77fit
#1Loop
$2K ACS median rent
Offices, Grant Park, and the L looping overhead. Walk scores max out; evening quiet depends on which block.
- Walk index
- 100
- Safety index
- 0
- Published fit
- 77
NightlifePlanned
Chicago · IL · 20 community areas
Compare official Chicago community areas on ACS rent, walk, safety, schools, and commute. Rankings stay inside this city.
Data period. ACS 2024 5-year (2020-2024) · CPD Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · OSM Aug 2026. ACS and CPD retrieved 2026-08-31; OSM retrieved 2026-08-31. Editorial copy last revised Sep 2026.
Published walkable weights — same order as the table below. Fit is an in-house score, not a resident review.
$2K ACS median rent
Offices, Grant Park, and the L looping overhead. Walk scores max out; evening quiet depends on which block.
$2K ACS median rent
River North restaurants, Gold Coast towers, Streeterville walks to the lake. Official name is the community area — search the nicknames.
$2K ACS median rent
Fulton Market restaurants, United Center nights, and new towers. Property crime follows the dinner rush.
$2K ACS median rent
Zoo, zoo-adjacent rents, and DePaul. The park is the brand; the side streets are the product.
$2K ACS median rent
Wrigley, Broadway, and the lakefront path. Nightlife is the tax; the Red Line is the amenity.
$2K ACS median rent
South Loop towers facing the museum campus. Newer, rental-heavy, and a walk to the lake that skips Mag Mile.
$2K ACS median rent
Roscoe Village strollers and high home values. Quiet streets with a short hop to the river.
$2K ACS median rent
Wicker Park and Ukrainian Village live inside this community area. Division Street energy, brick two-flats behind it.
$2K ACS median rent
Ravenswood porches and a German plaza. The family read of the North Side without giving up a Brown Line stop.
$2K ACS median rent
The boulevard, the farmers market, and Bucktown on the eastern edge. North-west Chicago's walkable default.
$1K ACS median rent
Andersonville's Clark Street sits inside this community area. Beach to the east, bakeries to the west.
$1K ACS median rent
Argyle, the Uptown Theatre, and a lakefront that never quite gentrified all the way. Density without Lake View prices.
$1K ACS median rent
Bungalows, the Blue Line, and a calmer northwest. Less scene than Logan, more yard.
$1K ACS median rent
Sox territory, bungalows, and a Chinatown-adjacent grid. South Side without a lakefront premium.
$1K ACS median rent
The city's far-north beach and a mix of students, immigrants, and long leases. Quieter than Edgewater, cheaper than Lake View.
$2K ACS median rent
The next stop past Logan. Still industrial edges, still cheaper, still a Belmont bus.
$2K ACS median rent
The university sets the tone: bookstores, the Point, and a lakefront that feels like another city.
$1K ACS median rent
Pilsen murals and 18th Street. The official name is Lower West Side; everyone searches Pilsen.
$1K ACS median rent
The park is enormous; the streets around it are still working-class. Safety scores tell you to weight it honestly.
$1K ACS median rent
Bronzeville history on the official Douglas map. Boulevards, new builds, and a short ride to the Loop.
Schematic community-area map — Lake Michigan on the right, the Loop in the middle. Click a block to open it. Distances on this drawing are not street geography. Adjacent blocks are not a claim that two community areas share a border.
ACS 5-year median gross rent for Chicago city. Up 50% since 2014.
Overlapping 5-year ACS windows (B25064), not asking rent. Figures are for the city place, household-weighted across all occupied rental units.
Chicago’s official units here are community areas, the city’s long-running stats geography, with Lake Michigan on the east. A community area is larger than a block club and smaller than a side of town.
Wicker Park, Wrigleyville, West Loop, Pilsen, and Bronzeville are names people search; some are aliases inside a community area. The map is a sketch of those areas, not a street survey.
Not a best-of list. Four cuts of the same 20 official community areas.
