Tamar Rubin
December 2013
Geographic Information Systems
Final Project
Lakeview Young Families Resource Map
Chicago, IL
Map Images:
This map shows the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, with layers highlighting accessible
public transportation, parks, libraries, schools (color coded by type), major streets, and all
local branches of the Caribou and Starbucks coffee chains. The symbols key can be seen on
the next page of this document.
I. Overview:
 Objectives and expectations
Finding affordable and easily accessible activities for their children is very important to
parents everywhere. Urban parents are often navigating their local neighborhoods on foot
with their children and it is thus especially important for them to be knowledgeable about
what resources are available within their community.
For my GIS project, my goal is to explore the creation of a map to serve as a resource for
families with young children in the north side neighborhood of Lakeview in Chicago. I
expect to analyze what sort of information is most important to families with young kids
planning family activities and create a map that responds to those needs.
Parents often want to know where they can find resources such as parks, libraries,
accessible public transportation, and publicly accessible bathrooms. They ideally want to
know as much about these spaces as possible before visiting them. For example, parks may
be designed for children of different ages, or have been renovated more or less recently,
thus affecting their appeal. I hope to be able to include renovation information and links to
images to provide parents with this more detailed picture of the parks in the neighborhood.
Where GIS data is not publicly provided, I will geocode some information, such as
addresses for Caribou and Starbucks Coffee locations (both of these chains have many
branches all around the Lakeview neighborhood, and have publicly accessible restrooms, a
must for families). I will analyze how this data, presented visually as well as in attribute
tables, can be useful to families. I also plan to include a short discussion about what other
private data would be useful to include on a family resource map, and ways to procure that
data.
The main users of this map are Lakeview-area families, though it would be useful to
families in other neighborhoods too, as well as tourists visiting Lakeview and the north
side. They do not need to be experts in the neighborhood or in map analysis in order to use
this map, it is geared toward lay-people and designed to make their lives easier. It should
enable them to make decisions about where to go in their neighborhoods with their
families depending on where they live or are staying, the age of their children, and their
needs.
II. Work log:
To begin work on my project, I first contacted UIUC’s GIS librarian Karen Hogenboom for
assistance on project. She recommended looking at the City of Chicago’s data portal,
https://data.cityofchicago.org for a lot of the data files I was looking for. After speaking
with her the first thing I did was go to this data portal and look through the available files,
both shapefiles and other data, to see what might be relevant for my map. I found several
relevant files that I bookmarked for possible inclusion in my map. They included:
Parks shapefile
CTA L rail lines
CTA L stops
Neighborhood boundaries
Streets
My first step was to set up my map with the neighborhoods layer as a ground. While I was
focused on the Lakeview neighborhood, neighborhoods in Chicago tend to blend from one
into the other so I put Lakeview in the center of my zoomed view but there is technically
some overlap into adjacent neighborhoods including Roscoe Village and Lincoln Park. Since
neighborhood definitions are informal, I chose not to label these boundaries and instead
have street names provided to define the space for the map user.
I couldn’t locate shapefiles for a few elements that I wanted in this data portal, including
libraries and CTA bus routes. I did a Google search for those and ended up on another part
of the City of Chicago’s website,
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/doit/supp_info/gis_data.html. The GIS data
on this part of the website differed slightly from that on the data portal, though there was
some overlap, including neighborhoods and parks. In this part of the website, I located a
few more relevant shapefiles that I marked for possible inclusion in my map, including:
Libraries
Schools
Major streets
The parks shapefile has a wonderful attribute table that includes information about park
features, such as playgrounds, basketball hoops, skate parks, water features, and boat
launches. Parents looking for an appropriate park for their children will find this
information especially useful--parents of a pre-teen may be seeking out a skate park for
their child, while parents with toddlers would more likely prioritize playgrounds and water
features for splashing.
The library attribute table did not supply as much information about the specific branches,
such as children’s programming, but since this information changes frequently, I decided
the best way to provide it to map users is to include a hyperlink on the library points to the
branch pages on the Chicago Public Library website.
I also decided to include layers for the CTA rail lines (the “L”), rail stops, and bus route
shapefiles. I included the stops for the L but not for busses, because busses stop so
frequently that the map would grow too cluttered. However, I still thought it was useful to
show which streets had bus routes on them, so that parents utilizing the map could see that
a public transit option was available that went near a park or other relevant location.
The attribute table provided with the CTA Rail Lines layer by the City of Chicago includes
key information including accessibility, as denoted by the field “ADA.” This is useful for
people with disabilities but also for parents traveling with small children and strollers who
may need an elevator and therefore want to know where the closest accessible stop is
located.
