==My sister, a public interest DV attorney, and her husband, a local journalist, bought their first house there; as you might imagine, neither are wealthy.== A

==My sister, a public interest DV attorney, and her husband, a local journalist, bought their first house there; as you might imagine, neither are wealthy.== And I have two different co-workers and my tech company who have moved there in the past 5 years. These anecdotes aren't data, but show how personal experience drives perception. ==I think anyone who lived here in the 1990s would recognize pretty much the same Chicago in 2019, modulo the wifi in the cafes== I think the data disagrees with you. Today, 39% of city residents have college degrees, in 1990, it was 19% [1]. The city has a higher percentage of residents with a college degree than larger, metro Chicago, the first time that has ever been the case. Other ways this can be observed is through the disappearance of the "Chicago accent". As more Big Ten graduates have migrated to the city from around the Midwest, the city's make-up has changed [2]. It relates to crime in the way these people have migrated. If the city was 1/3 working class, 1/3 middle class and 1/3 upper class 30 years ago; today it is more like 2/5 working class, 1/5 middle class, and 2/5 upper class. This mirrors what we have seen across the US economy. It reminds us of the quote, "Chicago is the most American of American cities." This change has meant that previously working class neighborhoods have lost jobs, residents and investment. Those are the things that lead to increased levels of crime/violence. If we look at any Rust Belt city, we see high murder rates [3]: >Out of the five metropolitan areas with the highest per capita murder rates, according to CBS News, four are deindustrialized cities: St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit and Cleveland. Chicago has managed to avoid much of the population loss and economic collapse of these cities, but still saw both happen over the past 40 years. ==Neighborhoods are gradually gentrifying, sure. That's incompatible with the idea that neighborhood flight is worsening crime.== Except there are 77 neighborhoods, so 25 can be gentrifying and seeing lower crime while 5 are facing de-population and increased crime. It's pretty obvious when you look at the 3 most violent neighborhoods (community areas) of Austin, Garfield Park and Englewood. They are each seeing population decrease and together account for 25% of murders in the city. [1] https://danielkayhertz.com/2019/05/15/out-of-state-college-graduates-help-define-chicagos-north-side-zone-of-affluence/ https://danielkayhertz.com/2019/05/15/out-of-state-college-g... [2] https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/04/why-city-accents-are-fading-in-the-midwest/555152/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/04/why-city-accents-are-fa... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/paidpost/cbs/why-are-murder-rates-so-high-in-the-rust-belt.html https://www.nytimes.com/paidpost/cbs/why-are-murder-rates-so...