click on image for a PDF version of my graphic

For my map project I debated different topics for a long time. I ended up choosing a map of Chicago because it’s my hometown, and I knew I would still be learning something new on the city. I decided to look into the rent prices in various Chicago neighborhoods and turn the data into a chloropleth map. I’m thinking of moving back to Illinois after graduation, and would love to live in the city if I am offered a job there. I thought this graph could not only be helpful for me, but for a lot of other soon-to-be college graduates in a similar situation to mine.

The first step to this map project was actually drawing out the city of Chicago. Going into the project I wasn’t aware there were 76 neighborhoods in the city, so it took me longer than I thought it would to make the map. I grew up in Skokie, which is a northern suburb of Chicago. I spent most of my time in the northern neighborhoods and around the downtown area growing up, so I was able to learn about some of the more southern and western neighborhoods in Chicago. I had never even heard of some of them. The median rent in a lot of neighborhoods were lower than I thought, and some of them were a lot higher than I was expecting.

As a whole, I am proud of what I accomplished in this project. I was having trouble using the pen tool in Illustrator when it was first introduced in class. Drawing this map gave me a lot of practice and now I feel comfortable using it. This project also showed me how important it is to get reliable data from the same source. When I first began research I wasn’t able to find rent prices for some of the smaller neighborhoods, so I would use a different source. I didn’t realize that some of the prices listed were averages, and some were median values. Luckily, I was able to find another source that was consistent with the data it provided.