Chicago ranks fourth in country for millennials and Wicker Park is their neighborhood choice

Chicago is ranked fourth in a 25-city field for millennials in the U.S. Estimated as 14% of Chicago's 9,425,706 population, the 25 to 34-year-olds consider Wicker Park the best neighborhood, according to Niche.com. 

This report goes on to give the following Chicago stats: median Rent is $931; median income is $30,061; representative college is DePaul University; and the crime score is average.  

Wicker Park
Diving into the Wicker Park stats they show the population as 24,391, with 52.2% being male (higher than the city's 48.9%) and the Racial segments breaking into:

• White                           70.3
• Hispanic                       15.62
• African American             7.47
• Asian                             4.11
• Other                             2.46

Age is broken down as:

• 9 and under              9%
• 10 to 17 years           5%
• 18 to 24 years         10%
• 25 to 34 years         42%
• 35 to 44 years         15%
• 45 to 54 years           8%
• 55 to 64 years           5%
• 65 and over               6%

They estimated that close to 55% of the residents rent versus own. 

Aldermanic view
So what does 1st Ward Alderman Proco "Joe" Moreno have to say about this? 

"The diversity, art and music, and independent business atmosphere of the neighborhood is pretty much unmatched in the country," he says, explaining why people come to Wicker Park.

Other rankings
First ranked New York stats are: millenniums are 14%; median Rent is $1,157; median income is $31,703; representative college is New York University; and the crime score is low. 

Second ranked Austin, TX,  stats are: millenniums are 17%; median Rent is $936; median income is $30,816; representative college is University of Texas - Austin; and the crime score is below average. 

Third ranked Washington, D.C.,  stats are: millenniums are 15%; median Rent is $1,353; median income is $42,226; representative college is Georgetown University; and the crime score is average. 

Fifth ranked San Francisco, CA,  stats are: millenniums are 15%; median Rent is $1,344; median income is $36.119; representative college is University of San Francisco; and the crime score is average. 

Among all 25 cities the millennials account for from 11 to 17% of the population and the crime score goes from  high in Atlanta, GA, to low in 5 cities. 

Methodologies
For the top metro areas, they used the following methodology:

1.  From the U.S. Census American Community Survey:

2.  Crime Rates from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports* (lower scores better)

3.  Rankings from Niche.com (generated from user survey responses):

Metro areas were restricted to only metros with a population of at least 1 million residents. All factors were normalized across the distribution and then weighted equally to determine the final ranking. 

For the best neighborhood, methodology used was similar: Less data is available at the neighborhood level, so factors were limited to:

Urban neighborhood data was unavailable or incomplete for Raleigh, Indianapolis, and Phoenix, so the datasets for those metro areas were limited to the Census County Divisions (CCDs) and Census Designated Places (CDPs) located within each metro. The remaining 22 metro area datasets incorporated urban neighborhoods in addition to CCDs and CDPs.

Thanks to Wicker Parker Nick Sommers for a heads up on this story.