Evanston Case Summary

The City of Evanston presents an interesting case study into the relationship between universities and the cities in which they reside. Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, is located in Cook County, Illinois and is the home to Northwestern University, a major research university. Northwestern’s 240-acre campus sits right outside the city’s central business district and serves more than 16,000 students. With the majority of the 8,000 undergraduate students living in on-campus housing or in the vicinity of the campus , Northwestern students are an integral part of the Evanston community. Evanston encompasses six zip codes, however, for the purpose of examining the complex town-gown relationship, this paper will focus primarily on the 60201 zip code, …show more content…
According to data from the 2010 census , the area’s population is 42,135 of which 48 percent is male and 52 percent female. The median age is 30.9. The community is 69.1 percent white, 14 percent black, and 11 percent Asian. Compared to the racial breakdown of Cook County, the community has a higher population of Asians and a smaller population of blacks, as only 6.9 percent of Cook County’s population is Asian and 24.6 percent is black. The residents are also much wealthier than the rest of the county. The area’s median household income is $66,282, whereas the median household income for Cook County is $54,648. According to the 2012 American Community Survey , the area has 17,228 total housing units. 50.6 percent of households are family households and 49.4 percent are nonfamily households, which differs greatly from the rest of Cook County, in which 61.5 percent of households are family households and 38.5 percent are nonfamily households. The high percentage of nonfamily households in this area of Evanston is indicative of the large percentage of Northwestern students that live off-campus in the neighborhood. It also contributes to the tenuous housing issue, which will be explored later in this