Chicago ( or ) is the
largest city in the U.S.
state of Illinois
, and with
more than 2.8 million people, the 3rd largest city
in the United
States
. Located on the southwestern shores of
Lake
Michigan
, Chicago is
the third-most
densely populated major city in the U.S., and anchor to the
world's 26th largest metropolitan area
with over 9.5 million people across three states.
After a series of wars with the local
Native Americans,
Chicago was founded in 1833, near a
portage between the Great Lakes and the
Mississippi River
watershed. The city became a major transportation and
telecommunications hub in
North
America.
Today, the city retains its status as a major
hub, both for industry and infrastructure, with its O'Hare
International Airport
as the second
busiest airport in the world. In modern times, the city
has taken on an additional dimension as a center for business and
finance, and is listed as one of the world's top ten
Global Financial Centers.
Chicago is a stronghold of the
Democratic Party, and has
been home to influential politicians, including the current
President of the United States,
Barack
Obama.
The World Cities Study Group at Loughborough
University
rated Chicago as an alpha
world city.
, the city attracted 32.8 million domestic visitors and about 1.15 million foreign visitors. Making use of its abundant resources, Chicago has a heritage for hosting major international, national, regional, and local events that include commerce, culture, entertainment, politics, and sports.
Globally recognized, Chicago has numerous nicknames, which reflect
the impressions and opinions about historical and contemporary
Chicago. The best known include: "
Chi-town"; "
Chi-city"; the
"Windy City" with reference to
Chicago politicians and residents boasting about their city;
"Second City," due to the city generally being the second most
prestigious in the nation in terms of culture, entertainment, and
finance; and because for much of the twentieth century Chicago's
population was the second largest of any city in the United States,
and the "City of Big Shoulders", referring to its numerous
skyscrapers (whose steel frame designs were largely pioneered in
Chicago), described as being husky and brawling.
Chicago has also been called "the most American of big
cities".
History
Early history
During the mid 18th century the area was inhabited by a
native American tribe
known as the
Potawatomis, who had taken
the place of the
Miami and
Sauk and Fox peoples.
The first known
non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable,
who was a man of mixed African and European heritage born in
Saint-Domingue (modern day Haiti
), arrived in
the 1770s, married a Potawatomi woman, and founded the area’s first
trading post. In 1795, following the
Northwest Indian War, an area
that was to be part of Chicago was turned over by some Native Americans in
the Treaty of
Greenville
to the United States for a military post.
In 1803
the United States Army built Fort Dearborn
, which was destroyed in the 1812 Fort Dearborn massacre. The
Ottawa,
Ojibwe,
and Potawatomi later ceded additional land to the United States in
the 1804
Treaty of St. Louis.
The Potawatomi were eventually forcibly removed from their land
following the
Treaty of Chicago in
1833. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a
population of around 200. Within seven years it grew to a
population of over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated on
March 4, 1837. The name "Chicago" is a
French rendering of the Native American word
shikaakwa, meaning “wild onion”, from the
Miami-Illinois language.
Infrastructure and regional development
The city began its step toward national primacy as an important
transportation hub between the eastern and western United States.
Chicago’s
first railway, Galena
and Chicago Union Railroad, opened in 1838, which also marked
the opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal
. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing
ships on the Great
Lakes
to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing
economy brought residents from rural communities and
immigrants abroad.
Manufacturing and retail sectors became
dominant among Midwestern cities, influencing the American economy,
particularly in meatpacking, with the advent of the refrigerated rail car and the regional
centrality of the city's Union Stock Yards
.
In February 1856, the Chesbrough plan for the building of Chicago's
and the United States' first comprehensive
sewerage system was approved by the Common
Council. The project
raised much of
central Chicago to a new grade.
Untreated sewage and industrial waste now
flowed into the Chicago
River
, thence into Lake Michigan
, polluting the primary
source of fresh water for the city. The city responded by
tunneling two miles (3 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly
built
water cribs. In 1900, the problem
of sewage was largely resolved when Chicago reversed the flow of
the river, a process that began with the construction and
improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal and completed with
the
Chicago Sanitary and
Ship Canal leading to the
Illinois
River which joins the
Mississippi
River.
After the
Great Chicago Fire of
1871 destroyed a third of the city, including the entire
central business district,
Chicago experienced rapid rebuilding and growth. During its
rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's
first skyscraper in 1885, using
steel-skeleton construction.
Labor conflicts and
unrest followed, including the Haymarket affair
on May 4, 1886. Concern for social
problems among Chicago’s lower classes led Jane Addams to be a co-founder of Hull House
in 1889. Programs developed there became a
model for the new field of social work. The city also invested in
many large, well-landscaped
municipal parks, which also included
public sanitation facilities.
In 1893,
Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition
on former marshland at the present location of
Jackson
Park
. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors,
and is considered the most influential world's fair in history.
The
University
of Chicago
was founded in 1892 on the same South Side
location. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival
referred originally to the Midway Plaisance
, a strip of park land that still runs through the
University of Chicago campus and connects Washington
and Jackson Parks.
20th century
The 1920s brought notoriety to Chicago as
gangsters, including the
notorious
Al Capone, battled each other
and law enforcement on the city streets during the
Prohibition era. Chicago
had over 1,000 gangs in the 1920s. The 1920s also saw a major
expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted
African Americans from the South. Arriving
in the tens of thousands during the
Great Migration, the
newcomers had an immense cultural impact. It was during this wave
that Chicago became a center for
jazz, with
King Oliver leading the way.
In 1933, Chicago
Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded
in Miami
during a
failed assassination attempt on
President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
On December 2, 1942, physicist
Enrico
Fermi conducted the world’s first controlled
nuclear reaction at the University of
Chicago as part of the top-secret
Manhattan Project.
Mayor
Richard J. Daley was elected in 1955, in the era of
machine politics. Starting in the
1960s, many residents, as in most American cities, left the city
for the
suburbs. Structural changes in
industry caused heavy losses of jobs for lower skilled workers. In
1966
James Bevel,
Martin Luther King, Jr., and
Albert Raby led the Chicago Open Housing
Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J.
Daley and the movement leaders. Two years later, the city hosted
the tumultuous
1968
Democratic National Convention, which featured physical
confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall,
including full-scale
riots, or in some cases
police riots, in city streets.
Major
construction projects, including Sears Tower
(which in 1974 became the world’s
tallest building), University of Illinois at
Chicago
, McCormick
Place
, and O'Hare Airport
, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's
tenure. When he died,
Michael
Anthony Bilandic was mayor for three years. His loss in a
primary election has been attributed to the city’s inability to
properly plow city streets during a heavy snowstorm. In 1979,
Jane Byrne, the city’s first female
mayor, was elected. She popularized the city as a
movie location and
tourist destination.
In 1983
Harold Washington became
the first
African American to be
elected to the office of mayor, in one of the closest mayoral
elections in Chicago. After Washington won the Democratic primary,
racial motivations caused a few Democratic alderman and ward
committeemen to back the Republican candidate
Bernard Epton, who ran on the slogan
Before it’s too late, a thinly veiled
appeal to fear.Washington’s term in office
saw new attention given to poor and minority neighborhoods. His
administration reduced the longtime dominance of city contracts and
employment by ethnic whites. Washington died in office of a heart
attack in 1987, shortly after being elected to a second term.
Current mayor
Richard M. Daley , son of the late Richard J. Daley,
was elected in 1989. He has led many progressive changes to the
city, including improving parks; creating incentives for
sustainable development, including green roofs; and major new
developments. Since the 1990s, some neighborhoods have undergone
revitalization in which some lower class areas have been
transformed to high priced and middle-class neighborhoods.
