today shows how 100 years of ward redistricting shapes things like voting resources and crime rates.

Researchers at you, Chicago Justice Project found that 15% of the city's land highlighted in blue on your screen has never changed wards while other neighborhoods are repeatedly divide it up on the map, Chicagoans prepare to vote for mayor and City Council early next year.

The data helps shine a light on who gets a seat at the table.

Joining us to break down the findings is Robert Vargas, sociology professor at the University of Chicago and director of the U Chicago Justice Project.

Welcome Chicago Tonight.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So tell us about your research.

How do the implications of settler colonialism that gerrymandering redlining, how they all still show up today in the ward boundaries yet.

So my research up to this study was studying the consequences of redistricting for things like crime and 3, 1, 1, requests.

Because what we were finding was that >> communities that were split up across 4 or 5 different awards higher crime rates and had slower 3, 1, 1, >> Responses.

I stopped to wonder like if you if I could, if I could digitize all the ward maps going back to the city's history, what that tell us about how this question about the relationship between redistricting and inequality and could unfold over the entire history.

And so digitize it.

Took us many years to find the digitize them.

And what we discovered was the importance Chicago's center colonial history.

So it's important remember, remember that in the 18 30's when Chicago was founded, it was much, much smaller than it is today and neighborhoods that we know like.

Lakeview Rogers Park High Park were also their own settlements.

Through a long history that we've uncovered.

That settlement.

History helps to explain over time how those communities continue to be protected over protected from redistricting.

>> So 15% of the city's land has never changed wards.

What does that mean for those areas?

>> That means a couple of things.

I think that.

Historically it's changed quite a bit.

And so initially you think of the neighborhood of like High Park.

That representation in the city council helped ensure that whatever taxes that they were contributing, Chicago that was growing in the 18, 100's at the time that they would get their fair share.

And then when you go up to the time of the 1950's and 60's 70's, which is the emergence of the first daily political machine.

Those that stable political representation help to become the basis.

The aldermanic that helped daily covered and that those same wards have consistently.

When you look at the history of the city's political coalitions, those words have consistently been part of the core political coalition to at that has decided some of the major policy decisions in the city.

So it's it's a story of path dependence of the past kind of shaping the president who are some of the people who live in those areas that >> Been in the same ward, all this tool for It should be of no surprise to many people have.

Bridgeport is one of the communities because it yes, that's the home of the Daley machine that to 2 generations in the mayor's office high park which houses the University of Chicago Edison Park.

And it's important to remember many of these settlements were founded over some of that the major investors of real estate in those communities.

And so Rogers parking believes was was named after will.

Fred Rogers, for example.

And you go down the list.

And, you know, there's been a lot of change in those neighborhoods for sure.

But structurally that position that they've had and has enabled those communities to continue to have more powerful.

And so the city politics then on the flip side of that, a key part of your findings is that it the board redistricting in Chicago has disproportionately impacted black, Latino immigrant working class communities.

>> What are impacts for the folks, you know, in those neighborhoods when they are repeatedly getting redistricted?

Yeah.

So the their cup, there's a lot going on there.

That just goes be on the history of settler colonialism.

So in the 1960's with the Voting Rights Act.

>> Wright local governments where being forced to account for racial equity and population equity to across Aborts and in the end, the process of trying to create a majority minority ward like a board that has a majority number of black or Latino residents is a lot harder than you would think because that requires you to draw very oddly shaped districts to get those numbers.

And so that's one reason in addition to other, traditional gerrymandering concerns going to protect incumbency.

But that's that's one of the factors that's going on here.

And so it's it's kind of like in the spirit of trying to maintain and provide racial racially fair maps.

consequence of this is the dividing up and splitting of communities.

I think what's really crucial now is that with the rolling back of the Voting Rights Act, which we've seen at the Louisiana verse Cali.

people who are concerned about racial equity are having to go back to the drawing board.

And I think that these histories not just of the city council, this kind of study could be with the state legislature could be done with congressional districts.

These hands of history's, I think can create different kinds of conversations about how to draw racially equitable maps.

We're redistricting.

It's based on population, but that means, you know, that some neighborhoods get divided into multiple awards.

I can take it in wood, for example, when I think sits across 4 or 5 wards.

>> How might that impact the residents who live in those areas?

Well, you know, a couple of right where I live in the West Loop as well is split up across a couple of boards and >> a neighbor of mines child was hit by a car at an intersection where one alderman represented a to the block and another on and on the other and the process of trying to get a simple traffic study done to do something about that troublesome intersection has been incredibly difficult for our friends.

Imagine how complicated is in community like Angola split up across 4 or 5 different awards has to deal with gun violence that has to deal with a number with crime and a number of issues.

And there have been others who've written about this.

I think they've been some of the news articles about the challenges they include has faced.

And I think some of the older ones have tried to organize across the board meetings.

That's logistically difficult because you have to get the buy-in of 4, 5 alders.

you know, just really, really hard And so just I think when you put that in the scope of history, imagine how communities to have to redo over and over again over decades and then juxtapose that with communities that have had that stable representation from the beginning.

That helps explain a lot about Chicago's inequities.

Just, you know, 30 seconds left.

You know, Chicagoans are going to vote for city Council mayor in February.

What do they need to keep in mind as they vote for their next older person?

>> You know.

>> Historically city council members have been looking out for their self interest the drawing maps.

I would look to the state legislature because Chicago history shows that and the way that the laws work, the state of Illinois has a lot of power over how cities and local governments can can