Does Chicago feel like the third largest city? (Joliet, Elgin: subdivisions, outlet malls)

[mas23]

Feels like the 2nd biggest city. Even though L.a. is the second largest city, it just doesnt have the steryotipical city feel if you know what i mean. And I'm not just talking about density.

mas23

[edsg25]

copied from Awesome City" thread by Londoner, Tenshi28

Originally Posted by Tenshi28

Straight to the point: I just came back from spending a week in Chicago for the first time and I can now see why everybody likes the city so much, it's an awesome place!

I read it many times before but I was still surprised to see and feel for myself how walkable it is, and how nice most people are. Even the weather was good! (we surely got lucky). It's a great town.

yep. i'd say that pretty well explains that Chicago feels like the nation's third largest city.

or larger.

[choroneko]

Chicagoland is a huge metropolis. It takes me an hour from South suburbs through the free way.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by mas23

Feels like the 2nd biggest city. Even though L.a. is the second largest city, it just doesnt have the steryotipical city feel if you know what i mean. And I'm not just talking about density.

mas23

I agree about LA not having than stereotypical city feel. I guess where I may disagree with others is that that very fact is something I love about LA: it is different. It doesn't conform. In fact, LA makes its own rules.

Once it was the proverbial "40 suburbs in search of a city"; those days are long gone. LA has filled in and much of it has its own special kind of density. And what it offers is totally urban, yet totally unique.

The best forms of east coast urbanism, the models of cities like New York and Boston, spread west to the interior and showed up in Chicago and then on to the west coast in San Francisco.

LA went a different route. And LA offers an awful lot you can't find in New York, Chicago, or San Francisco. Different doesn't mean "better" or "worse" and LA's "feel" is certainly comsenerate with a city of its population, even if (and maybe for) you have to contrast it from those other US cities rather than compare it to them. IMHO, one would have to be blind not to see "great city status" in Los Angeles.

I don't believe in stereotyping, but generalizations often hold many elements of truth. and my generalization sees us here in Chicago often elevating the status of New York far higher than it should be while lowering the status of LA in a way that hardly matches the magnitude and influence of that city. While far less than it once was (thankfully), we still carry an I-don't-understand-why chip on our shoulders in regards to NY and an equally ununderstandable dismissiveness of LA.

As for Chicago, I don't see that ranking as having an influence on "feel". I said LA was unique. I also see incredible uniqueness in Chicago. And while the question of the thread was based on that third ranking, I would come up with a graphic organizer to conceptualize Chicago in a far different way:

I'd draw a diagram with Chicago in the center circle, putting NY and LA in a circle to the left and all other big cities in a circle to the right, both these circles linked to the center one of Chicago.

The two bigger cities, New York and Los Angeles, are so big and so complex, I hardly would call them cities at all. They are literally regions and they divide themselves in ways Chicago never would: rivers, bay, and sound divide New York into boroughs and set up a special status for Manhattan while mountains and sprawl create the different worlds of Los Angeles as the Valley is a world apart from the Basin that is the heart of LA and the harbor is a universe away as the city inches southward to San Pedro.

Both NY and LA are too big to give any kind of commonality.

Cities smaller than Chicago just don't seem to have the critical mass that brings "big city" to fruition (although notably San Francisco and, to a lesser degree, Boston add a number of elements to this despite their remarkably small size).

Chicago is more "Baby Bear" (baby Chicago Bear) than any city: not too much, not too little; just right, the perfect size of city and metro area to offer the best form of urbanism.

I'll stick Millennium Park out at you as an example: New York and Los Angeles could never have created anything like it because so much of those cities are far removed from their core that a central showcase like this would never have been built.

And no city smaller than Chicago, IMHO, could have pulled something like Millennium Park off, even if the desire was great.

Others can stick with the 1,2,3,4...., but I'm sticking to the concept as Chicago as the ideal size, other cities spinning off it in two directions. It's my paradigm and not yours, and I'm more than comfortable with it.

Chicago is where you go if you want the full spectrum of urban joys and a rational, sane setting (not overpopulation-on-steroids) that doesn't overpower and makes those joys possible.

[Alacran]

Snapped on yo ass, mas

[Mezter]

I'm in Chicago right now for the first time, and It does not feel larger than LA. Def has the big city feel, but I seriously would not put it above LA. LA feels large outside the city limits, but the same can't really be said for Chicago imo.
The loop seems alot larger than Downtown LA, but the the Greater Los Angeles are is just so much more massive, and there is seemingly alot more going on.

[aragx6]

Originally Posted by Mezter

I'm in Chicago right now for the first time, and It does not feel larger than LA. Def has the big city feel, but I seriously would not put it above LA. LA feels large outside the city limits, but the same can't really be said for Chicago imo.
The loop seems alot larger than Downtown LA, but the the Greater Los Angeles are is just so much more massive, and there is seemingly alot more going on.

