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Old 04-12-2017, 02:42 PM
 
Location: Wicker Park/East Village area
2,474 posts, read 4,138,895 times
Reputation: 1939

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Razza94 View Post
It's one pf the fastest shrinking cities in the US, the glory days are long gone. All that's left now is the shameful inner city crime, which as become a national embarrassment. My mother made the difficult decision of leaving last year, and that it broke her heart, that lady once loved the city, but the Chicago she once knew is gone.
Chicago was a vibrant thriving city well before you and I were born and guess what? It will still be well after we're gone, don't fret, Chicago is going to do fine, it has loads of good things going for it.
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Old 04-12-2017, 02:54 PM
 
4,087 posts, read 3,205,764 times
Reputation: 3048
Quote:
Originally Posted by Razza94 View Post
It's one pf the fastest shrinking cities in the US, the glory days are long gone. All that's left now is the shameful inner city crime, which as become a national embarrassment. My mother made the difficult decision of leaving last year, and that it broke her heart, that lady once loved the city, but the Chicago she once knew is gone.
It's a tale of 2-3 cities. It is changing as European cities did in many ways. As it becomes the more wealthier part in its classic parts. As it changes hands to a professional crowd. From one originally a more blue-collar one even changed to Latino populations, and more the Middle-class end up in the suburbs and poor.

Surely one sees the gentrified areas looking prosperous and great. The bungalow-belt held up well. But Middle-class who owned it struggling. Most bad neighborhoods even look a hellofa lot better then before the city removed the worst of the blight. Still homes get condemned and city boards it up. But not the bombed out looks. Many of the streets there look cleaner then good areas in some other cities.

I heard my relatives back in the late 70s early 80s as these who were forced out in White-Flight back in the day. Call the city TOTALLY DOWNHILL THEN. Judged people by how far north, south and west intersections and neighborhoods they lived.

Heck if your lawn wasn't perfect and your windows looked unwashed? The neighborhood went downhill. I don't exaggerate.

I understand being forced out in no longer able to afford the home you lived in for decades. Or higher crime reached close to home and increased. But OVERALL the city looks great.

The demographics of the city will no doubt continue to change. Middle-class feeling more forced out, African-Americans numbers still the fastest declining group, and more Professionals continuing to move in. But not able to replace those aging and retiring or passing or feeling being forced out and leaving to warmer locations.

It's becoming richer and poorer at the some time. But now as merely a visitor. I see a city looking better virtually everywhere I visit.

It looks nothing like a city some say declining or on a verge of a financial collapse? I'm impressed each visit. But know the issues are very very real. With people feeling forced out.

We re becoming a Nation of or 2-3 sides too. Most cities have plenty of good and bad aspects changing them. Sadly, it's cost of living on top of the list that is squeezing a middle-class Nationally.

Last edited by DavePa; 04-12-2017 at 03:03 PM..
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Old 04-12-2017, 03:04 PM
 
2,558 posts, read 2,149,782 times
Reputation: 1671
I think there's a lot of generalizations made in this thread. Some have a bit of truth to it, others don't. I grew up in a bordering suburb, moved to the city for 8 years, and moved back to the suburbs 8 months ago. My interests haven't changed much, but I have a little more yard work now. A significant majority of my friends still live in the city. My wife and I have been slightly less social since we've been in the suburbs, but we've mainly just missed small things like a game night here or there, and part of it is because I'm in grad school part time, so I have to dedicate more free time to that in addition to a full time job. I'd likely be less social anyway even if I lived within a mile of all my friends due to school. We've gone to most of the bigger gatherings our friends have had in the city, even during the couple weekends in December when it snowed. It is what you make of it. We've had friends visit us a few times as well. I have some friends from high school that almost never visited when I lived in the city, other than my birthday. They're more willing to visit now. I have friends that live in the city that aren't that excited about visiting us in the burbs, but they said if we invite them, they'd come. Anyone we invited has visited.


There's pros and cons to living in each place. We definitely found a greater variety of things to do in the city, and we often had people to hang out with easier because our friends were there. There was no shortage of restaurants or shopping within walking distance or on easily accessible public transit.


