Great analysis. I’m from Milwaukee which has a similar reputation and challenges, as well as genuine need address the violence problems. But I was heartened late last year in terms of reputation when Milwaukee was ranked the 3rd best large US city to visit by Condé Nast subscribers trailing only San Diego and Chicago (top city). Chicago was a factor in Milwaukee’s high ranking. My assumption is that Condé Nast subscribers actual go to visit a lot of cities and are a little more sophisticated than the average respondent to Gallup polls.
While true that the lion’s share of violence occurs in a few south and west side neighborhoods, it seems much more random and widespread now. Even the “good” neighborhoods suffer from pretty horrific spillover crime.
Chicago had it going on pre-pandemic. Construction cranes all over the place, a lot of neighborhood rebirth, population that was increasing in a lot of areas, a growing number of tourist with the dollars they spent, and a beautiful downtown that was second to none in this country.
No longer. The Floyd riots ruined, in a couple years, the positive momentum that took a couple decades to build. Stop blaming the bad rep and outcomes on Republicans and “partisan politics”. Chicagoans need to take a look in the mirror. They had a chance to right the ship, but voted for an even more incompetent identity politics activist mayor, and are getting exactly what they voted for.
I’m a born and bred Chicagoan. I was always one of the city’s biggest cheerleaders, but can’t deny what I saw with my own eyes. I’m saddened and angered by what has happened to my hometown. I hope it can survive and recover, but I doubt I’ll see that in my lifetime. We left the city, the county, and the state in late 2020. I will always love Chicago, but don’t like it very much anymore.
I think that Chicago being a punching bag concerning violence boils down to a couple of things:
1) You say that Atlanta, DC and Philly are "peer cities" of Chicago; I'd argue that even though Chicago's importance has declined somewhat since it was the true Second City and a rival to New York, it's still a bigger, higher profile city than Atlanta and Philly, and while DC is of course a big deal, it's not because of its city-ness.
2) Maybe it's safer than a handful of smaller cities per capita, but the fact that it has more total murders than NYC (which is...150% larger?) is astonishing
A separate point: people from outside Chicago also don't realize how geographically concentrated the violence is. Almost none of it occurs in any location anybody from outside the city would ever bother to visit.
The gap with New York and LA is really stark -- it's horrifying that we have a murder rate 5x higher than New York. And that gap didn't always used to be there - murder rates dropped a lot in New York and LA but not nearly as much here (a subject for another post). New York is the safest big city in the country now!
But it's not like New York and LA are the only two other options for people to visit or move to - and it's wild that we get ranked so poorly relative to other top-10 cities that have higher murder rates. It's fair to quibble with how we define 'peer' cities, but we compete with cities like Vegas for conventions, New Orleans and DC for tourists, and Atlanta for residents. And while the primary goal here should be to do the work to get the murder rate down, it's also true that we don't deserve the reputation we have today.
Great analysis. I’m from Milwaukee which has a similar reputation and challenges, as well as genuine need address the violence problems. But I was heartened late last year in terms of reputation when Milwaukee was ranked the 3rd best large US city to visit by Condé Nast subscribers trailing only San Diego and Chicago (top city). Chicago was a factor in Milwaukee’s high ranking. My assumption is that Condé Nast subscribers actual go to visit a lot of cities and are a little more sophisticated than the average respondent to Gallup polls.
While true that the lion’s share of violence occurs in a few south and west side neighborhoods, it seems much more random and widespread now. Even the “good” neighborhoods suffer from pretty horrific spillover crime.
Chicago had it going on pre-pandemic. Construction cranes all over the place, a lot of neighborhood rebirth, population that was increasing in a lot of areas, a growing number of tourist with the dollars they spent, and a beautiful downtown that was second to none in this country.
No longer. The Floyd riots ruined, in a couple years, the positive momentum that took a couple decades to build. Stop blaming the bad rep and outcomes on Republicans and “partisan politics”. Chicagoans need to take a look in the mirror. They had a chance to right the ship, but voted for an even more incompetent identity politics activist mayor, and are getting exactly what they voted for.
I’m a born and bred Chicagoan. I was always one of the city’s biggest cheerleaders, but can’t deny what I saw with my own eyes. I’m saddened and angered by what has happened to my hometown. I hope it can survive and recover, but I doubt I’ll see that in my lifetime. We left the city, the county, and the state in late 2020. I will always love Chicago, but don’t like it very much anymore.
I think that Chicago being a punching bag concerning violence boils down to a couple of things:
1) You say that Atlanta, DC and Philly are "peer cities" of Chicago; I'd argue that even though Chicago's importance has declined somewhat since it was the true Second City and a rival to New York, it's still a bigger, higher profile city than Atlanta and Philly, and while DC is of course a big deal, it's not because of its city-ness.
2) Maybe it's safer than a handful of smaller cities per capita, but the fact that it has more total murders than NYC (which is...150% larger?) is astonishing
A separate point: people from outside Chicago also don't realize how geographically concentrated the violence is. Almost none of it occurs in any location anybody from outside the city would ever bother to visit.
The gap with New York and LA is really stark -- it's horrifying that we have a murder rate 5x higher than New York. And that gap didn't always used to be there - murder rates dropped a lot in New York and LA but not nearly as much here (a subject for another post). New York is the safest big city in the country now!
But it's not like New York and LA are the only two other options for people to visit or move to - and it's wild that we get ranked so poorly relative to other top-10 cities that have higher murder rates. It's fair to quibble with how we define 'peer' cities, but we compete with cities like Vegas for conventions, New Orleans and DC for tourists, and Atlanta for residents. And while the primary goal here should be to do the work to get the murder rate down, it's also true that we don't deserve the reputation we have today.