An Exploration of Illinois

Here is a map that blends a land cover layer of Illinois with a hillshade layer of Illinois's elevation. As you can see, Illinois is relatively flat except for the northwestern and southern parts of the state.

As mentioned on the last map, the elevation of Illinois is pretty flat overall. The range in elevation in the state is fairly small, in fact Illinois is the  second  flattest state in the United States.

The Illinois river does present a clear divide between a somewhat hilly northwestern region and an incredibly flat central region.

1. Chicago
2. Aurora
3. Rockford
4. Joliet
5. Naperville
6. Peoria
7. Springfield
8. Elgin
9. Waukegan
10. Cicero
11. Champaign
12. Bloomington
13. Evanston
14. Arlington Heights
15. Schaumburg

Illinois is one of the only states in the United States that has actually experienced a decline in population since 2010. Recently, this decline in population resulted in Illinois losing a representative in the US congress.

From 2010 to 2015 most of the loss was driven by rural counties; however, it's worth mentioning that since 2015 the urban counties have also lost population.

This is a heatmap indicating where there are higher densities of people in Illinois. The redder the area, the more people there are. As you can see, Chicago is a massive city that dwarfs the rest of the state in terms of population density.

At first glance, it may appear that Illinois is more Republican than Democrat; however, in reality the population density of the blue counties in Illinois is so high that despite only winning a plurality in 14 out of 102 counties, the Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden defeated the incumbent Republican President Donald Trump by over 1 million votes in Illinois.

Illinois has quite a few airports, especially in the northeastern region of the state. There are not many areas in the state that are farther than an hour away from the nearest airport.

Perhaps an additional airport could be built in the southeastern part of the state.