Where to live in San Antonio
San Antonio is 499 square miles of land and 1,548,422 people on the Census Bureau's estimate for July 2025, all but 11 of them in Bexar County, and the neighborhood decides more about an address here than any citywide figure does: whether it is in the City at all or in one of the separate cities the City surrounds, which school district the tax bill is drawn on, whether a City historic district or a neighborhood conservation district covers the street, and how close the lot sits to one of the creeks that run through it. These are 20 neighborhood guides, filterable by area below.
Browse dedicated pages for Downtown, the Pearl, Monte Vista and Mahncke Park, King William and Lavaca down the river to the missions and Brooks, The East Side, Government Hill to Highland Park, The West Side, Prospect Hill to Los Angeles Heights, The Medical Center, Oak Park-Northwood and Stone Oak.
20 communities across the city
A start on a city of 1.5 million people whose registered neighborhood associations take in only about half of it. Filter by area of the city, then page through the rest.
Beacon Hill
The streets between the railroad and Interstate 10 taken as the City's Beacon Hill Area conservation district, adopted in 2005, with Martinez Creek running through and about 4,700 residents.
Brooks
The former Brooks Air Force Base, where Air Force operations ended in 2011, now a mixed-use development, taken as the City's Brooks City Base reinvestment zone, with about a quarter of its residents in East Central ISD.
Denver Heights
The larger area east of Interstate 37 and south of Dignowity Hill that the Denver Heights association files, about 11,700 residents, with the small Knob Hill historic district inside.
Dignowity Hill
The streets across Interstate 37 from downtown that the Dignowity Hill association files, with the City's Dignowity Hill historic district over about half of its 4,152 residents.
Downtown San Antonio
The business district as the City's Central Business District draws it, with the San Antonio River and San Pedro Creek running through, the Alamodome and Hemisfair inside, and the Downtown Public Improvement District at its core.
Government Hill
The streets along Fort Sam Houston's southern edge that the Government Hill Alliance files, with a small City historic district of about 480 residents inside.
Harlandale
The South Side streets around Harlandale High School and Harlandale Creek that the Harlandale-McCollum association files, about 27,000 residents, all in Harlandale ISD.
Highland Park
Southeast of downtown and east of Interstate 37, the streets around Highland Park that the Highland Park association files, about 11,700 residents with no City historic or conservation district among them.
Jefferson
The streets northwest of Woodlawn Lake taken as the City's Jefferson conservation district, adopted in 2009, with Alazan Creek along its edge and Thomas Jefferson High School just outside, in Monticello Park.
King William
The neighborhood beside the San Antonio River south of downtown that was subdivided between 1853 and 1866 as German immigrants arrived, as the City's King William historic district, 220 acres with 1,525 residents.
Lavaca
East of King William and south of Hemisfair, taken as the area the Lavaca association files, with the City's Lavaca historic district covering 1,022 of its 2,358 residents.
Los Angeles Heights
Northwest of downtown and west of Interstate 10, the streets the Los Angeles Heights association files, with Martinez Creek at their edge and the small Greenlawn Estates historic district inside.
Photographs: Hiram Partee House by Julian Bravo, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Brooks AFB Hangar 9 San Antonio by Travis K. Witt, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · The San Antonio skyline from the south by Medialecent, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Emil elmendorf house 2012 by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Downtown, San Antonio, TX, USA by organic_veggie, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Bullis House by TXHorseMom, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Thomas Jefferson High School, San Antonio, TX by Highlycaffeinated, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · San Antonio King William District by Tony Kent, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · The Pig Building on South St. Mary's Street by Leonard J. DeFrancisci, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
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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 San Antonio already divides itself by: the interstates around downtown, Interstate 37 south of it, Interstate 10 to the northwest, and Loops 410 and 1604. Where one area stops and the next begins is our judgment rather than a map anybody publishes.