21st century
In 2003, Meigs Field, an airport close to downtown, was demolished
without advance warning by the order of mayor
Richard Daley, who wanted the land for
redevelopment. Private aircraft using the airport were stranded
when the runway was destroyed. They were later permitted to depart
from a taxiway.
Geography
Topography
Chicago
is located in northeastern Illinois at the southwestern tip of
Lake
Michigan
.
It sits
on a continental divide at the
site of the Chicago Portage,
connecting the Mississippi River
and the Great
Lakes
watersheds.
The city
lies beside Lake Michigan, and two rivers—the Chicago River
in downtown and the Calumet River
in the industrial far South Side—flow entirely or
partially through Chicago. The
Chicago Sanitary and Ship
Canal connects the Chicago River with the
Des Plaines River, which runs to the west
of the city. Chicago's history and economy are closely tied to its
proximity to Lake Michigan.
While the Chicago River historically handled
much of the region's waterborne cargo, today's huge lake freighters use the city's Lake Calumet
Harbor
on the South Side. The lake also provides
another positive effect, moderating Chicago's climate; making
waterfront neighborhoods slightly warmer in winter and cooler in
summer.
When Chicago was founded in the 1830s, most of the early building
began around the mouth of the Chicago River, as can be seen on a
map of the city's original 58 blocks. The overall
grade of the city's central, built-up areas, is
relatively consistent with the natural flatness of its overall
natural geography, generally exhibiting only slight differentiation
otherwise. The average land elevation is above
sea level.
The lowest points are along the lake shore
at , while the highest point, at , is a landfill located in the Hegewisch
community area on the city's far south
side.
Lake Shore
Drive
runs adjacent to a large portion of Chicago's
lakefront. Parks along the lakeshore include: Lincoln Park
, Grant Park
, Burnham Park
and Jackson Park
; 29 public beaches
are also found along the shore. Near downtown,
landfills extend into the Lake, providing space for the Jardine
Water Purification Plant
, Navy
Pier
, Northerly Island,
the Museum Campus, Soldier Field
and large portions of the McCormick
Place
Convention Center. Most of the city's
high-rise commercial and residential buildings can be found within
a few blocks of the lake.
Chicagoland is an informal name for the Chicago
metro area, used primarily by copywriters, advertising agencies,
and traffic reporters. There is no precise definition for the term
"Chicagoland", but it generally means the city and its suburbs
together.
The Chicago Tribune, which coined
the term, includes the city of Chicago, the rest of Cook
County
, eight nearby Illinois counties: Lake
, McHenry
, DuPage
, Kane
, Kendall
, Grundy
, Will
and Kankakee
, and three counties in Indiana
: Lake
, Porter
, and LaPorte. The Illinois
Department of Tourism defines Chicagoland as Cook County
without the city of Chicago, and only Lake, DuPage, Kane
and Will counties. The
Chicagoland Chamber of
Commerce defines it as all of Cook and DuPage, Kane, Lake,
McHenry and Will counties.
Climate
The city lies within the
humid
continental climate zone, and experiences four distinct
seasons. Summers are warm and humid with
average high temperatures of and lows of . Winters are cold, snowy,
and windy with temperatures below freezing. Spring and fall are
mild with low humidity.
According to the
National
Weather Service, Chicago's highest official temperature reading
of was recorded on July 24, 1934. The lowest temperature of was
recorded on January 20, 1985. Along with long, hot dry spells in
the summer, Chicago can suffer extreme winter cold spells. In the
entire month of January 1977, the temperature did not rise above .
The average temperature that month was
ca
.
Cityscape
Architecture
The outcome of the Great Chicago Fire led to the largest building
boom in the history of the nation.
Perhaps the most outstanding of these
events was the relocation of many of the nation's most prominent
architects from New
England
to the city for construction of the 1893 World
Columbian Exposition.
In 1885, the first
steel-framed high-rise
building, the
Home Insurance
Building, rose in Chicago, ushering in the
skyscraper era. Today, Chicago's skyline is among
the world's tallest and most dense.
The Loop's historic buildings include the
Chicago
Board of Trade Building
, the Fine Arts Building
, 35 East
Wacker
, and the Chicago Building
, along with many others. The Merchandise
Mart
, once first on the list of largest buildings
in the world, and still listed as twentieth with its own ZIP
code, stands near the junction of the North and South branches of
the Chicago River. Presently, the four tallest buildings in the
city are Willis
Tower
(formerly the Sears Tower), Trump International Hotel and
Tower
, the Aon Center
(previously the Standard Oil Building), and the
John Hancock
Center
. Industrial
districts, such as on the South Side
, the areas along the Chicago Sanitary and Ship
Canal, Chicago Southland, and
Northwest Indiana are
clustered. Future skyline plans include, amongst
others, the supertall
Chicago
Spire
.
Multiple kinds and scales of houses, townhouses, condominiums, and
apartment buildings can be found in Chicago. Large swaths of
Chicago's residential areas away from the lake are characterized by
bungalows built from the early 20th century
through the end of World War II. Chicago is also a prominent center
of the
Polish Cathedral style
of
church architecture.
One of
Chicago's suburbs, Oak Park
, was home to the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Public art and monuments
Chicago is well known for its wealth of
public art, including works by such artistic
heavyweights as
Marc Chagall,
Pablo Picasso,
Joan
Miró and
Magdalena
Abakanowicz that are all to be found outdoors. Several of these
have been financed through the
B.
F. Ferguson fund.
City sculptures additionally honor the many people and topics
reflecting the rich
history of
Chicago. There are monuments to:
There are
also to erect a 1:1-scale replica of Wacław Szymanowski's Art Nouveau statue of Frédéric Chopin found in
Warsaw
's Royal
Baths
along Chicago's lakefront in addition to a
different sculpture commemorating the artist in Chopin Park for the 200th anniversary
of Frédéric Chopin's
birth.
Neighborhoods
Chicago
is partitioned into four main sections: Downtown (which contains
the Loop), the North
Side, the South Side
, and the West Side. In the late 1920s,
sociologists at the University of Chicago subdivided the city into
77 distinct
community
areas.
Downtown is the center of Chicago's cultural, commercial and
financial institutions, and home to Grant Park and many of the
city's skyscrapers. Many of the city's financial institutions are
located within a section of downtown called "The Loop", which is an
eight block by five block square of city streets that are encircled
by elevated rail tracks.
The North Side is the most densely populated residential section of
the city and many high-rises are located on this side of the city
along the lakefront.
Lincoln Park
is a park stretching for along the waterfront and
is also home to the Lincoln Park Zoo
. The River
North neighborhood features the nation's largest concentration
of contemporary art galleries outside of New York City
. As a Polonia center,
due to the city having a very large Polish population, Chicago
celebrates every Labor Day weekend at the
Taste of Polonia Festival in the
Jefferson
Park
area.
The South
Side is home to the University of Chicago and the Museum of
Science and Industry
. It also hosts one of the city's largest
parades, the annual African American
Bud Billiken Day parade.
Parkland stretches along the waterfront of the South Side.
Two of
the city's largest parks are located here: Jackson
Park
, bordering the waterfront, hosted the World's
Columbian Exposition
in 1893 and is home of the aforementioned
museum. Slightly west sits Washington
Park
. The two parks themselves are connected by a
separate strip of parkland called Midway Plaisance
. Also, the U.S. automaker,
Ford Motor Company, has an assembly plant
located on the South Side.
