The Loop, Wicker Park, Hyde Park, Evanston, Oak Park, Naperville and more.
60 entries
Arlington Heights and Mount Prospect are the northwest suburbs with real downtowns around their Union Pacific Northwest Metra stations, and Arlington Heights' is one of the…
Aurora is the second-largest city in Illinois, about 180,000 people spread along the Fox River 40 miles west of the Loop, and one of the most…
Austin and Garfield Park are West Side neighborhoods with some of the grandest housing in the city and some of the longest disinvestment. Austin is Chicago's…
Avondale and Irving Park are working-class Northwest Side neighborhoods along Milwaukee Avenue and the Kennedy Expressway, with Polish roots on Milwaukee, taquerias on Belmont and a…
Berwyn and Cicero are the dense inner-ring suburbs southwest of Oak Park where Chicago's bungalow belt keeps going past the city line. Berwyn has one of…
Beverly and Morgan Park are the far Southwest Side neighborhoods on Chicago's only real hills, the Blue Island Ridge, with the Ridge Historic District's large houses,…
Bolingbrook and Romeoville are the I-55 corridor suburbs southwest of Naperville, built almost entirely since the 1960s and still growing on the strength of logistics parks…
Bridgeport and Chinatown are neighbors on the near South Side that share a boundary at the river and little else. Bridgeport is the old Irish political…
Bronzeville was the center of Black Chicago during the Great Migration, the "Black Metropolis" of the 1920s to 1950s where Louis Armstrong played, Ida B. Wells…
Chatham and Pullman are South Side neighborhoods known for well-kept housing and Black-owned business, with Pullman also holding the country's first planned industrial town, now a…
Chicago Heights and Park Forest are south suburban neighbors with very different origins: Chicago Heights grew up at the crossroads of the Lincoln Highway and Dixie…
Downers Grove and Westmont are neighboring BNSF commuter towns in DuPage County, with Downers Grove's downtown on Main Street around the Tivoli Theatre and Westmont's smaller…
Edison Park and Norwood Park are the far Northwest Side neighborhoods that feel like suburbs inside the city limits: single-family homes on quiet curving streets, a…
Elgin is the Fox River city at the northwest edge of the region, 40 miles from the Loop, with a historic downtown of 19th-century buildings, the…
Elmhurst and Lombard are neighboring DuPage County suburbs on the Union Pacific West line, about 15 miles west of the Loop. Elmhurst is the more affluent…
Evanston is the first suburb north of Chicago and the one that feels most like a continuation of the city, with a walkable downtown on Davis…
Gary is the Indiana steel city on the south shore of Lake Michigan, founded in 1906 by U.S. Steel and named for its chairman, and the…
The Gold Coast is the old-money strip of the Near North Side, running from Oak Street Beach north to North Avenue and from the lake west…
Hammond and Whiting are the Indiana lakefront towns closest to Chicago, across the state line from Hegewisch and the East Side, and the first stop for…
Highland Park and Highwood are the North Shore's most lived-in pair: Highland Park has Ravinia Festival, the Chicago Symphony's outdoor summer home, a real downtown on…
Hinsdale and Oak Brook are the affluent western suburbs where DuPage County's money lives and works. Hinsdale has a downtown of boutiques and restaurants around its…
Homewood and Flossmoor are the south suburban pair on the Metra Electric line, 25 miles from the Loop, that share a high school, a reputation for…
Humboldt Park is the West Side neighborhood named for its 200-acre park, the center of Puerto Rican Chicago since the 1960s and a neighborhood changing fast…
Hyde Park is a college town inside the city, the South Side lakefront neighborhood built around the University of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry…
Joliet is the Will County seat and one of the fastest-growing cities in Illinois, about 150,000 people on the Des Plaines River 40 miles southwest of…
La Grange and Western Springs are two BNSF commuter towns southwest of Oak Park with walkable downtowns built around their train stations, tree-lined streets of century-old…
Lake Forest and Lake Bluff are the north end of the North Shore, where the estates get bigger and the Metra ride gets longer. Lake Forest…
Lakeview is the densest neighborhood on the North Side, running from Diversey Parkway north to Irving Park Road between the lake and Ravenswood Avenue. Wrigley Field…
Lansing and Calumet City are the border towns on the Indiana state line, southeast of Chicago along I-80/94 and I-94, where the south suburbs meet Northwest…
Lincoln Park is the North Side neighborhood named for the park on its eastern edge, the 1,200-acre lakefront stretch that holds the free zoo, the conservatory…
