Notes: Geographic Boundaries
A few notes about the terms this site uses to define geographic boundaries.
Neighborhoods
Chicago is divided into a number of neighborhoods. These boundaries and names and borders evolve over time and there is no agreement about the number of neighborhoods. The city of Chicago provides some unofficial data about Chicago neighborhoods and this is the data that provides the neighborhood designation for each playground. In the end, I thought that neighborhoods would be the most helpful way to navigate geographic boundaries and that is what drives the navigation menu.
Community Areas
Chicago is divided into 77 Community Areas. These boundaries do not change over time and the city of Chicago provides official data about Community Areas. Each playground is also tagged with Community Area information.
Chicago Wards
Lastly, Chicago is divided into 50 Wards. The boundaries of these Wards change every 10 years and are the product of a political process. When possible, I've tagged playgrounds with the ward it is in. This, ideally, will provide the proper contact information to report issues with playgrounds.
Regions
In the end, navigating through 98 neighborhoods and 77 community areas was challenging. So I've decided to group these into regions - using an unofficial map found on Wikipedia. These regions are somewhat arbitrary but, I hope, make navigation a bit easier.