The West
Side holds the Garfield Park Conservatory
, one of the largest collections of tropical
plants of any U.S. city. Cultural attractions include
Humboldt Park's Puerto Rican Day Parade, Institute of Puerto Rican
Arts, and the
National
Museum of Mexican Art in
Pilsen.
The Near West Side holds the television production company of
Harpo Studios.
Culture and contemporary life
The city's waterfront allure and nightlife has attracted residents
and tourists alike.
Over one-third of the city population is
concentrated in the lakefront neighborhoods (from Rogers
Park
in the north to South Shore
in the south). The North Side has a large
gay and lesbian community. Two North
Side neighborhoods in particular, Lakeview and the Andersonville
area of the Edgewater neighborhood, are home to many
LGBT businesses and organizations. The area surrounding
the North Side intersections of
Halsted,
Belmont, and
Clark is a gay district known as
"
Boystown". The city has many
upscale dining establishments as well as many ethnic restaurant
districts. These include the Mexican villages, such as Pilsen on
18th street and
La Villita on 26th street, the
Puerto Rican enclave
Paseo Boricua in
the
Humboldt Park neighborhood,
"Greektown" on South Halsted, "Little Italy" on Taylor Street, just
west of Halsted, "Chinatown" on the near South Side, Polish fare
reigns at Belmont-Central, "Little Seoul" on and around Lawrence
Avenue, a cluster of Vietnamese restaurants on Argyle Street and
South Asian (Indian/Pakistani) on Devon Avenue.
Entertainment and performing arts
Chicago’s
theatre community spawned modern
improvisational theatre. Two
renowned comedy troupes emerged—
The
Second City and
I.O. (formerly known as
ImprovOlympic).
Renowned Chicago theater companies include
the Steppenwolf Theatre Company
(on the city's north side), the Goodman
Theatre
, and the Victory Gardens Theater
. Chicago offers Broadway-style entertainment
at theaters such as Ford Center for the Performing Arts
Oriental Theatre
, Bank of America Theatre
, Cadillac Palace Theatre
, Auditorium Building
of Roosevelt University, and Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower
Place. Polish
language productions for Chicago's
large Polish speaking population can be seen at the historic
Gateway
Theatre
in Jefferson Park
. Since 1968, the
Joseph Jefferson Awards are given
annually to acknowledge excellence in theater in the Chicago
area.
Classical
music offerings include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
recognized as one of the finest orchestras in the world, which
performs at Symphony
Center
. Also performing regularly at Symphony
Center
is the Chicago
Sinfonietta, a more diverse and multicultural counterpart to
the CSO. In the summer, many outdoor concerts are
given in Grant
Park
and Millennium Park
. Ravinia Park
, located north of Chicago, is also a favorite
destination for many Chicagoans, with performances occasionally
given in Chicago locations such as the Harris
Theater
. The Civic Opera House
is home to the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
The
Joffrey Ballet and Chicago Festival Ballet perform in
various venues, including the Harris Theater
in Millennium Park
. Chicago is home to several other modern and
jazz dance troupes, such as the
Hubbard Street Dance
Chicago.
Other live music genre which are part of the city's cultural
heritage include
Chicago blues,
Chicago soul,
jazz,
and
gospel. The city is the birthplace
of
house music and is the site of an
influential
hip-hop scene. In the
1980s, the city was a center for industrial,
punk and new wave. This influence continued into
the
alternative rock of the 1990s.
The city has been an epicenter for
rave culture
since the 1980s. A flourishing independent rock music culture
brought forth Chicago
indie. The
city has also been spawning a critically acclaimed underground
metal scene with various bands gaining national attention in the
metal and hard rock world . Annual festivals feature various acts
such as
Lollapalooza, the
Intonation Music Festival and
Pitchfork
Music Festival.
Tourism
Chicago attracted an approximate combined 35 million people in 2007
from around the nation and abroad. Upscale shopping along the
Magnificent Mile and
State Street, thousands of
restaurants, as well as Chicago's eminent architecture, continue to
draw tourists. The city is the United States' third-largest
convention destination.
Most conventions are held at McCormick
Place
, just south of Soldier Field
. The historic Chicago
Cultural Center
(1897), originally serving as the Chicago Public
Library, now houses the city's Visitor Information Center,
galleries and exhibit halls. The ceiling of its Preston
Bradley Hall includes a
Tiffany glass
dome.
Millennium Park
sits on a deck built over a portion of the former
Illinois Central Railroad
yard. The park includes the reflective
Cloud
Gate
sculpture (known locally as "The
Bean"). An outdoor Millennium Park restaurant transforms
into an
ice rink in the winter.
Two tall
glass sculptures make up the Crown Fountain
. The fountain's two towers display visual
effects from LED images of Chicagoans' faces, along with water
spouting from their lips.
Frank Gehry's
detailed, stainless steel band shell, the Jay Pritzker
Pavilion
, hosts the classical Grant Park Music Festival concert
series. Behind the pavilion's stage is the Harris
Theater for Music and Dance
, an indoor venue for mid-sized performing arts
companies, including the Chicago
Opera Theater and Music of the Baroque.
Navy Pier
, located just east of Streeterville
, is long and houses retail stores, restaurants,
museums, exhibition halls and auditoriums. Its tall
Ferris wheel is one of the most visited
landmarks in the Midwest, attracting about 8 million people
annually.
In 1998,
the city officially opened the Museum Campus, a lakefront park,
surrounding three of the city's main museums: the Adler
Planetarium & Astronomy Museum
, the Field Museum of Natural
History
, and the Shedd Aquarium
. The Museum Campus joins the southern section
of Grant
Park
, which includes the renowned Art
Institute of Chicago
. Buckingham Fountain
anchors the downtown park along the
lakefront. The
Oriental Institute, part of the
University of Chicago, has an extensive collection of
ancient Egyptian and
Near
Eastern archaeological artifacts.
Other museums and
galleries in Chicago include the Chicago History Museum
, the DuSable Museum of African American
History
, the Museum of Contemporary Art
, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
, the Polish Museum of America
, the Museum of
Broadcast Communications
and the Museum of
Science and Industry
.
Parks
When Chicago was incorporated in 1837, it chose the motto
Urbs
in Horto, a
Latin phrase which translates
into
English as "City in a Garden".
Today, the
Chicago Park
District consists of 552 parks with over of
municipal parkland, as well as 33 sand
beaches, nine museums, two world-class conservatories, 16 historic
lagoons, and 10 bird and wildlife gardens.
Lincoln Park
, the largest of the city's parks, covers and has
over 20 million visitors each year, making it second only to
Central
Park
in New York
City
in number of visitors. With berths for more
than 5,000 boats, the Chicago Park District operates the nation's
largest municipal harbor system; even larger than systems in cities
such as New York
City
, Los
Angeles
, or Miami
.
In
addition to ongoing beautification and renewal projects for the
existing parks, a number of new parks have been added in recent
years, such as the Ping Tom Memorial Park
in Chinatown, DuSable Park
on the Near North Side, and most notably,
Millennium
Park
in the Chicago Loop. The wealth of
greenspace afforded by Chicago's parks is further augmented by the
Cook County Forest
Preserves, a network of open spaces containing forest, prairie, wetland, streams, and lakes that are set aside as natural areas which lie
along the city's periphery, home to both the Chicago
Botanic Garden
in Glencoe and the Brookfield Zoo
in Brookfield.
Cuisine
Polish market in Chicago.
