Chicago Business Licenses from 2002 to Present with Location Data

Business Licenses issued by the City of Chicago's Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection from January 1, 2002 to the present. The dataset is updated daily and contains records for initial issuance, renewals, and status changes. It includes business names, addresses, license terms, and geographic coordinates.

Use Cases

• Analyze business license status trends over time using LICENSE STATUS, LICENSE STATUS CHANGE DATE, and DATE ISSUED.
• Map business density and types by neighborhood using LATITUDE, LONGITUDE, BUSINESS ACTIVITY, and NEIGHBORHOOD.
• Predict license renewal likelihood using APPLICATION TYPE, LICENSE TERM START DATE, and LICENSE TERM EXPIRATION DATE.
• Join with external ownership data using LEGAL NAME or ID to analyze business ownership networks.

Strengths

• Daily update frequency ensures current data.
• Includes precise geographic coordinates (LATITUDE, LONGITUDE) for spatial analysis.
• Contains detailed license lifecycle data with APPLICATION TYPE and LICENSE STATUS fields.
• Covers a long temporal range from 2002 to the present.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

City of Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection via data.cityofchicago.org.

Collection Method

Administrative records from the city's business licensing system.

Time Range

January 1, 2002 to present.

Freshness

Updated daily; last metadata update was 2026-04-03 10:09:15.

Geography

City of Chicago, Illinois, USA.