This map was an attempt to tell the story of Englewood, Chicago - a neighborhood that has undergone drastic changes over the past fifty years.
I wanted to tell the story from the beginning, from Englewood's rise to prominence with the coming of the railroads in the mid-1850. Englewood was one of the first Chicago suburbs and had a thriving commercial district in the 1950's. The post-war events of white-flight, widespread urban demolition, and the rise of expressways played a role in shaping Englewood's history, and I probably could've devoted a bit more cartographic real estate to trying to tell that part of the story. Unfortunately, I was stymied by Adobe Illustrator's maximum artboard length of 8190 pixels.
I ended up focusing mostly on the depopulation and widespread abandonment that Englewood experienced beginning in the 1950's up to the present. In 1950, Englewood had 94,134 residents. As of the 2010 census, it had 30,654.
You can view a PNG version of this infographic here.