Chicago lays claim to a large number of regional specialties, all
of which reflect the city's ethnic and
working class roots. Included among these are
its nationally renowned
deep-dish
pizza, although locally the Chicago-style thin crust is also
popular; featuring a thinner than normal crust. There are very few
pizzerias that specialize in true Chicago-style deep dish, the most
prominent being
Gino's East,
Pizzeria Uno and Due,
Giordano's and
Lou Malnati's. The number of
"authentic" Chicago pizzerias specializing in the thin crust
version is much higher, with many being "Mom and Pop" style shops.
Among the largest chains in Chicago area are
Home Run Inn,
Rosati's
and
Aurelio's. The
Chicago-style hot dog, typically a
Vienna Beef dog loaded with an array of
fixings that often includes Chicago's own neon green pickle
relish, yellow mustard, pickled
sport peppers, tomato wedges, dill pickle spear
and topped off with celery salt. Ketchup on a Chicago hot dog is
frowned upon. There are two other distinctly Chicago sandwiches,
the
Italian beef sandwich, which is
thinly sliced beef slowly simmered in an
au
jus served on an Italian roll with sweet peppers or spicy
giardiniera, and the
Maxwell Street Polish, which is a
kielbasa—typically from either the
Vienna Beef Company or the Bobak Sausage
Company—on a hot dog roll, topped with grilled onions, yellow
mustard and the optional sport peppers. Two other ethnic local
creations are the Puerto Rican
jibarito, a
sandwich made with flattened, fried green plantains instead of
bread and
Greek saganaki, an appetizer of fried cheese.
McDonald's even adds its own downtown flavor,
with their Rock-n-Roll McDonald's.
The grand
tour of Chicago cuisine culminates annually in Grant
Park
at the Taste of
Chicago which runs from the final week of June through Fourth of July
weekend. Chicago features a number of celebrity chefs, a
list which includes
Charlie Trotter,
Rick Tramonto,
Jean Joho,
Grant
Achatz, and
Rick Bayless.
Chicago features a wide selection of
vegetarian cuisine, with 22 fully
vegetarian restaurants and many vegetarian-friendly establishments
within the city.
Sports
Chicago was named the
Best Sports City in the United
States by
The Sporting
News in 1993 and 2006.
The city is home to two Major League Baseball (MLB) teams: the
Chicago Cubs of the National League (NL), who play in Wrigley
Field
on the city's North Side, and the Chicago White Sox of the American League (AL), who play in U.S.
Cellular Field
on the city's South Side. Chicago is the
only city in
North America that has
had more than one MLB franchise every year since the AL began in
1900. The
Chicago Bears, one of the
last two remaining charter members of the
National Football League (NFL),
have won nine
NFL
Championships, including
Super Bowl
XX. The other remaining charter franchise, the Chicago
Cardinals, also started out in the city, but are now known as the
Arizona Cardinals.
The Bears play their
home games at Soldier
Field
on Chicago's lakefront.
The
Chicago Bulls of the
National Basketball
Association (NBA) are one of the most recognized
basketball teams in the world. During the 1990s
with
Michael Jordan leading them, the
Bulls took six NBA championships in eight seasons (only failing to
do so in the two years of Jordan's absence). The
Chicago Blackhawks of the
National Hockey League (NHL), who
began play in 1926, have won three
Stanley
Cups. The Blackhawks also hosted the
2009 NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley
Field.
Both the Bulls and Blackhawks play at the
United
Center
on the Near West Side.
The
Chicago Fire are members
of
Major League Soccer. The Fire
have won one league and four
Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cups, since their inaugural
season in 1998.
In 2006, the club moved to its current home,
Toyota
Park
in suburban Bridgeview
, after playing its first eight seasons downtown at
Soldier Field and at Cardinal Stadium
in Naperville
. The club is now the third professional
soccer team to call Chicago home, or associate its name with
Chicago, the first two being the former
Chicago Sting of the
North American Soccer League
(and later of the
Major Indoor
Soccer League ), and the former
Chicago Power of the
National
Professional Soccer League II. The
Chicago Red Stars of
Women's Professional Soccer also
play in Toyota Park.
The Chicago
Bandits of National Pro
Fastpitch play at Judson Field in Elgin and the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League play at the
Allstate
Arena
. The former
Chicago
Rush of the suspended
Arena
Football League, also played at the Allstate Arena. The
Chicago Sky of the
Women's National
Basketball Association began play in 2006.
The Sky's home arena
is the UIC
Pavilion
.
Also calling the UIC Pavilion home are the
Windy City Rollers of the
Women's Flat Track Derby
Association, Chicago's premiere roller derby league.
The
Chicago Slaughter of the Continental Indoor Football
League began in 2006 and play at the Sears Centre
. The
Chicago
Storm played from 2004 to 2007 in the MISL, when they moved to
the
Xtreme Soccer League after
the MISL folded. The Chicago Storm also play at the Sears
Centre.
The
Chicago Steel are a
semi-professional hockey team based in the western suburb of
Bensenville.
The
Chicago Machine, a
Major League Lacrosse team, has been
playing since 2006.
Their home field is Toyota Park, but they
are playing their 2009 season opener and closer at Soldier Field
.
The
Chicago Marathon has been held
each year since 1977 except for in 1987, when a half marathon was
run in its place. This event is one of five
World Marathon Majors.
In 1994,
the United States hosted a successful FIFA World Cup with games played at
Soldier
Field
.
Chicago was selected on April 14, 2007, to represent the United
States internationally in the
bidding for the
2016 Summer Olympics. Chicago
also hosted the
1959 Pan
American Games and the
2006 Gay
Games.
Chicago was selected to host the 1904
Olympics, but they were transferred to St.
Louis
to coincide with the World's Fair.
On June
4, 2008, the International Olympic
Committee
selected Chicago as one of four candidate cities
for the 2016 games. On October 2, 2009, Rio de
Janeiro
was selected to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Starting
just off Navy
Pier
is Chicago Yacht
Club's Race to
Mackinac, a offshore sailboat race held each July that is the
longest annual freshwater sailing distance race in the
world. 2010 marks the 102nd running of the "Mac".
At the
collegiate level, Chicago and suburban Evanston
have two national athletic conferences, the
Big East Conference with DePaul
University, and the Big Ten
Conference with Northwestern University in Evanston.
Loyola University Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago
play
Division I sports as members of the
Horizon League.
Media
The
Chicago metropolitan area is the third-largest media market in
North America, after New York City
and Los
Angeles
. Each of the big four U.S.
television networks, CBS, ABC, NBC
and Fox, directly owns and
operates a high-definition
television station in Chicago (WBBM
, WLS
, WMAQ
and WFLD
,
respectively). WGN-TV
, which is owned by the Tribune Company, is carried with some
programming differences, as "WGN
America" on cable TV nationwide
and in parts of the Caribbean
. The city is also the home of several talk
shows, including
The Oprah
Winfrey Show on WLS-TV, while
Chicago Public Radio produces programs
such as
PRI's
This American Life and
NPR's
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! Chicago's
PBS station can be seen on WTTW
, producer
of shows, such as Sneak
Previews, The Frugal
Gourmet, Lamb Chop's
Play-Along and The
McLaughlin Group, just to name a few and WYCC
.
There are two major daily
newspapers
published in Chicago, the
Chicago
Tribune and the
Chicago
Sun-Times, with the former having the larger circulation.
There are also several regional and special-interest newspapers,
such as the
Dziennik
Związkowy ,the
Chicago
Reader, the
SouthtownStar, the
Chicago Defender, the
Daily Herald,
StreetWise,
The Chicago Free Press and the
Windy City Times.
The city
of Chicago is home to a large number of advertising agencies, in both
traditional and new media forms of marketing and promotion, ranking second behind
New York
City
and ahead of Los Angeles
.
