What’s Allowed on Your Block?

Enter a Chicago address to see its zoning district and whether common uses — from two-flats and corner stores to daycare and clinics — are allowed by right, need special approval, or are not allowed.

Built on Strong Towns Chicago’s “What’s Banned on Your Block?” data.

Informational screening tool — not an official zoning determination. Results don’t account for overlays, planned development terms, landmark or pedestrian-street rules, use-specific standards, or recent zoning changes. Confirm with the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development or a zoning attorney before making decisions.

Results appear here: the zoning district and whether common uses are allowed by right, need special approval, or are not allowed.

Shaded area: the zoning district boundary from the City of Chicago’s Zoning Districts (current) dataset.

About the data

Zoning boundaries are queried live from the City of Chicago’s Boundaries – Zoning Districts (current) dataset. The City’s last-updated date is shown with each result.
Use permissions come from a fixed snapshot of the Strong Towns Chicago use table (repository commit c879ad9), extracted from the use tables in Chicago Zoning Ordinance §§17-2-0207, 17-3-0207 and 17-5-0207. The extraction date isn’t recorded in the source, and its human spot checks were not completed, so verify any result against the ordinance.
It covers 37 district classes and 21 common uses. Downtown (D), Planned Development (PD), PMD, POS, transportation and other districts are not covered.

Credit to Strong Towns Chicago

The use-permission data and the idea for this tool come from Strong Towns Chicago (source repository). Siam and Siam Consulting is not affiliated with Strong Towns Chicago, and this page does not imply its endorsement.

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