6 ms·
Can't speak for other cities, and maybe not even Chicago today, but when I lived there, there was a lot of diversity in the loop (the downtown business district
by throwaway201103 6y ago
Can't speak for other cities, and maybe not even Chicago today, but when I lived there, there was a lot of diversity in the loop (the downtown business district) during the workday, but beyond that it was a very segregated city.
Also, though I did own a car, I really only used it on weekend trips out of town. If I had stayed long-term, I would have sold it, because it's expensive to own one there (parking is expensive unless you want to gamble on finding a spot on the street, and there are extra city taxes on gas and registration). Chicago is pretty walkable and has usable mass transit.
- skrtskrt 6y agoChicago is pretty segregated, but the transit situation is easily the best of any major US city. A car helps you get places quicker, but an adventurous person can get all over the city easily on the buses and trains and any given neighborhood is very walkable. The main issue is the cold. You have 3 months of amazing summer and 8 months of cold with two weeks of spring and fall on either end. If you're not from the Midwest, it can really wear on you and bring you down.
- busterarm 6y agoCold is fine. Getting robbed at gunpoint isn't. That's the real Chicago you have to contend with.
- ketamine__ 6y agoNever happened to me or my friends. And apparently there's less poop on the sidewalks than SF.
- rightbyte 6y agoI don't know anyone that died of Covid. I wash my hands and are not walking around in Chicago.
- ketamine__ 6y agoI have no plans to live in fear and plan to walk around downtown Chicago in the future.
- busterarm 6y agoHappened to a friend across the street from University of Chicago 2 weeks ago.
- stephencanon 6y agoOnly place I’ve been robbed is SF (Tenderloin, 2002). Only place I’ve had my car broken into is SFBA (Berkeley 2008, San Jose and SF in 2018).
- busterarm 6y agoAnd Chicago has nearly 6x as many violent crimes per year as Oakland or San Francisco and still edges them out on property crime.
- a_t48 6y agoIs that per captia?
- busterarm 6y agoChicago is less than 6x bigger than San Francisco or Oakland.
- stephencanon 6y agoSF, yes (“only” 3x bigger), but Chicago is more than 6x the population of Oakland.
- a_t48 6y agoI'm just asking for accurate statistics.
- pchristensen 6y agoCrime-wise (and on many quality of life issues), Chicago is like 3 cities in one: - a rich, extremely safe city (broadly, greater Loop and north/northwest sides) - a poor, unsafe city (south and west sides) - a middle income, very average city (the more suburban, far northwest, south, and southwest area) Your experience will vary greatly, depending on which areas you visit. It also has more than triple the population of SF, or twice as many people as SF+Oakland combined, so any absolute (as opposed to per-capita) numbers aren't comparable.
- baja_blast 6y agoAs someone how has lived in both cities, I can say I felt unsafe way more often in SF than Chicago. Chicago's crime is gang related and isolated to a part of the city kind of disconnected from the main hub. But in SF the craziness is in the nice areas, I have had to deal with way too many violent mentally unstable people there, in fact I remember one of the two years I lived there a British woman randomly got a kitchen knife jabbed through her skull. In SF you're dealing with a large number of seriously mentally ill going to and from work.
- busterarm 6y agoAs someone who has lived in several of the places topping the crime charts in the US, I want to tell you that this comment stinks of privilege. In Chicago you were able to afford to live somewhere isolated from the reality of most Chicagoans. In San Francisco you have so thoroughly priced everyone out that there isn't anywhere for the lower classes to go and so the bullshit is everywhere for everyone to deal with. Boo hoo.
- rayiner 6y agoMost big cities are segregated, both economically and racially—and the economic segregation amplifies the racial segregation. The exodus of middle class Black and Hispanic people from high cost urban areas drives some crazy income distributions in places like San Francisco: https://statisticalatlas.com/place/California/San-Francisco/Household-Income https://statisticalatlas.com/place/California/San-Francisco/.... If your apartment building, restaurants, etc., are places mainly populated by those making over $100k/year, there will be a vanishingly small number of Black people in those places. (See table 10). Contrast somewhere like Atlanta, where a third of households making $75-100k/year (a very comfortable income in that city) are Black.