Author: Steven Vance

Chicago is a very picturesque city because of its natural parklands, lakefront, skyscrapers, buildings designed by famous architects, railroads, bridges and neighborhoods.

Chicago is photo-central for diehard railfans. It’s the birthplace of the skyscraper, and we haven’t turned our waterfront areas into highways like New York City and Seattle

Here are three great photo sites for Chicago and the region:

1. Revealing Chicago – Photos by Terry Evans taken from airplanes. Showcases the natural features of Chicagoland from above all six counties and northern Indiana. The photos are in full-color and look to be taken from a low elevation. The website presents a fantastic vantage point that makes it easy to understand what we need to protect – which is actually the purpose of the project and the goal of one of its sponsors, the Openlands Project.
2. Picturing Chicago – This is a personal project from C.S.Shuratt, who holds a Ph.D. in sociology. He says he began the project of visualizing the city of Chicago as a research effort that would allow him to “utilize sociological theory and photography as a method to study the nature of various sociological concepts and forces.” What’s here is 5,000 black & white photos of the city. The expanse of the locations presented in the photos gives the suggestion that he walked every city block. The photos have the composition and quality of someone who wanted to present the city very simply, and it looks as if the photos could have been taken by someone with little to no training of a SLR camera.
3. Chicago Imagebase – The title for this website and research project is kind of misleading. I was expecting to find an easily browse-able database of “official” pictures. Instead I found a site that seeks to document the civic history of a handful of neighborhoods through fire insurance maps, topographic maps, aerial photos, and Works Progress Administration. The website is really uninteresting for casual online visits, but looks to be useful for any student or resident looking for historical information, maps, and diagrams on the specific neighborhoods covered here. The aerial photographs are interesting to see how the roads were configured in the city in the past.

Technorati Tags: chicago, photography, photos

The following is an interpretation of Census 2000 data for a very small sample: My census tract, number 3106.

There are 1,718 rented units in this census tract.

A rule of thumb is that not more than a third of your income should be designated for housing. If you are using more than a third of your income, you either don’t make enough money, or you live in housing that’s too pricey or you are plainly living beyond what is practical for you. At least that’s what I believe in.

Of those 1,718 rented units in my census tract, 57.7% of the renters are only using up to a third of their household income to pay for the rent. That’s decent. However, let’s look at the other end.

13.9% of the renters spend 35-49% of their income on rent and nearly a quarter of the renting residents here spend more than half of their income.

So, applying my rule of thumb, the housing here is either too expensive, the residents in that high-end quarter are not making enough income or there are not enough income earners, OR, they are choosing to live beyond practicality. I believe that there is not enough household income.

I must add that this data is seven years old and it’s very obvious (for those who live here) to know that housing prices in this neighborhood are going up. A more detailed look, as well as recent data, would help me determine with more accuracy what economical forces are having more effect here: wages not going up with inflation and costs of living, or housing costs rising because of short-term trends?

Sidenote: I live in Pilsen, zipcode 60608, in Chicago, IL.

Technorati Tags: 606068, census, chicago, housing, illinois, pilsen, rent