In the suburbs, I'm less concerned about safety walking around at night, my car insurance is less, and I get to keep my car in a garage away from people who struggle with parallel parking. Occasionally it's easier to decline invites to things with friends that might last til 2 am and throw off my whole schedule on Saturday or Sunday, so it's helped keep me more productive, too.
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Old 04-12-2017, 05:05 PM
 
Location: Cleveland, OH USA / formerly Chicago for 20 years
4,068 posts, read 7,269,778 times
Reputation: 3055
Quote:
Originally Posted by lepoisson View Post
Suburb dwellers live in a schedule like this Monday - Friday:

6am: Wake up & take shower
7am: Eat a quick breakfast and see the kids off to school
7:30am: Leave for work in the car
8:30am Arrive at work
4:30pm: Leave for home
5:30pm: Arrive at home
6:30pm: Eat dinner
10:00pm: Sleep
You forgot watching TV between dinner and sleep.
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Old 04-13-2017, 09:52 AM
 
Location: Chicagoland
5,749 posts, read 10,334,507 times
Reputation: 7010
Boy there are a lot of ridiculous stereotypes on this thread.... I have lived in poor and rich neighborhoods in the city core, suburbs, country farm, cabin in the woods, on a mostly deserted island... I am the same person in all these places. Depending on where I live, I just may have a longer commute to get to things and/or harder time getting services to me... People are not defined by where they live, it's what you make of your life wherever you are. Most people are not so simple-minded. I like to give them credit.
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Old 04-13-2017, 10:11 AM
 
Location: Chicagoland
5,749 posts, read 10,334,507 times
Reputation: 7010
Quote:
Originally Posted by lepoisson View Post
And people who live in the suburbs don't do this? I moved to Chicago from the suburbs in Dallas, and I'm WAY more active here than I ever was living in the boring suburbs.

Suburb dwellers live in a schedule like this Monday - Friday:

6am: Wake up & take shower
7am: Eat a quick breakfast and see the kids off to school
7:30am: Leave for work in the car
8:30am Arrive at work
4:30pm: Leave for home
5:30pm: Arrive at home
6:30pm: Eat dinner
10:00pm: Sleep

And on the weekends it consists of going to Costco, the grocery store, messing with the lawn, washing the car, and just maybe if you are adventurous enough, seeing a movie or driving to the park. Once every few months you'll drive to the city to go to a museum. How mundane...

Weekends in the city are quite different because there are actually things to do in the city. I can do to an opera, a play, a comedy show, a concert, go to a museum, etc.

All of this being said, rural life is quite different. I lived rurally and I spent a LOT more time outside because being outside was the ONLY thing to do. No movies, no museums, nothing except for a Dollar General and the local mom & pop grocery store.

Disagree with your assessment of suburban dwellers. Many people I know in my suburb commute to the city every weekday and on many weekends for events. E.g. I work in the city and am at Symphony Center every single Saturday and am a season ticket holder at various theaters/venues/museums in the city. One of my favorite music venues isn't even in the city - Ravinia...

Also, I assume you're joking with your "suburb dweller schedule" as you can't be that sheltered.

Last edited by GoCUBS1; 04-13-2017 at 10:45 AM..
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Old 04-13-2017, 10:40 AM
 
Location: Chicagoland
5,749 posts, read 10,334,507 times
Reputation: 7010
Quote:
Originally Posted by Razza94 View Post
Clearly you're not as mentally attuned with the cycles of this world as I am. Many urban-dwellers enjoy working a fixed pattern, get up, work, eat, sleep. Rinse and repeat. Much of this time iso indoors in oppressive office environments. They go to the store and purchase their food, without much thought as to where it's came from. Information comes through a biased media filter, only those in the upper-echelons are afforded the opportunities to experience the world first hand. Many, especially in a declining city like Chicago, rarely get to see beyond the concrete jungle that they call home.

Outside of the city, the air is cleaner, the food is fresher, you observe the cycles of nature. Living among nature is the only truly independent lifestyle you can lead. I've lived periods of my life in the "wilderness". I caught my own food, made my own shelter. I didn't have to worry about bills or deadlines. I was my own boss. I didn't even have to worry about clothing, I tell you standing in a hilltop and watching the sunrise as the breeze touches your body is the only time that I have ever truly felt alive.