| Area | Neighborhoods | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Downtown, the Pearl, Monte Vista and Mahncke Park | Beacon Hill, Downtown San Antonio, Mahncke Park, Monte Vista, Tobin Hill | Downtown, Tobin Hill and the Pearl, Monte Vista, Beacon Hill and Mahncke Park, where the city was founded and where City historic and conservation districts cover many of the older streets. |
| King William and Lavaca down the river to the missions and Brooks | Brooks, Harlandale, King William, Lavaca, Mission San Jose | King William and Lavaca, Mission San Jose, Harlandale and Brooks, down the San Antonio River to the missions, where the school district is often Harlandale ISD. |
| The East Side, Government Hill to Highland Park | Denver Heights, Dignowity Hill, Government Hill, Highland Park | Government Hill, Dignowity Hill, Denver Heights and Highland Park, east of Interstate 37 and south of Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio ISD. |
| The West Side, Prospect Hill to Los Angeles Heights | Jefferson, Los Angeles Heights, Prospect Hill | Prospect Hill, Jefferson and Los Angeles Heights, west and northwest of downtown, where part of the West Side is in Edgewood ISD and the creeks are the flood question. |
| The Medical Center, Oak Park-Northwood and Stone Oak | Medical Center, Oak Park-Northwood, Stone Oak | Oak Park-Northwood, the Medical Center and Stone Oak, where Northside, North East and Alamo Heights ISDs take over from San Antonio ISD. |
Where the neighborhoods come from. The City of San Antonio publishes no single layer of neighborhoods it draws itself. What it does keep at neighborhood size is a set of layers, and each guide here takes its boundary from the first of them that fits. A City historic district, of which the City's map shows 32, or a neighborhood conservation district, one of ten zoning overlays the City Council has adopted by ordinance since 2002, is the boundary where it carries the neighborhood's name and holds most of its residents. Where the name belongs to a district rather than a neighborhood, the boundary is that district: the Central Business District for downtown, a tax increment reinvestment zone for Brooks, and a regional center of SA Tomorrow, the City's comprehensive plan, for the Medical Center. Everywhere else it is the area a neighborhood association or homeowners association covers on the City's map of the associations registered with it, 322 of them in September 2026. Each guide names which boundary it uses and what the name covers, and its population is the 2020 census count of the blocks inside it. Only the City of San Antonio is covered. Alamo Heights, Olmos Park, Terrell Hills, Castle Hills, Balcones Heights, Leon Valley, Shavano Park, Hollywood Park and Hill Country Village sit inside the City's outline and are separate cities with their own councils and tax rates; so are Kirby, Windcrest, Live Oak, Converse and others on its edge. The subdivisions in the City's extraterritorial jurisdiction, such as Alamo Ranch, are outside the city limits altogether. None of them is here. And a San Antonio mailing address is not proof of a City of San Antonio address: the appraisal district's notice of appraised value for a property, which lists the taxing units in which it is taxable, 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 ten City Council districts are electoral, and the map in use is the one redrawn in 2022. SA Tomorrow divides the city into 30 plan areas, 13 regional centers and 17 community areas, that run from Midtown's 2,367 acres to West Northwest's 25,231, and the City's own map lists 11 of the 30 plans as adopted. And the registered associations are the right size for a guide and far too uneven for a grouping: some overlap one another, and on our count of the 2020 census blocks they take in only about half of the city's residents. 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. The Historic Westside Residents association and the Great Northwest and Encino Park homeowners associations have areas of their own on the City's map, and Alta Vista is a conservation district and Monticello Park, Olmos Park Terrace and Woodlawn Lake historic districts; they were left out to keep the first set to a size that could be finished, and they come as the guides do. The Dominion, inside the city limits on the northwest side, has no boundary on any of the City's layers to draw it by, so it has no guide yet. Southtown, the Pearl and the Deco District are names people use without a City line of their own: Southtown is taken here as King William and Lavaca, and the Pearl is inside Tobin Hill.