Chicago is a
filming-friendly
location. Since the 1980s, many motion pictures have been
filmed in the city, most notably John Hughes' classic
Ferris Bueller's Day Off and
the massive blockbuster success,
The Dark Knight and its
predecessor,
Batman
Begins.
Economy
Chicago has the third largest
gross metropolitan product in the
nation—approximately
$506
billion according to 2007 estimates. The city has also been rated
as having the most balanced economy in the United States, due to
its high level of diversification. Chicago was named the fourth
most important business center in the world in the MasterCard
Worldwide Centers of Commerce Index. Additionally, the Chicago
metropolitan area recorded the greatest number of new or expanded
corporate facilities in the United States for six of the past seven
years. In 2008, Chicago placed 16th on the
UBS list of the world's richest cities.
Chicago
is a major world financial center,
with the second
largest central business district
in the U.S. The city is the headquarters of the
Federal
Reserve Bank of Chicago
(the Seventh District of the Federal
Reserve). The city is also home to three major
financial and futures exchanges,
including the Chicago Stock
Exchange, the Chicago
Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the
"Merc"), which includes the former Chicago
Board of Trade
(CBOT). Perhaps due to the influence of the
Chicago school of
economics, the city also has markets trading unusual contracts
such as
emissions (on the
Chicago Climate Exchange) and
equity
style indices (on the
U.S.
Futures Exchange).
The city and its surrounding metropolitan area are home to the
second largest labor pool in the United States with approximately
4.25 million workers.
Manufacturing,
printing,
publishing and food processing also play major
roles in the city's economy. Several medical products and services
companies are headquartered in the Chicago area, including
Baxter International,
Abbott Laboratories, and the Healthcare
Financial Services division of
General
Electric.
Moreover, the construction of the Illinois
and Michigan Canal, which helped move goods from the Great Lakes
south on the Mississippi River, and of the railroads in the 19th century made the city a
major transportation center in the United States. In the
1840s, Chicago became a major
grain port, and
in the 1850s and 1860s Chicago's pork and beef industry expanded.
As the major meat companies grew in Chicago many, such as
Armour and Company, created global
enterprises. Though the meatpacking industry currently plays a
lesser role in the city's economy, Chicago continues to be a major
transportation and distribution center.
Late in the 19th Century, Chicago was part of the
bicycle craze, as home to
Western Wheel Company, which
introduced
stamping to the
production process and significantly reduced costs, while early in
the 20th Century, the city was part of the
automobile revolution, hosting the
Brass Era car builder
Bugmobile, which was founded
there in 1907. Chicago was also home to the
Schwinn Bicycle Company.
Chicago is a major world convention destination.
The city's main
convention center is McCormick Place
. With its four interconnected buildings, it
is the third largest convention center in the world. Chicago also
ranks third in the U.S.
(behind Las Vegas
and Orlando
) in number of conventions hosted annually.
In addition, Chicago is home to eleven
Fortune 500 companies, while the metropolitan
area hosts an additional 21 Fortune 500 companies. The state of
Illinois is home to 66
Fortune 1000
companies. The city of Chicago also hosts 12 Fortune Global 500
companies and 17 Financial Times 500 companies.
The city claims one
Dow 30 company as well:
aerospace giant Boeing, which moved its headquarters from Seattle
to the Chicago Loop
in 2001. The Globalization and World Cities Research
Network at Loughborough University
in England
classified Chicago as an "alpha− world city" in a 2008 study.
Demographics
Historical Populations |
Census
year |
Population |
Rank |
%± |
> |
1840 |
4,470 |
92 |
– |
1850 |
29,963 |
24 |
570.3% |
1860 |
112,172 |
9 |
274.4% |
1870 |
298,977 |
5 |
166.5% |
1880 |
503,185 |
4 |
68.3% |
1890 |
1,099,850 |
2 |
118.6% |
1900 |
1,698,575 |
2 |
54.4% |
1910 |
2,185,283 |
2 |
28.7% |
1920 |
2,701,705 |
2 |
23.6% |
1930 |
3,376,438 |
2 |
25.0% |
1940 |
3,396,808 |
2 |
0.6% |
1950 |
3,620,962 |
2 |
6.6% |
1960 |
3,550,404 |
2 |
-1.9% |
1970 |
3,366,957 |
2 |
-5.2% |
1980 |
3,005,072 |
2 |
-10.7% |
1990 |
2,783,726 |
3 |
-7.4% |
2000 |
2,896,016 |
3 |
4.0% |
2008 |
2,853,114 |
3 |
-1.5% |
During its first century as a city, Chicago grew at a rate that
ranked among the fastest growing in the world. Within the span of
forty years, the city's population grew from slightly under 30,000
to over 1 million by 1890. By the close of the 19th century,
Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world, and the largest of
the cities that did not exist at the dawn of the century.Within
fifty years of the
Great Chicago Fire
of 1871, the population had tripled to over 3 million, and
reached its highest ever-recorded population of 3.6 million for the
1950 census.
As of the
2000 census,
there were 2,896,016 people, 1,061,928 households, and 632,558
families residing within Chicago. More than half the population of
the state of Illinois lives in the Chicago metropolitan area. The
population density of the city
itself was 12,750.3 people per square mile
(4,923.0/km
2), making it one of the nation's most
densely populated cities. There were 1,152,868 housing units at an
average density of 5,075.8 per square mile
(1,959.8/km
2). Of the 1,061,928 households, 28.9% have
children under the age of 18 living in them, 35.1% were
married couples living together, 18.9% had a female
householder with no husband present, and 40.4% were non-families.
The median income for a household in the city was $38,625, and the
median income for a family was $42,724. Males had a median income
of $35,907 versus $30,536 for females. About 16.6% of families and
19.6% of the population lived below the
poverty line.
As of the 2005-2007
American
Community Survey conducted by the
U.S. Census
Bureau,
White Americans made up
37.6% of Chicago's population; of which 30.9% were non-Hispanic
whites.
Blacks or
African
Americans made up 35.0% of Chicago's population; of which 34.7%
were non-Hispanic blacks.
American Indians made up
0.2% of Chicago's population; of which 0.1% were non-Hispanic.
Asian Americans made up 4.9% of
Chicago's population while
Pacific Islander Americans made up
only 0.1% of the city's population; of which less than 0.1% were
non-Hispanic. Individuals from some other race made up 20.6% of
Chicago's population; of which 0.3% were non-Hispanic. Individuals
from
two or more races made up
1.6% of Chicago's population; of which 0.9% were non-Hispanic. In
addition,
Hispanics and
Latinos made up 28.1% of Chicago's population.
The main
ethnic groups in Chicago are African
American, Assyrian, Irish, German,
Italian, Mexican, English, Bulgarian, Greek, Chinese, Slovak, Lithuanian, Polish, Bosnian, Czech, Filipino, Serbian, Russian, Ukrainian, Indian, Pakistani
, Arab, and Puerto Rican.
Poles in Chicago allegedly constitutes the
largest Polish population outside of the Polish capital of Warsaw
. However, the 2000 U.S. Census states
that 210,421 Chicagoans claimed Polish background or ancestry
(7.3%). This total is far less than the population of several
Polish cities besides Warsaw, including Krakow (746,583 as of
December 2007), Lodz (753,192) and Wroclaw (632,930), as well as
eleven other Polish cities.
Because of Chicago's large multi-ethnic population, a wide variety
of faiths are practiced. Various
Christian
denominations, such as diverse
Orthodox,
Catholic
and
Protestant churches, are found
throughout the area along with adherents of
Judaism,
Islam,
Buddhism,
Hinduism,
Zoroastrianism,
Sikhism,
Bahá'í, and others.