School-heavy
Nearby rating + calmer map
Lower Part I rate
Fewer reports per 1,000 in this city set
Published fit uses default walkable weights and a $2,500 ACS rent budget. Same order for every reader. Fit is a number inside Chicago only.
| # | Neighborhood | Published fit | ACS median rent | Walk index | Safety index |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Loop | 77 | $2,447 | 100 | 0 |
| 2 | Near North Side | 66 | $2,277 | 72 | 21 |
| 3 | Near West Side | 59 | $2,013 | 65 | 5 |
| 4 | Lincoln Park | 52 | $2,128 | 25 | 58 |
| 5 | Lake View | 48 | $1,879 | 21 | 63 |
| 6 | Near South Side | 47 | $2,403 | 21 | 68 |
| 7 | North Center | 46 | $1,847 | 3 | 100 |
| 8 | West Town | 44 | $2,055 | 29 | 26 |
| 9 | Lincoln Square | 43 | $1,576 | 5 | 84 |
| 10 | Logan Square | 43 | $1,823 | 22 | 42 |
| 11 | Edgewater | 41 | $1,417 | 6 | 79 |
| 12 | Uptown | 39 | $1,326 | 17 | 47 |
| 13 | Irving Park | 39 | $1,406 | 0 | 95 |
| 14 | Bridgeport | 38 | $1,364 | 0 | 89 |
| 15 | Rogers Park | 37 | $1,351 | 5 | 74 |
| 16 | Avondale | 33 | $1,671 | 3 | 53 |
| 17 | Hyde Park | 33 | $1,544 | 5 | 16 |
| 18 | Lower West Side | 31 | $1,370 | 7 | 37 |
| 19 | Humboldt Park | 26 | $1,353 | 4 | 32 |
| 20 | Douglas | 24 | $1,059 | 2 | 11 |
ACS median gross rent mixes every occupied rental. Walk is an in-house OSM count, not Walk Score. Safety ranks Part I rates inside Chicago only.
Rent figures are ACS 5-year median gross rent (2020-2024, ACS 2024 5-year) mixed across unit sizes in the City of Chicago. Douglas is the lowest median in this set at $1,059. That is a survey median, not this week’s asking rent for a one-bedroom.
Walk is an in-house index from OpenStreetMap groceries, cafes, parks, and transit stops inside the official polygon or within 800 meters of its centroid. It is not a Walk Score® license.
Safety ranks CPD Part I rates (Sep 2025 – Aug 2026) inside this Chicago set only. A lower index means fewer Part I reports per 1,000 ACS residents relative to the other community areas here — not a guarantee that a block is safe, and not a measurement of noise.
A nearby school rating is not an assigned campus. Missing ratings sit at the middle of the scale.
Commute minutes are typical weekday estimates to named job centers, not live traffic.
Boundaries are City of Chicago Community Areas (igwz-8jzy). Crime counts are Chicago Police Department Crimes 2001 to Present (ijzp-q8t2).
ACS and CPD were retrieved 2026-08-31. OSM was retrieved 2026-08-31. Editorial pages on this site were last revised Sep 2026.
Sources: U.S. Census American Community Survey, OpenStreetMap, and this city’s police open data via the method page. NabeWise is published by NabeWise Media.
How the Chicago number is built — not a grade of the place.
Chicago’s official units here are community areas, the city’s long-running stats geography, with Lake Michigan on the east. A community area is larger than a block club and smaller than a side of town.
Douglas has the lowest ACS 5-year median gross rent in this set at $1,059 (2020-2024 survey). A median mixes every occupied rental. It is not this week’s one-bedroom.
Mapped groceries, cafes, parks, and transit stops inside the official community area or within 800 meters of its centroid. Loop currently leads the default walkable ranking. It is not a Walk Score® license.
Official community areas only — 20 on this map. Wicker Park, Wrigleyville, West Loop, Pilsen, and Bronzeville are search names mapped onto official community areas. The schematic map is for clicking, not for measuring a shared border.
Housing is ACS 2024 5-year (2020-2024). Crime is CPD Part I for Sep 2025 – Aug 2026. OSM amenities were snapshotted 2026-08-31. Editorial copy on these pages was last revised Sep 2026.
No. A number here is a rank inside these 20 official community areas, not a grade you can carry to another city.
Six axes — safety, schools, walk, cost, vibe, and optional commute — scaled only inside Chicago, then weighted. With default walkable weights and a $2,500 ACS rent budget, Loop is the current top match (77 published fit). Rankings never jump a city line. The formula is on the method page.
Full formula on the method page.