Chicago’s 50 Wards: How Weird Are They?

Gerrymandering happens at every level of government. Chicago’s 50 wards are stretched and twisted into tortured shapes, a not-surprising result of being drawn by politicians to serve their interests. If groups including the League of Women Voters of Chicago have their way, the next map will be drawn by an independent citizens’ commission to ensure fairer representation. 

Chicago magazine’s and Time Out’s picks for the weirdest ward shapes in the current map illustrate how wards may have “no relationship to neighborhood boundaries,” in the words of Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Supporters of an independent commission hope that Lightfoot will follow up on her 2019 statement that a commission should redraw the ward map. Get a look at all 50 ward configurations.

2nd Ward

The 2nd Ward was relocated so that Ald. Bob Fioretti, a thorn in the side of Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel, would lose his power base. The previously South Side ward had been represented by a Black alderman for nearly a century until the gentrification of the South Loop facilitated Fioretti’s election in 2007. The 2012 remap moved the 2nd Ward to the Near North Side, eliminating Fioretti’s seat. It is strung together from Streeterville to Ukrainian Village “like a video game character with missing pixels,” Chicago magazine said. Time Out saw the shape as more like a lobster and called the 2nd Ward “far and away the most gerrymandered in the city.”

14th Ward

The long, thin finger attached to the 14th Ward gave indicted Ald. Edward Burke enough votes from majority-White Garfield Ridge to win a 13th term in an otherwise Latinx ward. With Burke indicted on bribery charges, the extrusion, 38 blocks long and just one block wide in places, may be cut out of the next ward remap.

15th Ward

“The boundaries of the South Side jurisdiction look just like a rooster perched up on a branch,” Time Outsaid. The last remap drew former 15th Ward Ald. Toni Foulkes out of the 15th, but she won the 16th-Ward seat in 2015 and lost it in 2019.

16th Ward

Chicago magazine described the 16th Ward as looking “like a Star Wars All Terrain Walker with a wasps’ nest tethered to its ankle.” It is one of six wards that carve up Englewood, one of the city’s most underserved neighborhoods.

35th Ward

The long, skinny 35th Ward stretches from Logan Square to Hermosa to Albany Park. Mayor Lightfoot lives in the 35th and has used it as an example of the unfair representation that results when neighborhoods are carved up without citizens’ input.

36th Ward

Containing parts of Montclare, Portage Park, Belmont Cragin, and Hermosa, the 36th Ward “appears to be eating the 31st Ward, which in turn appears to be eating the 30th Ward, a Russian nesting doll of wards drawn in order to maximize Latinx representation on the Northwest side,” Chicago magazine said. 

40th Ward

Rosehill Cemetery separates the neighborhoods in the 40th Ward with live constituents. Chicago magazine speculated that the ward was drawn so “far-flung constituents had no common interests around which to organize.”