Before Chicago

Fort Dearborn in 1803.

Before the arrival of the first Europeans, the Chicago region was occupied by the Potetouatami Amerindians, who succeeded, in the mid-^18th century, Miamis and Sauk and Fox. The name of the city is said to come from the Miami-illinois word "sikaakwa", which the French deformed into "Checagou" or "Checaguar", which means "wild onion", "swamp" or even "skunk", which tells a lot about the pestilential smell that reigns on the site origin. It was the woodman Louis Jolliet and the Jesuit father Jacques Marquette who, in 1673, returned from an expedition on the Mississippi, to the present site of Chicago. The site of Chicago is first part of the Pays des Illinois, in French Louisiana. The British seized the region in 1763 at the end of the Seven Years' War, but a new conflict (the Pontiac Rebellion) broke out in this territory, which became known as the "Indian Territories". This former crossing and liaison point for Amerindians, explorers and missionaries, between Canada and the Mississippi Basin, became a permanent fur trading post.

Bust of Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable (1745-1818).

In the ^17th century, Fort Chécagou or Fort Chicago was a fortress, probably occupied less than a year during the winter of 1685; the name is now associated with a myth that a Frenchman possesses a military garrison there. Two mentions of this fort, which appeared on several maps of the region in the ^18th century, exist; the one indicating that the fort was built in 1685, and the one indicating that Henri de Tonti sent Pierre-Charles de Liette as commander of the fort until 1702. However, there is no archeological evidence to support these cartographic annotations. The first permanent establishment was founded by Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable at the end of the ^18th century. This mulatto, the son of a French sailor and a slave African mother, is originally from the French colony of Santo Domingo. He married an Amerindian and moved to the current location of Chicago, where he established a commercial counter.

During the War of Independence (1775-1783), Colonel George Rogers Clark seized the entire Illinois country in the name of Virginia and transformed it into "Illinois County" in order to exercise theoretical government over the region. In 1795, under the Treaty of Greenville and under the covenant of Colonel Anthony Wayne, the Amerindians had to give up the lands near the Chicago River estuary. In 1803, the purchase of the vast territories of French Louisiana by the United States reinforced the strategic importance of the site. The same year, Captain John Whistler arrived on the site and built Fort Dearborn in 1808. In the meantime, the future Chicago region was integrated into the Northwest Territory (1787-1809), then into the Illinois Territory (1809), before becoming part of the Illinois State since 1818. In 1821 and 1833, two Chicago Treaty agreements were concluded and signed between the United States and the Outaouais, Ojibwés, and Potéouatamis peoples (all three represented through the Council of the Three Fires) to give more land to help establish and expand what would become the city of Chicago.

A "mushroom city" (1833-1871)

The ruins of downtown Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871.

On August 12, 1833, the city of Chicago was formed with a charter. It received a charter from the State of Illinois on March 4, 1837 to form a municipality led by a mayor and six subdivisions called "wards". However, the natural constraints of the site quickly pose problems of development. Chicago suffers from a marshy environment that makes it very difficult to install roads and sewers. Unbridled development generates a lot of industrial waste that is dumped into the river, causing serious public health problems and contamination of drinking water. In order to remedy the situation, the authorities were undertaking major work to raise the infrastructure and set up a sewage system in the 1850s. In 1900, they decided to divert the river to preserve the drinking water of the lake by digging a canal (Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal) that opens onto the Mississippi. Since the canal was deeper than the river bed, the course was reversed, protecting the lake from polluting spills. The banks of the river itself will undergo major changes, mainly from the 1970s, to become one of the city's major tourist hubs.

Chicago is a "mushroom city" that grows thanks to the influx of immigrants from Europe. As early as the mid-^nineteenth century, the presence of immigrants led to the rise of Know Nothing, a nativist movement. His candidate, Levi Boone, supported by the Chicago Tribune, is elected mayor. It pursued a discriminatory and prohibitionist policy, which was particularly detrimental to German immigrants, and on April 21, 1855, a riot known as Lager Beer Riot, between WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and Catholic immigrants.

In 1836, the city became a communication hub with the first railway (Galena & Chicago Union Railroad) that joined Chicago to Clinton, Iowa, 210 km west. In 1860, 11 railway lines had Chicago as their terminus and another 20 stopped there. Beginning on the Chicago River and ending on the Illinois River for a distance of 155 km, the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848 and allowed boats on the Great Lakes to reach the Mississippi via Chicago. In 1854, Chicago was the largest grain market in the country. The founding of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) in 1848 was part of this considerable economic development. In the ^nineteenth century, Chicago was the world's largest wood market, which was transformed in the city's many sawmills and furniture industries, making Chicago's economy very thriving.

In 1847, Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the harvester, set up the production of agricultural machinery in Chicago. The first steel plants opened in 1858. In 1865, the Union Stock Yards was inaugurated, the slaughterhouses of the city where modern methods were quickly applied by the companies Armor and Swift.