Law and government
Chicago
is the county seat of Cook
County
. The government of the City of Chicago is
divided into
executive and
legislative branches. The
Mayor of Chicago is the
chief executive, elected by general
election for a term of four years, with no term limits. The mayor
appoints commissioners and other officials who oversee the various
departments. In addition to the mayor, Chicago's two other citywide
elected officials are the clerk and the treasurer.
The
City Council is the
legislative branch and is made up of 50 aldermen, one elected from
each
ward in the city.
The council enacts local ordinances and approves the city budget.
Government priorities and activities are established in a budget
ordinance usually adopted each November. The council takes official
action through the passage of ordinances and resolutions.
During much of the last half of the 19th century, Chicago's
politics were dominated by a growing
Democratic Party
organization dominated by ethnic ward-heelers. During the 1880s and
1890s, Chicago had a powerful radical tradition with large and
highly organized
socialist,
anarchist and labor organizations. For much of the
20th century, Chicago has been among the largest and most reliable
Democratic strongholds in the United States, with Chicago's
Democratic vote the state of Illinois has been "
solid blue" in
presidential elections
since 1992. The citizens of Chicago have not elected a
Republican mayor since
1927, when
William Thompson
was voted into office. The strength of the party in the city is
partly a consequence of Illinois state politics, where the
Republicans have come to represent the rural and farm concerns
while the Democrats support urban issues such as Chicago's public
school funding. Chicago contains close to 25% of the state's
population, and as such, eight of Illinois' nineteen
U.S. Representatives have
part of Chicago in their
districts.
Former Chicago Mayor
Richard J.
Daley's mastery of
machine politics preserved the
Chicago Democratic Machine long
after the demise of similar machines in other large U.S. cities.
During much of that time, the city administration found opposition
mainly from a liberal "independent" faction of the Democratic
Party. The independents finally gained control of city government
in 1983 with the election of
Harold
Washington. Since 1989, Chicago has been under the leadership
of
Richard M. Daley, the son of Richard J. Daley. Because
of the dominance of the Democratic Party in Chicago, the Democratic
primary vote held in the spring is
generally more significant than the general elections in
November.
Crime
Murders in the city peaked first in 1974, with 970 murders when the
city's population was over three million people (resulting in a
murder rate of around 29 per 100,000), and again in 1992 with 943
murders, resulting in a murder rate of 34 per 100,000. Chicago,
along with other major US cities, experienced a significant
reduction in violent crime rates through the 1990s, eventually
recording 448
homicides in 2004, the lowest
total since 1965 (15.65 per 100,000.) Chicago's homicide tally
remained steady throughout 2005, 2006, and 2007 with 449, 452, and
435 respectively.
In 2008, murders rebounded to 510 to lead the country, breaking 500
for the first time since 2003. As of late September 2009 the murder
count was down about 10% for the year.
Gangs
The City of Chicago is very rich in street
gang
history. Many people believe that the modern day street gang
originated in Chicago. The creation of the
People Nation and
Folks Nation can be accredited to Chicago, and
was well known for organized crime syndicates in the past. Street
gangs are a secret underground culture and the gangs are not
limited to gender, race, culture, or neighborhood.There are African
American Gangs, Asian Gangs, Arabic Gangs, Female Gangs, White
Gangs, Latino or Hispanic Gangs. The members can range from a
handful in a small neighborhood crew, to thousands for larger
gangs. Members can be as young as 10 and as old as 50. Street Gangs
are a rich part of Chicago's underworld, they have been around for
many years and will continue to be a secret culture among Chicago's
Society.
Education
There are 666 public schools, 394 private schools, 83 colleges, and
88 libraries in the Chicago proper.
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is the
governing body of the
school
district that contains over 600 public elementary and high
schools citywide, including several selective-admission magnet
schools. The district, with an enrollment exceeding 400,000
students (2005 stat.), ranks as the third largest in the U.S.
Chicago's
private schools are largely
run by religious groups, with the two largest systems being the
Catholic and
Lutheran schools. The
Roman Catholic Archdiocese
of Chicago operates the city's
Catholic schools, including the
Jesuit
preparatory school.
Some of the more prominent Catholic schools
are: Brother Rice High School
, St. Ignatius College Preparatory
School
, St. Scholastica Academy
, Mount Carmel High School
, Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High
School
, Marist High School
, St. Patrick High School
and Resurrection High School
. In addition to Chicago's network of 32
Lutheran schools, there are also several private schools run by
other denominations and faiths, such as the Ida Crown Jewish Academy in
West
Ridge
and the Fasman Yeshiva High School
in Skokie
, a nearby suburb. Additionally, a
number of private schools are run in a completely secular
educational environment, such as the Latin
School of Chicago
, the University of Chicago Laboratory
Schools
in Hyde Park, the Francis W.
Parker School, the
Chicago City Day School in Lake View, and the Morgan
Park Academy
. Chicago is also home of the private
Chicago
Academy for the Arts
, a high school focused on six different
categories of the arts, such as Media Arts, Visual Arts, Music,
Dance, Musical Theatre and Theatre.
Colleges and universities
Since the 1850s, Chicago has been a world center of higher
education and research with several universities that are in the
city proper or in the immediate environs. These institutions
consistently rank among the top "National Universities" in the
United States, as determined by
U.S. News & World Report.
They
include: the University of Chicago
, which also ranks among the world's top ten;
Northwestern University
; Illinois Institute of
Technology
; Loyola University Chicago
; DePaul University
and the University
of Illinois at Chicago
. Other notable schools include: Chicago
State University
; the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago
; East-West
University; North Park University
; Northeastern Illinois
University
; Columbia College Chicago
; Robert Morris
University; Roosevelt
University and Rush University
.
William Rainey Harper, the
first president of the University of Chicago, was instrumental in
the creation of the
junior college
concept, establishing nearby
Joliet Junior College as the first in
the nation in 1901. His legacy continues with the multiple
community colleges in the Chicago proper,
including the seven
City
Colleges of Chicago,
Richard J. Daley College, Kennedy-King College, Malcolm
X College
, Olive-Harvey College
, Harry S Truman College
, Harold Washington College
and Wilbur Wright
College, in addition to the privately held MacCormac College.
The Chicago proper also has a large concentration of graduate
schools, seminaries and theological schools.
The city is home to
the Adler School
of Professional Psychology, the Catholic Theological Union, the
Chicago
Theological Seminary
, the John Marshall Law School,
the Lutheran
School of Theology at Chicago, the McCormick Theological
Seminary, the Meadville Lombard
Theological School, the North Park Theological
Seminary, the University of Chicago
Divinity School, the Moody Bible Institute
, The Chicago School
of Professional Psychology, the Spertus Institute
and the Toyota Technological
Institute at Chicago.
Infrastructure
Transportation
Chicago is a major transportation hub in the United States.
It is an
important component in global distribution, as it is the third
largest inter-modal port in the world after Hong Kong
and Singapore
. Additionally, it is the only city in North
America in which six
Class I
railroads meet. As of 2002, severe freight train congestion
caused trains to take as long to get through the Chicago region as
it took to get there from the West Coast of the country (about 2
days). About one-third of the country's freight trains pass through
the city, making it a major national bottleneck. Announced in 2003,
the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency
(CREATE) initiative is using about $1.5B in private railroad,
state, local, and federal funding to improve rail infrastructure in
the region to reduce freight rail congestion by about one third.
This is also expected to have a positive impact on passenger rail
and road congestion, as well as create new greenspace.
Chicago is one of the largest hubs of passenger rail service in the
nation.
