Community Area 43 · Chicago
South Shore
Platform preview
This is a rendition of the live platform. Every number below is real and cross-validated against public records through 2025. What it does not do yet is refresh on its own. The connected view, with live data sources, is walked through directly.
Ranks are against the full nine-neighborhood benchmark set. Sources: Chicago Data Portal, U.S. Census ACS 2024 5-Year. Crime and permits are 2019–2025; business licenses are a current snapshot.
How 35.7 is built
Four measured pillars. The Access / Assets pillar was removed in v2.1 because it was a hardcoded 50 carrying 10% of the weight. Score moved 37.1 → 35.7.
Permit intensity vs. peers
Building permits per 1,000 housing units, 2025. Normalized so neighborhoods of different sizes compare fairly.
South Shore is last of nine, 33% below the core peer average. This is the single weakest signal in the model.
Corridor analysis
Two scores, not one
A single composite score scores every corridor as if it were retail. South Shore Drive carries $380.6M in permits and reads as the weakest corridor under a retail-weighted model — because it is not a retail corridor. Publishing both lenses instead of one number makes that visible.
Same five dimensions as the interactive explorer below, at two fixed weightings instead of one composite. South Shore Drive scores 36.4 under the retail-weighted default while carrying $380.6M in permit value, six times the next corridor. It is not a weak corridor. It is a development corridor being scored on a retail rubric. Publishing both lenses instead of one composite makes that visible instead of hiding it inside a single number.
The corridor type shown next to each name is not assigned by hand — it is classified automatically from average permit value per building permit, already held for every corridor. Under $100K reads retail, over $400K reads development.
Set your own lens
Or build a custom weighting
Retail and development are two fixed lenses. A lender, a public agency and a broker each weigh the same five dimensions differently — move the sliders to see how much of any ranking is a judgement call.
Model weights
The score is a weighted blend. Change the weights and the ranking changes.
Weights total 100%. Scores are normalized, so any total works.
Dimension scores — Stony Island Avenue
Each dimension is min-max normalized across these five corridors only. 100 means highest of the five. 0 means lowest of the five. Neither is an absolute grade.
Densest commercial base and near-highest permit frequency, offset by the heaviest crime concentration of the five.
What this means for you
Same five corridors, four different answers — depending on what you do for a living.
Where are businesses operating without capital reaching them?
71st Street. 101 businesses, dead last on reinvestment.
71st Street has more active business licenses than any other corridor in South Shore and the second-highest business density. It also ranks last of five on permit activity and last of five on reinvestment intensity.
That combination means businesses are operating in buildings nobody is putting money into. Existing operators, no visible capital.
Watch out: Business license counts are a current snapshot; permits are cumulative 2019–2025. Confirm the businesses are still trading before treating this as a prospect list.
Sensitivity test · 101 weightings
What survives a change of assumptions
Share of 101 weight combinations in which each corridor ranks first.
- Robust: Stony Island Avenue and Jeffery Boulevard are the top two corridors under the default weighting, and one of them ranks first in 79% of all tested weightings.
- Not robust: Which of the two ranks first is NOT robust. Stony Island leads under the default weights but Jeffery leads in 57% of tested weightings.
The finding the model almost buried
South Shore Drive ranks last and carries $380.6M
The model weights business density at 30% and permit frequency at 25%. South Shore Drive is last on both — it is not a retail strip. It is where large-scale capital is landing, at an average permit size seven times Stony Island’s.
Scored as a commercial corridor it looks like a failure. Scored as a development corridor it is the most active site in South Shore. The lens was wrong, not the corridor. Try the “Real estate developer” preset above.
Averages hide corridors
South Shore scores 35.7 as one market. Inside it, corridor scores span 30 points. An institution screening at the community-area level sees one number and passes.
Benchmarking changes verdicts
Scored alone: 45.3, a maybe. Scored against nine peers: 35.7, a pass. Same neighborhood, same data, different question.
Weights are a judgement call
Every scoring product makes one and most hide it. Tubman puts the sliders on the page, because a lender and a developer should not get the same ranking.
One community area. 76 more in Chicago.
The pipeline is repeatable: public endpoints, normalization, peer benchmarking, corridor buffers. A pilot points it at a market you are already trying to decide about.