Great question! My current plan is for each chapter to center on the same community, but have that community change and introduce different satellite locations in each chapter. I haven't nailed down a timeline yet, but the chapters may cover a period of 50 years or so, creating plenty of opportunity for the central community to show change over the course of the game.
And you also hit on another key thing about differences between chapters: with the difference in professions of the player characters, the idea is that the player will have different ways of interacting with the communities. They'll work in different ways, as required by the tasks at hand and their specialties, and they'll likely interact with different people in the community.