Chicago has been named America's rattiest city ten years running - by a pest-control company counting its own treatments. The city's actual 311 rat ledger, all 372,251 complaints of it, tells a richer story: a 2021 peak, four straight years of decline, a July rat season peaking now, and a rat map crowned by Lake View. With an interactive report card for all 77 neighborhoods.
Our three computed datasets - construction permits, new business licenses, and L station recovery - painted onto one interactive map of the 77 community areas. Tap between the views and watch the same city rearrange itself.
The city licensed 6,503 new business locations in 2025 - about 13 percent below 2019, with the Loop down 38 percent, the worst of the ten biggest license centers. The third leg of our vitality triangle, computed from the city's own license records - including the neighborhood 'boom' that turned out to be a flea market's vendor stalls.
3.8 billion turnstile entries since 2001 tell the L's whole modern arc: a fifteen-year climb to the 2015 peak, a slide that started before the pandemic, the 2020 cliff, and five straight years of recovery. Plus the 25-year station reshuffle and the rise of the weekend rider - three charts, all computed from the city's own data.
Speed-camera violations are up 38 percent in 2026 - but at cameras that existed last year, they actually fell 16 percent. The whole increase is the new fleet. We ranked all 213 speed cameras and 151 red-light intersections from the city's own data.
IRS tax-return migration files show where Cook County movers actually land: 39 percent stay in Illinois, a third go to the collar counties, and the named Florida counties draw under 6 percent. Four cuts of the data, including the income test of the wealth-flight claim.
The Census Bureau's current estimates show Illinois gaining population in 2023, 2024, and 2025 - and all six Chicagoland counties growing since 2023. We computed the numbers from the Bureau's files, including the 57,000-person revision that explains why the shrinking-Illinois story never got updated.
We compared weekday entries at all 144 L stations, January-May 2026 vs the same months of 2019. Systemwide the L runs at 62% - but Cermak-Chinatown and Morgan in Fulton Market beat their 2019 numbers, while the Loop's office subway stops sit at 41-51%. Original KCM analysis with the full method.
Every UP-NW station town from Park Ridge to Harvard, plus the corridor's no-station communities — 23 towns with current Census population, home value, and income figures. Companion to our west suburbs reference.
Search interest in South Shore is up 22% since the Obama Presidential Center opened. Six years ago, the neighborhood was cut from the housing-protection ordinance that covers Woodlawn. Here's the evidence, and its limits.
