Chicagoans are no strangers to West Side pride, particularly in Austin.
From current residents Mayor Brandon Johnson and former Gov. Pat Quinn to actor Robert Townsend and comedian Hannibal Buress, some of the city’s notable figures have roots in the West Side neighborhood.
A new study by the University of Chicago takes a close look at where Chicago residents consider their neighborhood boundaries and shows there’s more to the West Side, and in particular Austin, than what’s on the map.
The Chicago Neighborhood Project, led by the Urbanism Lab at the University of Chicago, set out last year to survey Chicagoans on what they define as their neighborhood and its borders.
From November 2023 to April 2024, the project collected more than 5,500 responses identifying more than 100 unique neighborhoods. Block Club published the initial results and map at the beginning of December.
The city of Chicago doesn’t actually have officially recognized neighborhoods, though there is a seldom-used neighborhood map passed by the City Council in 1993.
Instead, the city has 77 “community areas,” originally mapped out in the 1920s by two University of Chicago sociologists, with Austin being the westernmost community area in central Chicago, just east of suburban Oak Park.
On the new, resident-drawn Chicago Neighborhood Project map, Austin generally matches up with the city’s map of the community area, but it’s subdivided into Austin, North Austin and Galewood, with the latter expanding north into Belmont Cragin by a few blocks.
The gray areas of the map are unlabeled due to a lack of respondents agreeing on a name for those areas, researchers said.
Austin and its many neighborhoods
Austin began in 1865 as a 470-acre township of Cicero named Austinville, according to WTTW. It was created by Oak Park developer Henry Austin before being annexed into Chicago.
Historically a neighborhood of immigrants, Austin would see thousands of middle-class African American families move there in the 1950s and 60s to avoid restrictive housing covenants.
The city currently defines the borders of the community area of Austin as North Austin Boulevard on the west; West Roosevelt Road on the south; and the eastern and northern borders following the Belt Railway, the largest intermediate switching terminal railroad in the U.S., headquartered in Bedford Park.
On the Chicago Neighborhood Project map, Austin and North Austin blend together from roughly West Lake Street up to West North Avenue. There are areas of the map beyond this that respondents consider North Austin as south as West End Avenue and as north as West Wabansia Avenue.
South Austin is not recognized as a neighborhood on this new resident-drawn map — though many residents do consider it a distinct area.
The West Side neighborhoods of Austin, Garfield Park and North Lawndale, as defined on the resident-drawn Chicago Neighborhood Project map from the University of Chicago’s Urbanism Lab. Credit: Provided/Urbanism Lab
Over the years, Austin began to see divisions within the community along socioeconomic lines as North Austin and South Austin distinguished themselves as sub-communities, according to Darnell Shields, executive director of the nonprofit Austin Coming Together.
“There’s no real defined border between the two,” said Shields. “A lot of people associate the division between North and South [Austin] through the Green Line because of the physical barrier it creates.”
Shields said there’s a mindset among neighbors of living on the right “side of the tracks”: North of the Green Line tracks is considered North Austin and viewed as more affluent, and South Austin south of the track is viewed as more impoverished.
Shields experienced this division himself, growing up in South Austin in the early 1970s and moving with his family to North Austin in the 1980s, he said.
The division may have predated Black people moving to the area in the 1950s, developing out of real estate speculation of one side being better resourced than the other, Shields said.
Shields said South Austin not being recognized on the Chicago Neighborhood Project map is likely due to the negative connotation that the area has acquired.
“These physical distinctions within the community really create a lot of psychological references for people here, especially when you start to look at the other things that you can associate with that [area] like property value, income, rate of violent crime and things like that,” he said.
Former Gov. Quinn moved to Galewood, which he and most West Side neighbors consider part of Austin, in 1983 from Oak Park. He views North Avenue as the boundary of Galewood, separating the community from Austin, and said when he first arrived, the area was known as “the Galewood section of Austin.”
While the city’s community areas map doesn’t acknowledge it, the Chicago Neighborhood Project does, placing it as a neighborhood with a southern boundary of North Avenue and extending past the Belt Railway tracks into Montclare and Belmont Cragin.
Over the years, Quinn said he has seen the disparities between South Austin, North Austin and Galewood and has worked to invest in South Austin. In 2005, Quinn passed utility reform legislation in partnership with the South Austin Coalition to provide relief for low-income and elderly homeowners with high utility bills by stabilizing payments through a “percentage of income plan.”
Today, Quinn believes it is best for the residents of Austin to unite under one identity and erase divisions within the neighborhood – however they define where the neighborhood’s boundaries fall.
“I don’t like the word boundary. I think we have to put hands across neighborhoods and work together. Everybody banding together is the strongest way to build,” Quinn said. “We don’t want to have divisions that end up with one part of the neighborhood getting less than it deserves.”