Great Fire and Industrial Expansion (1871-1895)

The Union Loop of the Chicago subway at the corner of Van Buren Street and Wabash Avenue around 1900.

In October 1871, about 10 km² were burned to the ground by the Great Chicago Fire. A large number of buildings and buildings, built of wood, allow the fire to spread easily. The toll is dramatic, as 300 people die and 18,000 buildings are destroyed, leaving about one in two people on the streets. There are at least 100,000 homeless people. A few years later, the disaster allowed Chicago to develop better from an economic and urban perspective, making it one of the largest cities on the American continent.

In the late ^nineteenth century, the city's economy diversified with the entry into the Second Industrial Revolution. The reconstruction after the great fire of 1871 and the development of the railway stimulated the need for steel. During the post-fire reconstruction, the slaughterhouses in the southern part of the city experienced an unprecedented development, thanks to the commissioning of refrigerated cars that made it possible to ship the meat to New York. In 1956, the remains of the O’Leary House were demolished for the construction of the Chicago Fire Department Academy, a training camp for the city’s firefighters. Steel and equipment requirements contribute to the development of the mechanical industries: Chicago produces agricultural machinery, equipment for automobiles, cars (Pullman Company). Men's garment was dynamic until the 1920s. Chemistry specializes in water treatment, sulfuric acid production and phosphates. The agro-food industries remain thriving (processing of cereals, meat packaging, etc.).

Original 1886 engraving in the Harper's Weekly newspaper depicting the Haymarket Square tragedy.

In July 1877, Chicago rail workers joined and started a strike that shook the American railways. Clashes between police and strikers took place on South Halsted Street, killing 18 people. Around 10,000 special assistants, police and soldiers continue to repress the war for two days, resulting in 50 deaths and about 100 serious injuries among the strikers. The press takes a radically hostile attitude towards the strikers; the editor of the Chicago Times suggests "a small dose of strychnine or arsenic" for all strikers and vagabonds. On 1 May 1886, workers gathered at the McCormick plant to demand the eight-hour day of daily work, for which a general strike of 340,000 workers had been launched. Two days later, the police killed two strikers, triggering riots that killed several people. Seven policemen were killed by a bomb blast (Haymarket Square Massacre). Four anarchists were accused and executed in 1887. On May ¹, the second International Labor Day is now a reference. Strikers at Pullman Company's factories denounce the wage cuts in 1894. Following a crackdown organized by the mayor and US President Grover Cleveland, 12 workers were killed. Having participated in the strike, Eugene Debs, a member of the American Railway Union, was arrested by law enforcement.

Industrialization is accompanied by the impoverishment of some of the population. In 1889, in response to the social movement called the settlement movement, Jane Addams founded the first house (Hull House) that served as a shelter for the poor. In 1895, Florence Kelley denounced the working conditions in the sweatshops of the city. In November of the same year, the Chicago Times-Herald organized one of the country's first car races, a Chicago competition in Evanston. In 1905, Upton Sinclair published La Jungle, a novel that describes the exploitation of Lithuanian immigrants in the Chicago slaughterhouses. The women of Chicago get the right to vote in municipal elections in 1913.

Large migration (1870-1920)

State Street circa 1907.

Between 1870 and 1900, the city of Chicago grew dramatically from 299,000 people to almost 1.7 million. The city then experienced the fastest population growth in the United States. Chicago's economy was thriving and brought jobs to a large number of new residents of communities and rural immigrants from Europe. Growth in the retail manufacturing sectors in Chicago came to dominate the Midwest region and to significantly influence the nation's economy. The stock yards of the Chicago unions dominate the packaging business. The city becomes the largest railway network in the world, managed by the Metra company, with more than 200 stations spread over 11 different lines throughout the city.

Chicago welcomes waves of immigrants from Eastern Europe, from the end of the civil war to the end of World War I. Starting in the 1910s, thousands of African-Americans arriving from the south of the country to escape the racial segregation that has become too virulent settled in Chicago, hoping to find work in the city's factories and slaughterhouses. This movement, triggered by racial segregation, is called "Great Migration". With these new populations competing for limited housing, and construction, especially in the southern neighborhoods of the city (South Side), social tensions are rising in the metropolis. In the 1920s, there were some 50,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan in Chicago.

In 1910, frustrated by the victory of black boxer Jack Johnson at the Heavy World Championship, racist groups attacked random black men in several cities, including Chicago and New York, killing dozens.

The years following the end of the First World War are the most difficult, when the city applies segregation as in the south of the country. Blacks are then separated from whites, each with their own schools, public places, and workplaces. They are discriminated against in the exercise of their political rights, thus not having the right to vote, and during their schooling often remain illiterate. In the workplace, they are mostly unemployed or concentrated in the least skilled jobs. Black veterans seek more respect for serving their nation.

