Rooted Forward
  • Tours
  • Podcast
  • Policy
  • About
  • Team
  • Get Involved
  • Contact
Rooted Forward

A student-run Chicago nonprofit. Walking tours, an online exhibit, a podcast, and housing policy work.

© 2026 Rooted Forward. All rights reserved.

Privacy

Quick Links

  • About
  • Team
  • Tours
  • Podcast
  • Policy
  • Get Involved
  • Contact

Contact

Questions, press, partnerships, or anything else.

contact@rooted-forward.org

Based in Chicago.

Mobile self-guided tour app

Our student researchers take one neighborhood at a time and work out how race shaped it, out of the deeds, the appraisal maps, and the plans the city drew. What they find becomes a free audio tour you can walk at your own pace, whenever you want.

The tours live in our iPhone app. Hyde Park in Chicago is finished, and more neighborhoods are being researched now.

Coming soon to theApp Store

The app is not up yet. Ask us for the link and we will send it the day it lands.

See the tours →
The tour map, drawn over the 1929 government survey of Hyde Park, with the route and every stop
The app's home screen, with the Walk Hyde Park tour card
A tour stop with its audio player, photographs, and text
A red plate naming one instrument of housing segregation, above the walking directions to the next stop

Screens from the Hyde Park tour in the app.

What you get when you download it

Self-guided narration

You stand where it happened and hear what happened there, with the whole script under the player if you would rather read it.

A map of the route

Drawn over the government survey of the day, with every stop on it, your own dot, and walking directions between them.

Works without a signal

Everything downloads with the app, so a dead zone does not end the walk. No account, no ads, no tracking.

What you can walk right now

Aerial photograph of Hyde Park and the lakefront taken by the Chicago Aerial Survey Company in 1928

Hyde Park and the lakefront from the air, 1928. Chicago Aerial Survey Co. Public domain.

Walk Hyde Park

Hyde Park, Chicago

The tour goes through the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, stopping at sites that reflect its deep racial history and the inequality that still shapes the neighborhood today. It starts at Paul Cornell's stone by 53rd Street and ends at Harper Court.

Stops

13, plus 3 detours

On foot

About 4 miles

Audio

About 70 minutes

Price

Free

Coming soon to theApp Store
Or take it in your browser →

More neighborhoods are in the works

Help research the next one →

Or walk Hyde Park with a guide

Our student researchers run the same route in person for small groups, about two hours, working from the documents the app is built on. You can ask them questions the recording cannot answer.

Book on Viator
Cobb Lecture Hall about 1900, a long four-storey limestone Gothic block with steep gables and turrets, young trees along the sidewalk and a horse and buggy passing on the unpaved street

Cobb Lecture Hall about 1900, a stop on the walk. Detroit Publishing Company, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. No known restrictions on publication.

Download the app

It is free, and every tour we finish shows up in it. Get it before you leave the house, since the whole walk works without a signal.

iPhone, iOS 17 or newer. Free.

Coming soon to theApp Store

The app is not up yet. Ask us for the link and we will send it the day it lands.