Where to live in Jacksonville
Jacksonville is 747 square miles of land and 1,017,689 people on the Census Bureau's estimate for July 2025, and since 1968 it has been one government with Duval County, all of the county except Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach and Baldwin. One school district, Duval County Public Schools, covers every address, and the levies on a homesteaded tax bill are the same in every neighborhood, so what the neighborhood decides here is everything else: which bank of the St. Johns the street is on and how close the river or a creek runs, whether a City historic district reviews the outside of the house, whether a newer subdivision carries a community development district's assessment on the tax bill, and whether the address is in the City at all or in one of the four municipalities that kept their own governments. These are 20 neighborhood guides, filterable by area below.
Browse dedicated pages for Downtown, Springfield, the Eastside and Durkeeville, Riverside, Avondale, Murray Hill and Ortega out to Argyle, Moncrief, Panama Park and Sherwood Forest, San Marco, San Jose and Mandarin, and Baymeadows and Deerwood, Arlington, Woodland Acres and East Arlington.
20 communities across the city
A start on a consolidated city of about a million people that publishes no map of its own neighborhoods, so each guide is drawn on a City district where one carries the name and otherwise on the area a neighborhood organization filed with the City. Filter by area of the city, then page through the rest.
Argyle
The area the Argyle Area Civic Council filed with the City, about 15,600 acres from 103rd Street to the Clay County line, mostly beyond Interstate 295, from Argyle Forest to Chimney Lakes and Oak Hill, and about 60,000 residents, by far the largest guide.
Arlington
The City's Arlington Community Redevelopment Area across the St. Johns from downtown, 1,048 acres along University Boulevard and Merrill Road north of the Arlington Expressway, reaching the river and Interstate 295, about 9,300 residents.
Avondale
The south-west part of the City's Riverside-Avondale local historic district, from the Riverside line to Fishweir Creek, about 5,000 residents on the St. Johns with Boone Park and the National Register's Avondale district inside.
Baymeadows
The area the Baymeadows Community Council filed with the City less gated Deerwood, about 7,300 acres inside Interstate 295 and almost all east of Interstate 95 along Baymeadows Road, and about 34,000 residents.
Deerwood
The gated Deerwood community as its improvement association filed it with the City, about 1,600 acres around the Deerwood Country Club inside Interstate 295, about 2,500 residents.
Downtown Jacksonville
Downtown as the City's Downtown Community Redevelopment Area draws it, about 2,500 acres on both banks of the St. Johns from LaVilla and Brooklyn to the stadium and the Southbank, with City Hall, the Florida Theatre and the arena inside and the Pre-Trial Detention Facility counted among its 8,567 residents.
Durkeeville
The area the Durkeeville Neighborhood Association filed with the City, 742 acres west of Interstate 95 around Edward Waters University and the Durkee Gardens historic district, about 6,400 residents.
East Arlington
The area the Arlington East Neighborhood Association filed with the City, 1,526 acres between Atlantic and Beach Boulevards just inside Interstate 295, about 5,400 residents.
Eastside
The City's East Jax neighborhood action plan area east of downtown and north of the stadium, 702 acres and about 2,800 residents, most of them inside the National Register's Eastside Historic District.
Mandarin
The area the Olde Mandarin Neighborhood Association filed with the City, about 3,350 acres on the St. Johns south of Interstate 295, about 8,900 residents with the Mandarin Museum and the City's Mandarin zoning overlay inside.
Moncrief
The City's 45th and Moncrief neighborhood action plan area on the Northside, 1,190 acres west of Interstate 95 and north of the Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, about 5,200 residents with Royal Terrace inside.
Murray Hill
The area the Murray Hill Preservation Association filed with the City, 1,264 acres west of Avondale and south of Interstate 10, about 9,200 residents with Edgewood Avenue's shops and the Murray Hill Theatre inside.
Photographs: The Jacksonville skyline across the St. Johns by DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · The Arlington Woman's Club by MikesMegapixels, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Shops in the Avondale Historic District by Anthony Inswasty, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Laura and Forsyth Streets by Mathew105601, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Houses on Cleveland Avenue by Mathew105601, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · The Mandarin Store and Post Office by Ebyabe, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Showing 1–12 of 20 communities
The five areas at a glance
None of these five is drawn by the City. They are the names people here use, set on the lines Jacksonville already divides itself by: the St. Johns, the Trout and Arlington rivers, Interstates 95, 10 and 295, the Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and Beach Boulevard. Where one area stops and the next begins is our judgment rather than a map anybody publishes.
