Civic Worth is in beta. It’s assembled automatically from public records and can be wrong. Check the official source before you rely on it, and tell us what’s wrong, or see what we’ve corrected.

About Civic Worth

Civic Worth joins federal civic data — Census, EPA, USDOT — to county and city parcel registries in Columbus (Franklin County) and Chicago (Cook County). The platform answers a single question: what does this address actually mean?

Who represents it. What its zoning permits. What transit serves it. What's been reported to 311. Whether a Phase 1 or Phase 2 Zone In rezoning changed anything. Whether the parcel sits inside a historic district, a flood zone, a Chicago TIF district, or an EPA EJScreen polygon. All joined to the parcel polygon, not the ZIP code or the council-district centroid.

The free preview returns a Civic Address Card in under a second. The $29 Zone In Decoder shows a side-by-side of old and new zoning rules. The $9.99 Citizen tier emails a watchlist digest each morning, or once a week if you prefer. Verified Ohio newsrooms and 501(c)(3) organizations get every paid tier free.

Data sources

Civic Worth synthesizes 50+ public-records sources across Columbus (Franklin County) and Chicago (Cook County). Every report shows the originating source for every fact (the provenance schema is documented and non-negotiable). The major sources, with their official homes:

Federal: Census ACS & TIGER, EPA EJScreen, CDC PLACES, FEMA NFHL, and HUD (LIHTC, vouchers, fair-market rents).
Columbus / Franklin County: Franklin County Auditor parcels, Columbus zoning + Title 33 ordinance text, and Columbus open data (311, permits, area-commission boundaries).
Chicago / Cook County: Cook County Assessor parcels + assessments and the Chicago Data Portal (zoning, permits, 311, wards, community areas).

How we keep it current

County parcel registries re-ingest nightly; federal datasets refresh on each source's own cadence (annually for ACS, on release for FEMA/EPA), with volatile federal sources diffed daily against mirrors so a deletion is caught, not silently served. Every figure in a report carries an as-of date so you always know how fresh it is.

Found something wrong? Every parcel page links a public corrections form. See the corrections policy and the methodology for how sources are joined, timestamped, and cited.

Independence

Civic Worth is not affiliated with the City of Columbus, Columbus City Council, or any campaign.

What we don't do

Civic Worth does not surface owner names on the free tier. The platform does not predict property values, opine on neighborhood quality, or characterize residents. The synthesis is descriptive and citation-ready — it tells you what the public record contains, not what to do with it.

See the privacy policy and the terms of service for the formal stance.