Moving to Chicago (Lincoln, Columbia, Bridgeport: home, neighborhoods, law school)

[MegYost]

Next month my fiance and I are moving to Chicago from San Diego, originally from Philadelphia.
We are currently looking for places to live. Any suggestions for a SAFE, beautiful location in or around the downtown area?

We need to be educated on the different areas (University area, Downtown, Financial District, Artsy Area, Ghettos). Any information or links to hot spots, or urban guides would help greatly! Thanks!

[chet everett]

Lots of info HERE in the forums. If want rely on public transit it is important to know where you will be working, some parts of Chicago are well served with multiple modes of transportation and others are not...

The heart of Chicago's financial district is basically "the Loop" and immediately adjacent areas.

There are a number of large Universities / Colleges within the City limits and ALL of these area are highly urbanized / part of the City grid (as opposed to having campus feel of some urban colleges). These include UIC that is just west and a bit south of the Loop, Northwestern's Medical and Law Schools that are north of the Loop/east of North Michicigan Ave., IIT that is several miles due south of the Loop /due east of Bridgeport which is home to the White Sox, (the Cubs are north, in a portion of Lakeview referred to as "Wrigelyville" for its proximity to the park) Lincoln Park is home to DePaul University's undergrad campus, but they also have professional and undergrad classes in the Loop, University of Chicago has some facilities (mostly for the B-School) in the Streetville area northeast of the Loop, but the majority of their campus (including Law and Medicine) are in Hyde Park, which is further south than IIT, thought still far from the "far south side"... At the other end of the City limits Loyola has its undergrad campus in the Roger's Park neighborhood, hugging the lakefront north of Edgewater. I am sure I will get critized for missing other schools (like Roosevelt and Columbia in the "South Loop" or North Park or Xavier or Northeastern Il or Chicago State, but I think you can google those and others I have left off...

The traditional modern gallery space is centered in the "River North" area that is, predictably, north of the Loop and the Chicago River, west of North Michigan Ave. The more staid gallery space is generally in the Gold Coast that is centered on North Michigan Ave. The newer "hipster" areas that some consider artsy include Buck Town. Wicker Park, and to some extent Pilsen.

There are pockets of violent and underdesirable area throughout Chicago, though the historic poorest stretched of the ghetto are generally on the West Side or portions of the South Side.

[soulful]

MegYost. You may want to check out the very first thread here in the "Chicago Forum". It is entitled "read this first" and is designed for folks moving to Chicago and hopefully will answer a lot of your questions re. neighborhoods, etc. Good luck.