Really? Where have you gone?

[edsg25]

some folks here have brought up the idea that LA seems bigger than Chicago because of the huge sprawl of its suburbs. It simply is a larger region.

In that respect LA is a lot like NY. And both cities (metro regions actually) have a bigger "feel" than Chicago (and Chicagoland).

But there is a flip side to those:

Chicago and all its component parts feel more like "the same place" than the diverse regions in either New York or Los Angeles. In both of these regions, diversity of place and distance from each other provides so many different spheres that the whole is hardly tied together.

New York's division by rivers (which make the boroughs more separate from each other) and the heavily bi-state nature of the region (NYC is more of a NY/NJ split; nobody is going to say that Chicagoland is an IL/IN split) keep things apart.

LA experiences the same with topography. That's a pretty big chunk of mountains that separate basin from valley.

And outside the cities, places like Orange County seem like their own world, as do the two LI counties east of Queens.

Chicagoland is simply more interconnected and on the same page than either metro NY or LA.

Look at the cities themselves. More people have a "Chicago address" than that of any city in the nation. That's because in Chicago, you don't have individual communities (Forest Hills, Astoria, St. George, Bel Air, Encino, Westwood) or boroughs (Brooklyn) that have their own addresses.

New York and LA metro areas, unlike any in the nation (with the possible exception of the far flung Bay Area with its remarkable divisions by water and topography) come across more region like than metro like.

Chicago and Chicagoland may easily be the largest of the traditional type of metro areas.

[Tex?Il?]

Originally Posted by edsg25

some folks here have brought up the idea that LA seems bigger than Chicago because of the huge sprawl of its suburbs. It simply is a larger region.

In that respect LA is a lot like NY. And both cities (metro regions actually) have a bigger "feel" than Chicago (and Chicagoland).

But there is a flip side to those:

Chicago and all its component parts feel more like "the same place" than the diverse regions in either New York or Los Angeles. In both of these regions, diversity of place and distance from each other provides so many different spheres that the whole is hardly tied together.

New York's division by rivers (which make the boroughs more separate from each other) and the heavily bi-state nature of the region (NYC is more of a NY/NJ split; nobody is going to say that Chicagoland is an IL/IN split) keep things apart.

LA experiences the same with topography. That's a pretty big chunk of mountains that separate basin from valley.

And outside the cities, places like Orange County seem like their own world, as do the two LI counties east of Queens.

Chicagoland is simply more interconnected and on the same page than either metro NY or LA.

Look at the cities themselves. More people have a "Chicago address" than that of any city in the nation. That's because in Chicago, you don't have individual communities (Forest Hills, Astoria, St. George, Bel Air, Encino, Westwood) or boroughs (Brooklyn) that have their own addresses.

New York and LA metro areas, unlike any in the nation (with the possible exception of the far flung Bay Area with its remarkable divisions by water and topography) come across more region like than metro like.

Chicago and Chicagoland may easily be the largest of the traditional type of metro areas.

But it is for this VERY reason why there is so much bickering, debate, and confusion when it comes to Chicago.

The reality is that there IS as much difference culturally between not only between Chicagos city and suburbs, but also between the urban core and the middle and outer neighborhoods of the city.

In NYC and LA, you DO have the "benefit" of topography, distance, political lines, that neatly organize the culturally sphere for easy categorization between city and suburb, or between urbane-cosmopolitan parts of the city, and "meh" parts of the city.

And then most other metro areas are small or sprawling enough where that categorization is not really needed as much.

I've come to terms that if someone from Norwood Park, Hedgewisch or Garfield Ridge or even Naperville or Schaumburg, or even Gurnee or Joliet want to claim downtown Chicago as a place where they are from and a place that they are proud and strongly identify with I guess thats fine if that makes them happy.

[edsg25]

Originally Posted by Tex?Il?

But it is for this VERY reason why there is so much bickering, debate, and confusion when it comes to Chicago.

The reality is that there IS as much difference culturally between not only between Chicagos city and suburbs, but also between the urban core and the middle and outer neighborhoods of the city.

In NYC and LA, you DO have the "benefit" of topography, distance, political lines, that neatly organize the culturally sphere for easy categorization between city and suburb, or between urbane-cosmopolitan parts of the city, and "meh" parts of the city.

And then most other metro areas are small or sprawling enough where that categorization is not really needed as much.

I've come to terms that if someone from Norwood Park, Hedgewisch or Garfield Ridge or even Naperville or Schaumburg, or even Gurnee or Joliet want to claim downtown Chicago as a place where they are from and a place that they are proud and strongly identify with I guess thats fine if that makes them happy.

Tex, I'm not disagreeing with you here because I'm not sure exactly the point you are making (no offense to you on that....it might just be that I'm not reading it the right way).

can you clarify? what (based on what I previously wrote) do you see as the downside for Chicago in relationship to both NY and LA.