Next I needed to decide whether or not to include private and public schools in my map. I
decided to definitely include public schools, because I know that in Lakeview, as in many
other neighborhoods, most public elementary schools have playgrounds that are open and
freely available on weekends and non-school hours. While private school playgrounds are
not publicly accessible as often, I decided to include private schools on the map as well
because it can be helpful for parents to know where all schools, both public and private, are
located in their neighborhood. In order for map users to easily differentiate between the
different types of schools, I utilized different colors for symbology, which I discuss shortly.
III. Visual elements:
Once I had my shapefiles, I could put them in a geodatabase and create my map. Next, I
needed to determine what symbology and labeling to use for them:
Streets: I used a light gray to display the street layer, without labeling, because to label
every street would make the map far too crowded.
Major streets: I was happy to have a separate major streets layer, in addition to the full
streets layer, because that allowed me to provide the user with some important street
information without over-cluttering the map. I denoted the major streets with a thick black
line and labeled them.
Rail lines: I used the “railroad” symbol option which makes rail lines appear like train
tracks, so it would be obvious to the map user what they were looking at. I labeled the
different train lines so the user could easily see which line went where to help them
navigate the area.
Rail stations: While information about accessibility was available in the attribute table, I
wanted to make this information more immediately obvious to the user. I set the
symbology for the map such that ADA accessible stations appeared in one color (dark red)
and non-accessible stations appeared in another (light pink). As it happens, only one El
station in my map’s area is non-ADA accessible (Sheridan), but if this map were expanded
to other parts of the city, there would (unfortunately) be many more stations without
elevator accessibility.
Parks: I assigned the park polygons a green color with a dark gray outline. I chose this
color to connote the outdoors and green space that parks provide. I also had them be
labeled in black so that a user could easily identify which park was which.
Libraries: I assigned libraries an orange square symbol. I used this bright color to catch the
user’s eye. I also labeled the branches.
Neighborhoods: I used a pale blue for this neighborhood ground layer. I chose not to label
the specific neighborhoods, however. Neighborhood boundaries are relatively informal,
and somebody living near the boundary between Lakeview and Lincoln Park would be just
as likely to walk to a park or library in what is technically a “different neighborhood,” and I
wanted to prevent the map from becoming overly cluttered.
School grounds: The City of Chicago had a shapefile for all schools, both public and
private, but I wanted map users to be able to differentiate. One of the attributes in the
attribute table was “Definition,” which classified each school by category, including public,
independent, and various religious denominations. Under symbology, I selected Categories
and then Unique Values, and the selected “Definition” as the value field. I then clicked “Add
All Values,” which assigned a different color to each of the different school types. Many of
these school types were not relevant to the area of the map that I am displaying, so I
removed all but the relevant types, which included Independent, Jewish, Montessori,
Public, and Roman Catholic. I adjusted the colors so Independent was tulip pink, Jewish was
purple, Montessori was fuschia, Public Schools were medium coral, and Roman Catholic
schools were ultra blue. The different school types are also labeled in the table of contents.
This way, the user can see all of the schools in the neighborhood differentiated by type.
I believe my map is the most useful in a data view, and I envision that it would be an
interactive map, where users could click on hyperlinks, view the attributes of the different
layers, etc. They would probably be doing this on a mobile device so they could make
decisions on the go. However, I did decide to also create a layout view for users who might
not have a smart phone and desire a hard copy. For this layer, I added a legend and a scale
bar. I included a few images of some of the parks, but if I were to try and include them all,
they would overwhelm the map and cover over other important features. Therefore I
decided to only include a few as examples to the user. Below is a JPEG of my layout view:
Overall, the process of creating the layout view map reinforced to me that this sort of
resource is most useful as a digital, interactive creation which can be continuously updated
and populated with useful data and hyperlinks without creating an overly large or cluttered
image.
IV. Process:
 Data
 Attributes
 Geocoding
To further enhance the utility of the map, I inserted hyperlinks to the individual webpages
for each park (from the Chicago Park District website) and library branch (from the
Chicago Public Library website) on the map. This way, a user utilizing the data view of the
map can click on these locations and get more information, including images and details
about programs, hours, recent renovations and improvements, and other features of these
public spaces.
In addition to adding in hyperlinks to the map, I also decided I wanted to add renovation
information to the parks layer attribute table: seeing how recently a park was redone helps
the user get an idea of the condition of equipment and surfaces at the park. In order to get
this information, I researched online, finding some information on the Chicago Park District
website and sometimes from other sources such as Park Advisory Council websites. In
some cases I could not find the information online and I visited the parks in person to look
for plaques listing a renovation date. If none of these avenues yielded renovation
information, I left the field blank, but I was able to get a date for almost all of the parks on
my map. Below is an example of the information a user can see when they click using the
“Identify” tool on a particular park.
