Chicago has a variety of housing that is relatively affordable. From the US cities I have lived in (LA, SF, grew up in suburbs of Houston, spent ~2 months in Qu

Chicago has a variety of housing that is relatively affordable. From the US cities I have lived in (LA, SF, grew up in suburbs of Houston, spent ~2 months in Queens and a little time working in Manhattan), I found Chicago to be the most reasonable to live an affordable urban lifestyle in. Chicago has the advantage of plenty of land as opposed to New York or SF. There are massive sprawling suburbs, but I get the impression people move there when they have kids mostly due to better schools, not being priced out or leaving for safety. Of course, Chicago has the most murders in the US (but still about half the murder rate per capita of New Orleans or Detroit), bitterly cold winters, and far from any mountains, but nowhere is perfect (where being affordable is part of being perfect).