Your block
Host a block audit
Gather neighbors and decide which measures matter most on your blocks. The result is your own wellbeing index, one you can hold your government to year after year.
Send us what your neighbors choseWard Wise
A clearer view of every ward.
Ward Wise turns Chicago's open data into measures of neighborhood wellbeing that anyone can explore, weight and compare. Volunteers build it at Chi Hack Night.
Built from public records
Every measure comes from an agency or open dataset, and the metric dictionary names the source for each one.
Shaped by residents
Many measures started as resident nominations, from parking difficulty to lead in park water fountains.
The same for every ward
One method covers all 50 wards and 77 community areas, so any two places can be compared fairly.
Open to everyone
The site is free with no login, and the data is available through a public API.
Our goal
A measure nominated from every ward.
The best measures come from the people who live with them. Nominate one, and your ward gets the credit on the map.
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Where it started · 2024
First, the menu money.
Ward Wise began as a Chi Hack Night breakout group built around participatory budgeting. Every year each alder gets $1.5 million in "menu money" for neighborhood infrastructure such as sidewalks, street resurfacing and bike lanes. The first Ward Wise showed how every ward spent it, and how residents could have a say.
Sean MacMullan presented that version at Chi Hack Night on May 28, 2024. Menu money is still part of the site, and participatory budgeting is one of the measures in the catalog.
Ward Wise: Neighborhood Infrastructure Spending in Chicago
Chi Hack Night #591 · May 28, 2024 · Watch on YouTube
Since May 2026
Refreshed, and still growing.
In May 2026 the team expanded Ward Wise to help citizens explore Chicago data more broadly. The refreshed dashboard opened with 20 measures for the Bean's 20th birthday and has added more every month since.
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Visual signifiers
Put your area on the map.
Every ward, neighborhood and small area shows a photo of a real place inside it, with its source and credit.
Who builds it
The team.
Volunteers who met at Chi Hack Night, each from a different ward.
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Harry Brisson
12th Ward · Data coordinator
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Angel Carbajal
33rd Ward · UX and design
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Connor Florczyk
42nd Ward · UX and reporting
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Jackie Schmitz
43rd Ward · Personalization
Get involved.
In person
Come to Chi Hack Night
Chicago's weekly meetup for people who use data and technology in the public interest meets on Tuesday evenings. Ward Wise is built there, and no technical background is needed.
chihacknight.orgBeyond Chicago
Bring Ward Wise to your city
Open data and open source travel well. The team is exploring Columbus, Madison, Cincinnati, New York and Los Angeles.
Tell us about your cityDevelopers
Build on the data
Every number on the site is available through a small read-only API, along with the dictionary that explains it. Keys are free.
Read the API docs