Downtown Explorer
How many homes are near a downtown depends on how you measure. Try it yourself.
Advanced adds what-if tools: new buildings, crossings, parking, storefronts and spending.
1 Choose what to measure
Spending assumptions
What a household spends a year eating out and shopping at the kinds of stores a downtown has. Used by the restaurant and shop check, the storefronts tool and the project figures.
BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey 2024 (U.S. average / $150–200K income / $200K+): eating out $3,945 / $6,241 / $8,489; groceries $6,224 / $8,305 / $9,964; shopping (apparel and services, personal care, household furnishings and equipment, alcoholic beverages) $6,036 / $8,863 / $13,508. These include online purchases, so a downtown only ever gets part of them.
2 Results
Check the village's slide
The village's April 28, 2026 slide, "Residential Units w/in 1 Mile Radius of Metra Station," next to 2020 Census counts measured the way its title describes: 1 mile, straight line, from the Metra station. This table doesn't change with your settings above.
| Town | Slide | Census | Difference |
|---|
Check the multi-unit claim
The village said about 20% of homes within a mile of Northbrook's station are in multi-unit buildings, against 35–45% in other towns. This measures every town the same way: homes in buildings with 2 or more units, 1 mile in a straight line from the Metra station, from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.
| Town | Homes | 2+ units | 5+ units | Townhomes |
|---|
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Check the density table
The village's "Community Data Comparison" divides every home by every square mile of the village, including office parks, industrial land, golf courses and forest preserves. This table splits the land by what's on it, from the regional planning agency's 2023 land-use map.
Loads when you show this section.
Compare towns
Drop (Advanced) is the share of homes inside the straight-line circle that are beyond the same distance on foot. Think of it as freedom of movement: lower means streets connect more directly; higher means more barriers, such as rail lines with few crossings, rivers and creeks, expressways, golf courses and forest preserves, and long blocks or cul-de-sacs. Busy roads like Dundee Rd (a state-route arterial) aren't counted as barriers; the tool assumes you can cross them. Planners usually measure this as a "pedestrian shed ratio" (walkable area ÷ circle area). This is the same idea counted in homes instead of acres, so it isn't a standard published figure.
Side by side with another town
Both towns use the same settings. The second map uses the same zoom, so you can compare at the same scale.
Restaurant and shop check
Could the homes inside the area keep the town's restaurants and stores going on their own? Each row assumes every nearby household spends all of its money for that category in this town.
| Category | Town sales, 2025 | Nearby households could spend, at most | From farther away, at least |
|---|
3 What if…
Each tool: set it up on top, read the result in the box below it.
…a new building went up?
See how much one building moves the count.
…there were a new crossing?
A footbridge, underpass or path over the tracks, the river or a busy road. Click one end, then the other; each end has to be on a street the tool knows (dashed brown lines). Private drives and very new streets aren't in the Census street file. Counts use walking distance.
No crossings added yet.
…there were a parking garage?
Drop a parking garage on the map to see how much of downtown is within a 2-, 5- and 10-minute walk of it (walking 3 mph).
Turn on parking lots to see how much surface parking is near downtown.
…storefronts were many small or a few big?
The same commercial space split into small shops or a few big ones. Every number is an assumption you can change.
Limits: space 500–200,000 sq ft; small storefront 300–5,000 sq ft; big 1,000–50,000 sq ft; sales $50–2,000 per sq ft per year. Defaults: 11,000 sq ft matches the two 5,500 sq ft commercial buildings in the Meadow Plaza proposal. Household spending comes from Spending assumptions in section 1.
Share or print
Saved settings
Save the settings you're using now (town, distance, what-ifs, storefront and spending numbers, density view and printout choices) so you can come back to exactly this view. Every printout is saved here automatically. Saved in this browser only; to move them to another computer, use the link instead.
Download the data
Every number here comes from free public sources. Download any table as a spreadsheet (CSV), or the source files the tool uses. No account or sign-up needed.
Source files (JSON, each with a note on where it came from): slide check · multi-unit · land use · town sales · stations and corners · downtown outlines. Census homes and streets load live from the Census Bureau's free TIGERweb service.
What goes in the printout
Your name, notes and these choices stay in this browser. The last page of every printout lists the settings used, with a link and a code you can scan with a phone to reopen this exact view.