| Area | Neighborhoods | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Downtown, Springfield, the Eastside and Durkeeville | Downtown Jacksonville, Durkeeville, Eastside, Springfield | Downtown on both banks of the St. Johns at the river's bend, from LaVilla and Brooklyn to the stadium and the Southbank, with Springfield and the Eastside north of it and Durkeeville west of Interstate 95, all south of the Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, where every guide but Durkeeville follows a line the City draws. |
| Riverside, Avondale, Murray Hill and Ortega out to Argyle | Argyle, Avondale, Murray Hill, Ortega, Riverside | Riverside, Avondale and Ortega on the west bank of the St. Johns and Murray Hill behind them, all south of Interstate 10 and inside the Interstate 295 beltway, then Argyle beyond it out to the Clay County line, a civic council's 15,623 acres rather than one neighborhood. |
| Moncrief, Panama Park and Sherwood Forest | Moncrief, Panama Park, Sherwood Forest | Moncrief at the 45th Street end west of Interstate 95, Panama Park east of it where the Trout River meets the St. Johns, and Sherwood Forest on the Trout by the beltway, all north of the Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and none of them north of the Trout. |
| San Marco, San Jose and Mandarin, and Baymeadows and Deerwood | Baymeadows, Deerwood, Mandarin, San Jose, San Marco | San Marco, San Jose and the old riverside village of Mandarin along the St. Johns, then Baymeadows, a community council's area, and gated Deerwood inside the beltway east of Interstate 95, all on the east and south bank below Beach Boulevard. |
| Arlington, Woodland Acres and East Arlington | Arlington, East Arlington, Woodland Acres | The east bank north of Beach Boulevard: the City's Arlington redevelopment area on the St. Johns and the Arlington River, Woodland Acres between the Arlington Expressway and Atlantic Boulevard, and East Arlington, one association's 1,526 acres at the beltway. |
Where the neighborhoods come from. Jacksonville does not map its own neighborhoods. The City publishes no layer of neighborhoods for the whole city: its IC Neighborhoods layer has six features, and the map service does not say what IC stands for. So each guide takes a line the City draws where one carries the name, and otherwise the area an organization filed with the City. Downtown and Arlington are Community Redevelopment Areas. Springfield is a City local historic district, and so is Riverside-Avondale, which draws the two names together without saying where one ends, so Riverside is the National Register's Riverside Historic District as the City maps it and Avondale is the rest of the local district. The Eastside, Moncrief and Woodland Acres are neighborhood action plan areas the City Council adopted by ordinance. The rest are areas filed on the City's Neighborhood Associations layer, 594 features from under an acre to 147,481 acres, about a sixth of them neighborhood associations and the rest civic councils, homeowners and condominium associations, churches, businesses and entries with no type, and the layer does not say the City checks the lines. Where a City district takes in an association's residents almost whole, the district is the line; where it takes in a small part, as the San Marco zoning overlay does with 28% of the San Marco Preservation Society's area, the association's area is the line and the district is named inside the guide. Some lines are far larger or smaller than the name in common use, and those guides say so: Argyle is the Argyle Area Civic Council's 15,623 acres and 60,007 residents in 2020, and Baymeadows another council's area of 33,985; Mandarin is the old riverside village, not all of what residents call Mandarin south of Interstate 295; East Arlington is one association's 1,526 acres, not the east side to the Intracoastal; and Moncrief is the 45th Street end of the name. Each guide's population is the 2020 census count of the blocks inside it. Only the City of Jacksonville is covered. Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach and Baldwin are in Duval County but kept their own governments and levy their own rates; Orange Park and Middleburg in Clay County, Nocatee, Ponte Vedra Beach and St. Augustine in St. Johns County, and Yulee and Fernandina Beach in Nassau County are outside the county; none of them is here. Neither are Naval Air Station Jacksonville and Naval Station Mayport, which are inside the city and in no guide. And a Jacksonville mailing address is not proof of a City of Jacksonville address: the Duval County Property Appraiser's record for the property, which names its taxing district, is the one to read.
The five areas are ours. The City does publish divisions, and none of them is a way to choose where to live. Its fourteen City Council districts, with five at-large seats over them, are electoral and are redrawn after each census. Its six planning districts, which the Citizen Planning Advisory Committees share line for line, come closest, and two of the names here, the Urban Core and Greater Arlington, echo them, but they are drawn for land-use policy and cut across the names people use: the Urban Core district held only 39,724 residents in 2020, 4.2% of the city, Riverside falls mostly in the Northwest district and Avondale mostly in the Southwest, and the Southeast district alone held 288,422, three in ten, from San Marco to Mandarin and the Baymeadows corridor. The City has no map of neighborhoods for the whole city, and the areas organizations filed with it overlap so much that, on our count, 483,049 residents, half the city, are in two or more of them. The grouping here uses the names residents use instead, and which neighborhood lands in which area is our judgment.
What is not here. Inside the limits this selection still leaves real places out, and the largest gap is the north: no guide is north of the Trout River, where the City's North planning district held 92,945 residents in 2020. Oceanway, the name most people would look for there, has no line: the City has no district of that name and no organization filed one. The first Northside additions are Garden City, San Mateo and Lake Forest, which is south of the Trout. Cedar Hills and the City's Hyde Park/Sweetwater line are the first on the Westside; the City's College Gardens, Chase and Pine Forest lines are next in and around the Urban Core; and Sans Souci, Springpark and Windy Hill on the Southside. Old Arlington, an action plan area the Council adopted, shares 6,219 residents with the Arlington redevelopment area and is left out for that, and Fort Caroline, Mayport and the Intracoastal side have no line with enough residents behind it. Brooklyn and LaVilla are downtown districts inside the downtown guide. Some names people use are areas rather than neighborhoods: the Southside, the Westside and the Northside have no line of their own, and neither does Tinseltown, which is 1.5 kilometers outside Baymeadows and in no guide. The Riverside Arts Market under the Fuller Warren Bridge is in no guide either, and Jacksonville University is 230 meters outside Arlington's line.