an infobox template to the neighborhood articles instead of a custom table for every one? Cacophony 18:51, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

ZIP codes in Chicago are not tied to the neighborhood boundaries. That is simply not factual. Fingusernames 19:55, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Roads, Landmarks?

It might be nice to have an overlay or an alternative version of the map with major landmarks--rivers, big parks, interstate highways, etc. marked. I was trying just now to figure now where Midway Airport was on this map and it was not easy! A few key landmarks would help people get a sense of where these community areas actually *are* in the city. Look at how useful this map is, for example: http://www.wildonions.org/NeighborhoodsMap.htm

This actually would not be hard to create based on maps I made for Wikitravel. If someone is interested in doing this and who knows how to edit SVG files, all maps are available here. --Peter ^Talk 23:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] City of Chicago Neighborhood maps

Does anyone know the proper way to add City of Chicago Neighborhood maps to the neighborhood templates or to the pages. TonyTheTiger 01:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Community areas of Chicago / Neighborhoods of Chicago merger discussions

Merge I believe these two pages should be merged and text should be included to describe the difference between neighborhoods and community areas. I think that the community area page should be the merger destination. Almost all of the neighborhoods listed on the Neighborhoods pages just link back to the Community areas. I don't think the neighborhoods are actually encyclopedic in general. TonyTheTiger 00:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The failure of Chicago's wikipedians to create pages for their neighborhoods should not, in my opinion require the merger of the community page with the neighborhood page. Speciate 00:38, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Merge I agree that the neighborhoods and Community Areas articles should be merged, perhaps to a renamed page titled "Neighborhoods and Community Areas of Chicago," with redirects from both.

1. Chicagoans tend to use neighborhood to mean both neighborhoods and official Community Areas, even when they know the difference.

2. The distinction is confusing, particularly to nonnatives, especially since the names of some neighborhoods and Community Areas are similar (or even the same), even when one is the subset of the other.

3. While the boundaries of Community Areas are official and unchanging, neighborhoods are often ephemeral (e.g. New Town), with amorphous boundaries often subject to the whims of Realtors, chambers of commerce and other promoters. However, since the boundaries of CAs tend to be physical barriers like railroad tracks and the river, it's rare for a neighborhood to overlap CA borders, so understanding the CAs is key to grasping the neighborhoods.

75.56.60.44 07:22, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't merge, but help them refer to each other Researchers and planners need the community areas and datasets depend on the community areas. Neighborhoods are different quality, cultural/historical, commercial, popular. They have distinct audiences and combining them puts too much info on one page. If the distinction bet n and ca is confusing, then explain it, but don't merge the two pages. Katewill 04:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Don't merge, but help them refer to each other I agree with Katewill. But please, don't say "bet n and ca". Slo-mo 07:48, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge for a number of reasons, in addition to what has been said:

1. Content unnecessarily split across pages becomes easier to overlook. I was actually unaware that there was a separate neighborhoods page, despite having referred to this article often while writing a Chicago travel guide over the past year. There is some useful content on that neighborhoods page that visitors to this page may miss without cause.
2. All neighborhoods listed are subsets of the community areas. The fact that the community areas have been so heavily relied on in the presentation of the neighborhoods belies the argument that they have distinct audiences. If there were neighborhoods that went across community area borders, then there would be a much better case for separate articles, as they would be two separate ways of looking at the city's subdivisions. Currently the "neighborhoods approach" is merely adding a finer level of detail to the community area approach.
3. A merge will improve the presentation of the content on both pages. The context provided by the community area information on this page is useful to understand the relationship between the community areas and popularly conceived neighborhoods. The neighborhood lists will provide context to understanding what exactly the community areas entail for those familiar with the more finely grained neighborhood names.

I also think that the merge destination should be this article, as it is the parent category of the neighborhoods subsets. --Peter ^Talk 07:12, 5 November 2007 (UTC)