Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago - Cultural Policy Center

The ChicagoContextChicago has one of the country’s most diverse populations and is one of thenation’s most vibrant and diverse culture and arts environments.Chicago is the third largest metropolitan area in the United States behind New Yorkand Los Angeles. Chicago’s arts and culture community serves the city’s seventy-sevencommunity areas of almost three million people and the entire metropolitan statisticalarea (MSA) of nine million. The characteristics of Chicago’s residents and its institutionsdemonstrate the diversity of the social, economic, and cultural resources of the entiremetropolitan area.The City of Chicago’s population is roughly evenly divided among African-Americans(36 percent), Caucasians (31 percent), and Latinos (26 percent). The other races makeup the remaining 7 percent of the city’s population. Outside of the city, much smallerpercentages of the population are either African-American or Latino. As a result, forthe Chicago metropolitan area 18 percent of the population is African-American and16 percent is Latino.Although the Chicago area’s Latino population comes from many parts of the WesternHemisphere, the vast majority report either having immigrated from Mexico or beingof Mexican ancestry. Approximately 70 percent of the city’s Latino population ofapproximately three-quarters of a million persons is of Mexican descent. Fifteen percentreport being from Puerto Rico or of Puerto Rican ancestry. The remaining 15 percentreport ancestry from Spanish-speaking countries throughout the Caribbean and Centraland South America. In the rest of the metropolitan area outside of the City of Chicago, aneven larger percentage of Latinos report that they are Mexican or of Mexican origin.The median household income for the City of Chicago is substantially less ($38,625) thanthe Chicago MSA ($51,046). Furthermore, the metropolitan area has three to four timesmore middle income and wealthy households than the City of Chicago.In the city, 25 percent of Chicago’s population holds a bachelor’s degree or higher, whilein the metropolitan statistical area, the figure is 29 percent.Definitions and Maps of Chicago• The Chicago MSA is the fourteen-county area shown in Map 1; the population of theMSA is about nine million.• Just over five million of the people in the Chicago MSA live in Cook County, which isdivided into townships and community areas, as shown in Map 2.• The City of Chicago, with a population of nearly three million, is shown in Map 3.Within the city, the boundaries of the seventy-seven community areas are shown.The populations of community areas range from 3,000 to 117,500.• Map 4 shows the boundaries of the 865 census tracts in the City of Chicago. Mosttracts have populations of about 2,000 to 5,000, with 1,000 to 2,000 households in each.13