Thematic Cartography For Social Reform In Chicago, 1894-1923

Abstract

A historiographical analysis of thematic mapping in turn-of-the-century Chicago reveals the role of cartography as a highly politicized method for sorting and labeling urban populations. Progressive Era reformers and sociologists created maps that fixed transient and shifting populations of various ethnic and socioeconomic groups deemed undesirable. Such urban mapping projects demonstrate the application of cartography's ostensible objectivity to justify moral and political judgments about urban populations.