Many Amtrak long
distance services originate from Union Station
. Such services terminate in New
York
, Seattle
, Portland
, New
Orleans
, San
Francisco
, Los Angeles
, San
Antonio
, and Washington, D.C.
Amtrak also provides a number of short-haul
services throughout Illinois and toward nearby Milwaukee
, Indianapolis
, St. Louis
, and Detroit
. An attempt was made in the early 20th
century to link Chicago with New York City
via the Chicago –
New York Electric Air Line Railroad. Parts of this were
built, but it was ultimately never completed.
Nine
interstate highways
run through Chicago and its suburbs. Segments that link to the city
center are named after influential politicians, with four of them
named after former U.S. Presidents. When referring to the
expressways, citizens tend to use the names of the expressways
rather than the interstate numbers.
The
Regional
Transportation Authority (RTA) coordinates the operation of the
three service boards: CTA, Metra, and Pace. The
Chicago Transit Authority (CTA)
handles public transportation in the city of Chicago and a few
adjacent suburbs. The CTA operates an extensive network of buses
and a
rapid transit elevated and
subway system known as the
Chicago 'L'
(for "elevated"), with lines designated by colors.
These rapid transit
lines also serve both Midway
and O'Hare Airport
. The CTA's rail lines consist of the
Red,
Blue,
Green,
Orange,
Brown,
Purple,
Pink, and
Yellow lines. Both
the Red and Blue lines offer 24 hour service which makes Chicago
one of the few cities in the world (and one of only three American
cities) to offer rail service every day of the year for 24 hours
around the clock. A new subway/elevated line, the Circle Line, is
also in the planning stages by the CTA.
Metra
operates
commuter rail service in
Chicago and its suburbs.
The Metra
Electric Line shares the railway with the South Shore Line's
NICTD Northern Indiana
Commuter Rail Service, providing commuter service between South
Bend
and Chicago. Pace provides bus and
paratransit service in over 200 surrounding
suburbs with some extensions into the city as well. A 2005 study
found that one quarter of commuters used public transit.
Chicago offers a wide array of bicycle transportation facilities
and events, including miles of on-street bike lanes, 10,000 bike
racks, a state-of-the-art central bicycle commuter station in
Millennium Park and the annual Bike Chicago festival. The network
has of on-street bike lanes and of off-street trails. Bicycles are
permitted on CTA trains and their fleet of over 2,000 buses that
have been equipped with racks that carry bikes. The successes of
the
Bike Program are due in
large part to Mayor Daley's leadership and the incorporation of
bicycling into the mandates and programs of the Chicago Department
of Transportation, CTA, Chicago Park District and the Mayor's
Office of Special Events, in partnership with the
Chicagoland Bicycle
Federation.
Chicago
is served by Midway International
Airport
on the south side and O'Hare
International Airport
, the world's second busiest airport, on the far
northwest side. In 2005, O'Hare was the world's busiest
airport by aircraft movements and the second busiest by total
passenger traffic (due to government enforced flight caps). Both
O'Hare and Midway are owned and operated by the City of Chicago.
Gary/Chicago International
Airport
, located in nearby Gary, Indiana
, serves as the third Chicago area airport.
Chicago Rockford International
Airport
, formerly Greater Rockford Airport, serves as a
regional base for United Parcel Service cargo flights, some
passenger flights, and occasionally as a reliever to O'Hare,
usually in times of bad weather. Chicago is the world
headquarters for
United Airlines,
the world's second-largest airline by revenue-passenger-kilometers
and the city is the second largest hub for
American Airlines.
Midway airport
serves as a major 'focus city' for Southwest Airlines
, the world's largest low-cost airline.
Health systems
Chicago
is home to the Illinois Medical District
, on the Near West Side. It includes Rush
University Medical Center
, the University of
Illinois Medical Center at Chicago, Jesse Brown VA Hospital, and
John H.
Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook
County
, the largest trauma-center in the
city.
The
University of
Chicago Medical Center was ranked the fourteenth best
hospital in the country by
U.S. News & World Report.
It is the only hospital in Illinois ever to be included in the
magazine's "Honor Roll" of the best hospitals in the United
States.
The Chicago campus of Northwestern University includes the
Feinberg School of Medicine,
Northwestern Memorial
Hospital,
Rehabilitation Institute of
Chicago (rated best U.S. rehabilitation hospital by
U.S. News & World Report), the new
Prentice Women's Hospital, and the
new Lurie Children's Hospital, which is currently under
construction.
The
University of
Illinois College of Medicine at UIC is the largest medical
school in the United States (2600 students including those at
campuses in Peoria, Rockford and Urbana-Champaign
).
In
addition, the Chicago Medical
School and Loyola University Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine are
located in the suburbs of North Chicago
and Maywood
, respectively. The Midwestern University Chicago College
of Osteopathic
Medicine is in Downers Grove
.
The
American Medical
Association,
Accreditation
Council for Graduate Medical Education,
Accreditation
Council for Continuing Medical Education,
American Osteopathic
Association,
American
Dental Association,
Academy of General Dentistry,
American Dietetic
Association,
American
College of Surgeons,
American Society for
Clinical Pathology,
American College of
Healthcare Executives and the
American Hospital Association,
and
Blue Cross
and Blue Shield Association are all based in Chicago.
Telecommunications
Using only 3% of the total available bandwidth capacity and 13% of
the available fiber pairs, Chicago area data centers move data for
local, area, regional and international networks.
Utilities
Electricity for most of
northern
Illinois is provided by
Commonwealth Edison, also known as
ComEd.
Their service territory borders Iroquois
County
to the south, the Wisconsin
border to the north, the Iowa
border to
the west and the Indiana
border to the east. In northern Illinois,
ComEd (a division of
Exelon) operates the
greatest number of nuclear generating plants in any US state.
Because of this, ComEd reports indicate that Chicago receives about
75% of its electricity from
nuclear
power. Recently, the city started the installation of wind
turbines on government buildings with the aim to promote the use of
renewable energy.
Domestic
and industrial waste was once incinerated but it is now landfilled, mainly in the Calumet area
. From 1995 to 2008, the city had a
blue bag program to divert certain refuse
from landfills. In the fall of 2007 the city began a pilot program
for blue bin recycling similar to that of other cities due to low
participation rates in the blue bag program. After completion of
the pilot the city will determine whether to roll it out to all
wards.
Sister cities
Chicago has twenty-seven
Sister Cities
and one Friendship City. Like Chicago, many of them are or were,
the
second city of their
country, having very similar-sized populations, or they are the
main city of a country that has sent many immigrants to Chicago
over the years.
Paris
is a Partner City, due to the one
sister city policy of their respective French commune. A twin city
partnership with Karachi
, Pakistan
, was contemplated and initiated in 2000, but
was never implemented.
To
celebrate the sister cities, Chicago hosts a yearly festival in
Daley
Plaza
, which features cultural acts and food tastings
from the other cities. In addition, the Chicago Sister
Cities program hosts a number of delegation and formal exchanges.
In some
cases, these exchanges have led to further informal collaborations,
such as the academic relationship between the Buehler Center on
Aging, Health & Society at the Feinberg School of Medicine of
Northwestern University and the Institute of Gerontology of the
Ukraine
(originally of the Soviet Union
), that was originally established as part of
the Chicago-Kiev sister cities program.
Bibliography
Notes
- Chicago notoriety comes from being the subject or being
referenced in novels, plays, movies, songs, various types of
journals (e.g., sports, entertainment, business, trade, and
academic), and the news media.
- Architect Gallery website. Accessed November 7,
2009.
