Cook County

Examples of Cook County Data in Use

Josh KalovFebruary 10, 2015

Here are some recent examples of Cook County Open Data in use:

LargeLots used Cook County parcel data to make it easier for people to see available city lots. This was one of the most successful tech-focused projects for the City in 2014, and the parcel data was essential to the interface.
The Chicago Sun-Times used the parcel data in a story about parking lots near the United Center
The Better Government Association uses salary data to make their popular lookup tool more accurate and up-to-date

If you are using Cook County Open Data, let us know!

Cook County Land Bank Property Viewer

Josh KalovFebruary 9, 2015

Recently the Cook County Land Bank launched a new online property viewer and search tool. The site includes property owned by the land bank and property that may be available to the land bank.

Initially you can search by parcel number, street address, or city or you can view all properties. The main view shows a map and a list of the properties. The property locations are color-coded by property classification such as “Residential Land” and “Residential Structure.” Searches can be filtered by location and building characteristics. The map can show additional layers such as recent foreclosures, tax sales, TIF districts, and floodplains.

You can click on a property to get to a property detail page with more information and pictures.

By creating an account it is possible to submit the pre-qualification application PDF.

The Cook County Land Bank worked with ePropertyPlus to develop the web application.

Join us for Data Portal Training at The Hive Network

Kyla WilliamsJanuary 13, 2015

Smart Chicago is an affiliate member of the Hive Learning Network, a thriving network designed to motivate, inspire and support Connected Learning experiences for thousands of young learners. As part of our collaborative work together and collective desire to deepen the relationships between organizations and the Civic Technology community, Josh Kalov will present a one hour training on the Chicago and Cook County Data Portals on January 16th at 12:30pm.

The training will include the following elements:

Introduction to the data portals
Login, Search and Saved Searches
Existing Application and Project Examples from Portal usage
Breakout Activity-What can the portals do for you? Participants will briefly brainstorm in small groups how the portal could support/benefit one of their existing Hive projects

The training will occur as part of a bigger two day training event being held by Hive Chicago. Both days are free and are designed to help strategize and build skills within Hive’s Moonshot Projects. This is also an excellent opportunity to collaborative with Member organizations around technology inputs and outputs for their projects.

You can register for the event here: http://www.hivechicagobuzz.org/#joinus.

New Cook County Data: Unincorporated Zoning

Josh KalovJanuary 13, 2015

Last month, in December 2014, the Cook County GIS Department added data on unincorporated zoning information to Cook County’s Open Data Portal. The data comes in two varieties – by parcel and by zoning district. They include information on Agency ID, Agency Description, Zone ID, Zone Description, Zone Notes, Zone Label, Zone Ordinance, and PIN (in the Parcel data set). These data sets can be downloaded as KML, Shapefile, CSV, and JSON.

This data is provided by the Cook County Department Of Building and Zoning and is maintained by the Cook County Zoning Board of Appeals. Unincorporated land is land that doesn’t belong to any particular city. About 100,000 residents live in these areas.

Municipalities maintain zoning for their incorporated land. The City of Chicago’s Zoning District Boundaries data can be found here.

New Cook County Data: Indigent Cremations

Josh KalovDecember 31, 2014

In December 2014, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office released a new data set listing indigent cremations. The data includes case number, name, age, sex, race, date of death, and cremation date. This is a companion data set to the Burial Locations data set and part of the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Virtual Cemetery.

Cook County Medical Examiner’s Indigent Cremations Data set.

On September 11, 2013 the Cook County Board approved changes to the Medical Examiner’s Ordinance to allow cremation of bodies of unclaimed and disclaimed indigents. The complete Medical Examiner’s ordinance can be found here.

Find your polling place on the Cook County Data Portal!

Smart ChicagoNovember 3, 2014

If you live in Suburban Cook County and haven’t voted yet, you can find your voting location on the Cook County Data Portal. If you forgot to register to vote, you can also find places where you can do same day voting registration as well.

Voting

Josh recently released data sets for early voting locations and polling places on the Cook County data portal. The County had previously released early voting locations in 2012, and so Josh updated the data set for this election season.

You can get more information on Cook County elections by visiting the Cook County Clerk’s website. You can also see how the county is doing in early turnout by going here. For information on elections within the city, you can visit the Chicago Board of Elections website.