While the information from the city was extremely useful, I wanted my map to provide
additional practical information for families. As a parent myself I know that one thing I
always want to be aware of is the proximity of a park to a public restroom. The libraries on
the map do provide one place where a family could go, but there are only a few in the
neighborhood. Far more ubiquitous are two major coffee chains: Starbucks and Caribou,
both of which have restrooms that are open to the public. (They are also a convenient place
to stop and refuel on a hot or cold day.) In order to get Starbucks and Caribou on my map, I
visited their websites to get the addresses of all locations in the area covered by my map. I
created one Excel table for Caribou and one for Starbucks, which included columns for
address, city, state, ZIP, and Business_Name. I imported these tables into ArcMap and then
had ArcMap geocode the addresses. The following image shows the attribute table for
Starbucks:
I now had points on my map for both Starbucks and Caribou, which I labeled accordingly. I
had both chains be denoted by the same shaped symbol, a triangle, but with different colors
(yellow and orange) to differentiate between the different chains. I did not label the
locations on the map as it would have grown too cluttered and a user could see from the
symbol that it was a coffee shop; each one did not need an individual text label.
V. Discussion:
 Suggestions for enhancement:
I think this map provides an excellent starting place for families looking for an affordable
excursion in this neighborhood. With more business data, the utility and scope of this map
could be expanded even further. For example, a map could include locations such as indoor
(for-pay) play spaces, pediatrician and pediatric dentist offices, children’s clothing and toy
stores, etc. Businesses would benefit from being included in such a map because parents
would easily be able to locate them and seek them out without having to do a separate
search. If a company were to produce a series of maps like this for neighborhoods
throughout the city, it could even help young families decide where to live based on
proximity to desired resources for their children.
While geocoding is a great option for inputting addresses on a smaller scale map such as
this one, a company producing a map including many more businesses or a much larger
area might find this process too time consuming and prefer to pay for data. There are
commercial vendors that provide such data for a fee. One example is InfoGroup, which
advertises itself as having “detailed information on more than 24 million businesses,”
including “address point data, mailable addresses, and addresses with phone numbers.”
Another way to access data is through a resource called SimplyMap (the University of
Illinois has a subscription), which maps businesses by name or NAICS code. These can then
by downloaded as a shapefile and loaded on to a map. I experimented with SimplyMap and
found it useful, for example it included the Starbucks locations that I had geocoded. For a
larger scale map, being able to use a resource like this rather than manually entering
addresses to geocode would be very useful. I did a few other searches to see what else it
contained, and was able to map several other useful resources, including a local bookstore
called Unabridged, and local location of the Gap. However, the resource is limited by what
data it contains: for example, I was not able to get it to differentiate between the Gap and
Gap Kids, which would have been useful for my map. When I tried to use it to add
pediatrician and pediatric dentist offices to my map, it did not turn up any results. I think it
is a useful resource if the type of business one is looking for is included in their data set, but
depending on what one is trying to do, it is not a complete answer.
VI. Challenges:
I was fortunate that most of the data that I sought out was relatively straightforward to
work with, and because I was familiar with the area, I had an idea of what businesses to
look up to geocode. For me, the biggest challenges were of design: since this map is meant
to be a resource for families, I think design and readability were especially important. If it’s
confusing or overly cluttered, it would not be useful. I had to try and balance wanting to
include useful information with not wanting the map to get unwieldy. I tried to accomplish
this by only labeling useful layers, and by choosing different colors, sizes, and fonts to
differentiate between layers. I also wasn’t sure at first how to color code different elements
of the same layer (such as accessible vs. non-accessible CTA stations) so it required some
experimenting with the symbology options to get that right.
Of course, accessibility to proprietary data is also a challenge. For my map, the most
important points were publicly available or straightforward to geocode, but on a larger
scale, it would probably take more effort to acquire these points. Karen Hogenboom was
very helpful in giving me information about how one could go about accessing such
information, as I discussed above.
VII. Resources:
The resources I utilized in the creation of this map included the following:
Gorr and Kurland, GIS Tutorial for ArcGIS10
City of Chicago GIS and City of Chicago Data Portal:
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/doit/supp_info/gis_data.html
https://data.cityofchicago.org
Chicago Public Library:
http://www.chipublib.org
Chicago Park District:
http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com
Caribou Coffee store locator
http://www.cariboucoffee.com/page/1/our-locations.jsp
Starbucks store locator
http://www.starbucks.com/store-locator/search
Infogroup:
http://www.infogroup.com
SimplyMap
http://sm2.simplymap.com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/index.html
Urban Green Space
http://www.urbangreenspace.blogspot.com
Thank you also to GIS librarian Karen Hogenboom for her guidance and suggestions for
sources.