Chicago and Michigan Neighborhood Demographics

For my next foray into economic geography, I wanted to look at Chicago and the industrial belt of Michigan, which are traditional industrial areas of the U.S.  This is in contrast to the Bay Area, where the center of gravity of the economy is semiconductors and software.   I present the exact same map subjects with the exact same color scales so that maps from the two posts can be compared (I encourage you to click for the large versions and muse on the data).  I am again building on the sterling efforts of Ducky "Webfoot" Sherwood, and again this is all year 2000 census data.

First up is median household income (in 2000, $30k-$100k).

All these cities have a low-income core, surrounded by wealthy suburbs, with poorer rural regions outlying that.

Next up: education (fraction of population over 25 with a college degree, 0-70%).

Again, as in the Bay Area, education and income correlate very strongly.  Again, there are a few urban area exceptions (eg parts of the north side of Chicago)

Here is median age for the area (25-45):

Again, poorer areas tend to skew younger and the wealthy suburbs are older.  Rural areas tend to be intermediate in average age.

Next up, home prices (median, $50k-$500k - 2000 prices remember).

Again, the home prices mostly correlate with income and education.  Home prices are lower than in the Bay Area, for the most part, especially in the smaller cities.

Here is the home-ownership fraction (0-80%):

The home-ownership percentage is much higher than in the San Francisco area.  Presumably this would have something to do with the more reasonable house-prices.

Finally, the racial demographics, beginning with the fraction of the population identifying as black (0-50%):

For the most part, the black population is clustered in a subset of the lower income areas.  Next hispanics, also on a 0-50% color scale:

As before, the hispanic population is mostly also clustered in a subset of the poor areas, but the pockets of hispanic population are much smaller than in the Bay Area.

Then, asian population (0-50%).

There are a much smaller fraction of asian origin people too. The ones there are, are congregated in the wealthy suburbs.

Finally, here is the white population fraction (0-100%).