Mapping Opportunity in Chicago Neighborhoods

Within cities, there is variation in Internet use across neighbourhoods. Urban scholars have documented a host of "neighbourhood effects" for health, education, and income, among others. How do concentrated poverty, segregation, and ethnic differences matter for technology use at the neighbourhood level? What role does the neighbourhood context play for influencing individual opportunity? This chapter addresses these questions using neighbourhood-level data from Chicago, a large and diverse city. Multilevel models show that neighbourhood characteristics matter, beyond individual-level factors. The multilevel models are used to generate maps, showing the geography of technology opportunity across Chicago's neighbourhoods. Comparisons of neighbourhoods with the lowest and highest rates of broadband adoption demonstrate impacts at the neighbourhood level for quality of life, economic development and political representation-for the percentage of residents who use the Internet at work, go online for health information, use the city's website, or access political information online.