- Skyscraper City website. Accessed November 7,
2009.
- Chicago Hip Transplant at Honest Expession
website. Accessed November 7, 2009.
- Mark Caro, The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old
Delicacy Inspired the World's Fiecest Food Fight, p. 149,
(Simon and Schuster, 2009), ISBN 9781416556688 found at Google books website. Accessed November 7,
2009.
- Marco Portales, Latino sun, rising: our Spanish-speaking
U.S. world, p. 54, (Texas A&M University Press, 2004) ISBN
9781585443819, found at Google books website. Accessed November 7,
2009.
- For a historical account of interest see the section entitled
"Origin of the word Chicago" in Andreas, Alfred Theodore,
History of Chicago, A.T. Andreas, Chicago (1884) pp
37-38.
- Swenson 1991, pp 235–248
- Boyle, Elizabeth and Rodolfo Estrada. (1994) "Development of the U.S. Meat Industry" – Kansas State
University Department of Animal Sciences and Industry.
- Bruegmann, Robert (2004–2005). Built Environment of the Chicago Region.
Encyclopedia of Chicago (online version).
- Chicago History. Chicago Convention and
Tourism Bureau.
-
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/portalContentItemAction.do?blockName=Mayors+Office/March/I+Want+To&deptMainCategoryOID=-536882034&channelId=0&programId=0&entityName=Mayors+Office&topChannelName=Dept&contentOID=536889070&Failed_Reason=Invalid+timestamp,+engine+has+been+restarted&contenTypeName=COC_EDITORIAL&com.broadvision.session.new=Yes&Failed_Page=/webportal/portalContentItemAction.do&context=dept
- Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
- Chicago (2004). Chicago Public
Library.
- World's Tallest Cities.
UltrapolisProject.com.
- Sawyer 2002, p 14
- Levine, Jay. " Chicago In The Running To Host 2016 Summer Games."
CBS. July 26, 2006.
Retrieved on December 1, 2006.
- " Official Chicago 2016 Website." Retrieved on December
1, 2006.
- Nielsen Media - DMA Listing (September 24, 2005).
- . Accessed from World Business Chicago.
- " London named world's top business center by
MasterCard", CNN, June 13,
2007.
- . CBRE - CB Richard Ellis.
- Norcliffe 2001, p 107
- Clymer 1950, p 178
- Chicago falls to 3rd in U.S. convention industry
(4/26/2006). Crain's Chicago Business.
- Fortune 500 2006 - Illinois.
CNNMoney.com.
- U.S. Census Bureau | Chicago, Illinois
- Schneirov 1998, pp 173–174
- Montejano 1998, pp 33–34
- Heinzmann, David (1/1/2003). Chicago falls out of 1st in murders.
Chicago Tribune, found at
qrc.depaul.edu/djabon/Articles/ChicagoCrime20030101.htm.
- http://www.gangresearch.net/ChicagoGangs/chiroomnew.html
- http://www.chicagogangs.org/index.php?pr=GANG_LIST
- CPS At A Glance (2005) Chicago Public Schools
at www.cps.k12.il.us/AtAGlance.html.
- Pogorzelski 2008, p 58
- Madigan 2004, p.52.
- Appendix C: Regional Freight Transportation
Profiles. Assessing the Effects of Freight Movement on Air
Quality at the National and Regional Level. U.S. Department of
Transportation - Federal Highway Administration (April 2005).
- [1] - Includes map
- "New Yorkers are top transit users", by Les
Christie,CNNmoney.com, 2007-6-29, retrieved 2009-9-21
- . Airports Council International.
- About The University of Illinois College of Medicine
(2007). UIC College of Medicine at
www.medicine.uic.edu/about.
References
- Chicago notoriety comes from being the subject or being
referenced in novels, plays, movies, songs, various types of
journals (e.g., sports, entertainment, business, trade, and
academic), and the news media.
- Architect Gallery website. Accessed November 7,
2009.
- Skyscraper City website. Accessed November 7,
2009.
- Chicago Hip Transplant at Honest Expession
website. Accessed November 7, 2009.
- Mark Caro, The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old
Delicacy Inspired the World's Fiecest Food Fight, p. 149,
(Simon and Schuster, 2009), ISBN 9781416556688 found at Google books website. Accessed November 7,
2009.
- Marco Portales, Latino sun, rising: our Spanish-speaking
U.S. world, p. 54, (Texas A&M University Press, 2004) ISBN
9781585443819, found at Google books website. Accessed November 7,
2009.
- For a historical account of interest see the section entitled
"Origin of the word Chicago" in Andreas, Alfred Theodore,
History of Chicago, A.T. Andreas, Chicago (1884) pp
37-38.
- Swenson 1991, pp 235–248
- Boyle, Elizabeth and Rodolfo Estrada. (1994) "Development of the U.S. Meat Industry" – Kansas State
University Department of Animal Sciences and Industry.
- Bruegmann, Robert (2004–2005). Built Environment of the Chicago Region.
Encyclopedia of Chicago (online version).
- Chicago History. Chicago Convention and
Tourism Bureau.
-
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/webportal/portalContentItemAction.do?blockName=Mayors+Office/March/I+Want+To&deptMainCategoryOID=-536882034&channelId=0&programId=0&entityName=Mayors+Office&topChannelName=Dept&contentOID=536889070&Failed_Reason=Invalid+timestamp,+engine+has+been+restarted&contenTypeName=COC_EDITORIAL&com.broadvision.session.new=Yes&Failed_Page=/webportal/portalContentItemAction.do&context=dept
- Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
- Chicago (2004). Chicago Public
Library.
- World's Tallest Cities.
UltrapolisProject.com.
- Sawyer 2002, p 14
- Levine, Jay. " Chicago In The Running To Host 2016 Summer Games."
CBS. July 26, 2006.
Retrieved on December 1, 2006.
- " Official Chicago 2016 Website." Retrieved on December
1, 2006.
- Nielsen Media - DMA Listing (September 24, 2005).
- . Accessed from World Business Chicago.
- " London named world's top business center by
MasterCard", CNN, June 13,
2007.
- . CBRE - CB Richard Ellis.
- Norcliffe 2001, p 107
- Clymer 1950, p 178
- Chicago falls to 3rd in U.S. convention industry
(4/26/2006). Crain's Chicago Business.
- Fortune 500 2006 - Illinois.
CNNMoney.com.
- U.S. Census Bureau | Chicago, Illinois
- Schneirov 1998, pp 173–174
- Montejano 1998, pp 33–34
- Heinzmann, David (1/1/2003). Chicago falls out of 1st in murders.
Chicago Tribune, found at
qrc.depaul.edu/djabon/Articles/ChicagoCrime20030101.htm.
- http://www.gangresearch.net/ChicagoGangs/chiroomnew.html
- http://www.chicagogangs.org/index.php?pr=GANG_LIST
- CPS At A Glance (2005) Chicago Public Schools
at www.cps.k12.il.us/AtAGlance.html.
- Pogorzelski 2008, p 58
- Madigan 2004, p.52.
- Appendix C: Regional Freight Transportation
Profiles. Assessing the Effects of Freight Movement on Air
Quality at the National and Regional Level. U.S. Department of
Transportation - Federal Highway Administration (April 2005).
- [1] - Includes map
- "New Yorkers are top transit users", by Les
Christie,CNNmoney.com, 2007-6-29, retrieved 2009-9-21
- . Airports Council International.
- About The University of Illinois College of Medicine
(2007). UIC College of Medicine at
www.medicine.uic.edu/about.
Further reading
- [ USGS Chicago] - Elevation and topography
External links