Non-English language neighborhoods in Chicago, Illinois: 2000

We use data from the 2000 U.S. Census to investigate the spatial patterns and characteristics of non-English language neighborhoods in Chicago Illinois, a major immigrant gateway city. We seek to answer three research questions. First, do non-English language speakers live close enough to form spatially bounded neighborhoods? Second, where are these neighborhoods—in the historical central city of Chicago or in suburbs? Third, what are these neighborhoods like? We use the technique of exploratory spatial data analysis, spatial autocorrelation analysis, to describe and visualize neighborhoods. Our analyses show that non-English language neighborhoods exist in suburbs as well as the central city and that the linguistic, demographic, and socioeconomic characteristics of language neighborhoods vary strongly by site and language group.