Lincoln Square is the North Side's German-rooted neighborhood, centered on the triangle where Lincoln, Western and Lawrence avenues meet. Giddings Plaza and the pedestrian-friendly stretch of…
Little Village, La Villita, is the Mexican commercial heart of Chicago, and 26th Street is its main street: a two-mile strip of family-run restaurants, bakeries, quinceañera…
Logan Square is the Northwest Side neighborhood built around Chicago's boulevard system, where Logan and Kedzie boulevards meet at the Illinois Centennial Monument and greystone mansions…
Munster and Crown Point are the Northwest Indiana suburbs where Chicago-area families move for lower taxes and newer houses without giving up the region. Munster, on…
Naperville is the largest suburb in the region after Aurora and the one that shows up on every national best-places list, with a downtown along the…
The Near West Side is the wide stretch between the Loop and Western Avenue that holds the University of Illinois Chicago campus, the Illinois Medical District…
North Center and Roscoe Village are the quiet residential neighborhoods between Lakeview and the river, a stretch of two-flats and single-family homes with a small village…
North Lawndale is the West Side neighborhood with the largest concentration of greystones in Chicago, more than a thousand of them on the blocks around Douglass…
Oak Lawn and Evergreen Park are the inner-ring southwest suburbs that border Chicago's Beverly and Ashburn neighborhoods, with 95th Street as the shared main drag. Oak…
Oak Park is the suburb that touches Chicago's West Side at Austin Boulevard and feels like a leafier extension of it: a grid of Victorians and…
Orland Park and Tinley Park are the retail and entertainment hubs of the southwest suburbs, two large villages along the Rock Island and SouthWest Service Metra…
Pilsen is the Lower West Side neighborhood that Mexican-American families made their own starting in the 1960s, in housing built by Czech and other Central European…
Plainfield is the fast-growing Will County village west of Joliet and southwest of Naperville, with a small historic downtown on Lockport Street that predates the 1990s…
Portage Park and Jefferson Park are the heart of the Bungalow Belt, mile after mile of brick Chicago bungalows on the far Northwest Side, with Six…
River Forest and Forest Park sit west of Oak Park along the Des Plaines River and could not be more different. River Forest is a village…
River North is the old warehouse district just north of the Chicago River, between the river and Chicago Avenue and between Michigan Avenue and the North…
Rogers Park and Edgewater are the city's northernmost lakefront neighborhoods, running from Foster Avenue up to the Evanston line along the Red Line. Loyola University anchors…
Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates are the corporate heart of the northwest suburbs, built almost entirely after 1960 around Woodfield Mall, one of the largest malls in…
Skokie and Lincolnwood are the inner-ring suburbs directly northwest of Chicago's Rogers Park and West Ridge, and they are among the most diverse suburbs in the…
The South Loop is everything south of Ida B. Wells Drive and downtown's office core, from the Printers Row loft blocks on Dearborn down through Dearborn…
South Shore and Woodlawn are South Side lakefront neighborhoods on either side of Jackson Park, and the Obama Presidential Center that opened in the park in…
St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia are the Tri-Cities, three river towns stacked along the Fox River in Kane County with historic downtowns, riverfront parks and the…
Streeterville is the wedge of land between Michigan Avenue and Lake Michigan, north of the river and south of Oak Street. Most of the ground was…
The Loop is downtown Chicago proper, the district inside the elevated L tracks and the blocks that spill out to the river and Michigan Avenue. State…
Uptown and Andersonville share the 60640 ZIP code and the Red Line, and not much else in character. Uptown, along Broadway from Montrose to Foster, was…
The West Loop is the former meatpacking and produce district directly west of the Chicago River, and for the past fifteen years it has been the…
Wheaton and Glen Ellyn are neighboring college towns on the Union Pacific West line, with downtowns built around their Metra stations, the Illinois Prairie Path running…
Wicker Park and Bucktown are the Northwest Side's shopping, restaurant and nightlife district, centered on the six-way intersection of Milwaukee, North and Damen. Wicker Park is…
Wilmette and Kenilworth are the first two North Shore villages north of Evanston, and they set the tone for the rest: big houses on quiet streets,…
Winnetka and Glencoe are the wooded, ravine-cut North Shore villages between Kenilworth and Highland Park, with estates that run down to the lake, the Chicago Botanic…