Knowledge Base
Tutorials, guides, and videos to using Chicago Cityscape
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Find homeownership assistance programs
Chicago Cityscape's determines automatically if any Address Snapshot is potentially eligible for any of 32 (at time of publication) financial and development incentives due to geography. Incentives Checker does not include information about programs for helping people buy a house. This article points to resources to find assistance to become a homeowner.
Property research, Resource
Last updated 02/20/2022
Determining how many people live near a train station
This Knowledge Base article answers the question, "Is there a way to find out how many people live within 1/4 mile of a CTA or Metra station using Cityscape?"
Mapping, Resource
Last updated 12/20/2021
Find properties that are in Cook County's annual tax sale
The Cook County Treasurer is in charge of collecting properties taxes from all owners of taxable properties. When owners don't pay their property taxes, the taxes are "sold" in the annual tax sale, nine months after the second installment is due. (This is separate from the scavenger sale, which is for properties that have three or more years of unpaid taxes.) Chicago Cityscape incorporates the treasurer's list of properties and makes it easy to find these properties.
Resource, Property research, Property Finder, Taxes
Last updated 11/16/2021
How to build more housing with less parking
Building new housing with car parking tends to increase construction costs, increase rental or ownership costs, and adds to local traffic congestion. Yet the City of Chicago's zoning code generally requires one car parking space per new dwelling unit. Chicago Cityscape is aware of six strategies to build less parking.
Resource, Zoning
Last updated 11/15/2021
How to export Cityscape data to a spreadsheet
Cityscape members benefit from being able to download nearly all of our data with the click of a button. Every map and table can be exported to a format usable in spreadsheets and a format usable in map making and GIS software (that would be CSV, or comma-separated values). This tutorial will guide users to get data from Chicago Cityscape into a spreadsheet program.
Resource, Property research, Exporting data
Last updated 11/03/2021
All of the service providers in this directory are interested in designing and building ADUs in Chicago, and have relevant experience. Chicago Cityscape does not endorse or qualify any person or company listed here. We've asked each interested service provider to provide examples of relevant work.
Resource, Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU)
Last updated 05/05/2021