Even so, the menace of civilization is never far away. Contrails left by aircraft, roads cutting through forests, loggers, etc. This menace is what cut short my last natural experience. Reports of a "strange man wandering around the forests without any clothes" emerged. I came across a search party and offered to help them find this gentleman, after an hour or so of searching, it turned out that the person they were looking for was me.

Entire forests in the Midwest are now essentially restricted, since I am under curfew. Therefore I'm getting ready to head out to Alaska in the next year or so, where I hope I can live out the rest of my days in bliss, at one with nature, and free from the oppression of our tyrannical society.

A good thing for the environment is to house people in multi-dwelling structures, so they are a close commute to work/shopping/services and can share public transit while leaving less of an environmental footprint and reducing the necessity for carving roads, houses, and parking lots into pristine forests...

What are you doing to protect those woods? What should stop thousands of others from following you into the woods to dwell? Cutting down forests for lodging, fishing/hunting protected species, dispensing phosphates/human waste into pure waters, introducing invasive species, disrupting native ecosystems and animal territories.... Then what would happen to your pristine wilderness? The sunset and breeze from Chicago's lakefront parks is breathtaking. There is wilderness underwater to explore. Protected and well-managed woods and prairies are not too far away.
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Old 04-13-2017, 10:51 AM
 
Location: Chicago, Tri-Taylor
5,014 posts, read 9,396,381 times
Reputation: 3987
Urban living is chic right now. And Chicago is the entertainment and arts capital of the Midwest. On a Saturday, you will not see the expressways heading to the suburbs jam packed with cars like you do coming in. There is a reason for that.

So, naturally, trendsetters and the followers who love them are going to want to live in the city. Be apart of its scene. They will look at you askance if you live in the suburbs because you are not part of that scene. It doesn't really matter how urban the suburb is. They will not be impressed with your garage graffiti if you do not have a 773 area code.
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Old 04-13-2017, 11:47 AM
 
Location: Chicagoland
5,749 posts, read 10,334,507 times
Reputation: 7010
The city gallery shows, galas, rock music performances with backstage parties, etc. I've recently attended are well-represented by suburbanites, many of whom were managing, sponsoring, financing, marketing, underwriting that hip city arts/music scene. Even many of the performers/artists are from the suburbs. To think all these suburbanites are just interested in Costco is absurd.

These type of people that seek to generalize everyone and put them in a box annoy me.
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Old 04-13-2017, 12:02 PM
 
Location: Below 59th St
672 posts, read 751,291 times
Reputation: 1407
It's easy to point at urbanists who promote walkability, transit, sustainability, quality public spaces (over private ones) and great public amenities as being 'anti-suburban'. And it's true: they'll point out that suburbs are ecologically disastrous, culturally destructive and promote fear, obesity and 'otherizing'. But urbanists are only a subset of city-dwellers who dislike the suburbs.

So why then?

My guess is because in many cities, people in the suburbs want to use the city for its jobs and cultural offerings, but they don't want any of their tax money going to 'those people'. (The horror!) The 'my taxes only go to my back yard' mentality sets the city up in competition with its suburbs, who hang off it like parasites and jealously reserve any resources they have for their residents only.

To keep it all humming, there's the old trick of segregationist zoning -- minimum lot sizes, zero public transit and so forth. Can't have the wrong sort going to our beloved schools to lower the standards and soak our hard-earned tax dollars.

So yeah. The people living in the actual engine for a metro area get resentful.

Chicago really isn't bad in this regard. Thankfully, Chicagoland is reasonably cohesive and the membrane between suburb and city is porous. It helps that old inner suburbs like Oak Park are transit-driven, dense and city-like. Metra, a shared transit resource, helps too. Even better, Illinois's body politic forces municipalities to redistribute the wealth a little. I could foresee things being much worse if every far-out dinky-di suburb were given its 'every man for himself' druthers. (Though even now, witness the race-to-the-bottom tax undercutting that goes on between Chicagoland counties. So destructive.)

Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore and St. Louis are what happens when dog-eat-dog suburbanism takes over. Lovely cities in many respects, but hobbled completely by the bloated, isolationist, politically powerful suburban donuts that choke them.

New York started to go that way too, until the city had its renaissance. Thankfully, Jane Jacobs and her followers didn't let their idiot midcentury mayors tear up Manhattan to built freeways so suburbanites in Connecticut could have quicker car commutes.
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