1919 Riots

Gathering at the corner of 35^th and State Street during the 1919 riot.

A few months after William Hale Thompson's re-election as mayor, a racial riot broke out in Chicago on Sunday, 27 July 1919. Triggered following the murder of a young black man after a stone throw, it spread to other major cities across the country and only ended on 3 August, after the More than 6,000 National Guards. In Chicago alone, the riots lasted 13 days, killing 38 people, wounding 537 and leaving hundreds homeless. Much of this violence is being waged by members of Irish sports clubs, who have a lot of political power in the city and defend their "territory" against African-Americans.

The African-American population grew from 15,000 in 1890 to 44,000 in 1910 and 234,000 in 1930. The black community is starting to organize: so the Chicago Defender is the first newspaper dedicated to blacks in the city. Chicago becomes a major home of American jazz.

When the riot erupted, the mayor was in Cheyenne, Wyoming for the Frontier Days celebration. He is rushing back to Chicago, as the riot is at its height. Despite the advice of his advisers, he initially refused to involve the Illinois militia in order to strengthen the Chicago police. It was not until 30 July, when the number of dead, injured and residents whose houses had been destroyed had increased, that he decided to ask for the intervention of the National Guards. But his rather hesitant handling of the crisis does not earn him the distrust of blacks who see him as the politician who is most favorable to them at the time.

Gang and Prohibition Time (1890-1935)

Al Capone's house in the 1920s, at 7244 South Prairie Avenue, Greater Grand Crossing.

The years from the late ^19th to the early ^20th century were marked by the presence of numerous gangs that shared the north and south of the city. The areas just southwest of Downtown are dominated by Mano Nera (or Black Main), including Little Italy. James Colosimo, nicknamed "Big Jim" in the middle, managed to impose himself in the Italian neighborhood and centralize all the gangs. Colosimo was born in Calabria in 1877 and emigrated in 1895 to Chicago, where he became a criminal. In 1909, it dominates the Mano Nera. To support him, he brings his nephew Johnny Torrio from New York. Torrio brings Al Capone with him. Colosimo opposes Torrio's ambition to develop business. In 1920, Torrio arranged with Frankie Yale to eliminate Colosimo.

During Prohibition, Chicago became the capital of organized crime around the figures of Frank Nitti, Bugs Moran and Al Capone. The city’s gangsters take advantage of its location close to Canada, where the contraband alcohol shipments come from. Above all, they find complicity with corrupt judges, municipal politicians, and policemen. In 1929, gang warfare killed 29 people in the city.

On February 14, 1929, seven people were killed in a shootout between the two main gangs: We are talking about the Valentine's Day Massacre. This is the time of gangsters, corruption, violence, and after October 29, 1929: John Dillinger, a famous bank robber, was killed in 1934 in a shootout with federal agents led by Melvin Purvis in the Lincoln Park area while he was leaving the Biograph cinema with his fiancée Polly Hamilton after having the film Manhattan Melodrama in which Clark Gable played and Myrna Loy who he was crazy about and wanted to meet at all costs. He was shot dead when he had developed a plan to attract and sleep with Myrna Loy in one of his isolated hiding places in Chicago. According to the FBI, Dillinger was denounced by Ana Cumpanas, the owner of a brothel. The Incorruptible (Untouchables) is the nickname given by the American press to a group of US Treasury agents (the most famous of them is Eliot Ness) who fight to enforce prohibition. They conducted a long and rigorous investigation into the city's various gangs, in particular Al Capone, who was eventually arrested and imprisoned on the island of Alcatraz, near San Francisco. Capone died of a heart attack on his Florida property in 1947.

The rise and fall of Al Capone's empire in the 1920s and 1930s, together with his arrest for tax evasion, did not put an end to organized crime in the city of Chicago. Indeed, his gang has since been widely relayed, because the Chicago mafia, known as Outfit, has never stopped its activities and still exists today. Today, the core of the organization would comprise only 200-300 freed members and about 1,250 associates, which is less than the criminal organizations in other cities. The areas in which they operate include loan sharking, prostitution, murder, extortion, robbery, robbery, financial scams, money laundering, drug trafficking, all kinds of trafficking, tax evasion or car theft.

Chicago, home of modernity (1871-1950)

The 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park, South Side.

Cultural, architectural, and urban, from the late ^nineteenth century to the first half of the ^twentieth century, Chicago presents itself as a "laboratory of innovative ideas." The aspect of the city changes fundamentally. The Great Fire of 1871 allowed planners to think about rebuilding the city according to modern criteria. The World Columbian Exposition attracted 27 million visitors in 1893. It is an opportunity for developers of the City Beautiful architectural movement to build several buildings that are now part of Chicago's heritage: the Science and Industry Museum (MSI) in the Hyde Park area and the famous Union Loop air subway, whose journey forms a loop that marks the financial sector of the Loop. A few years later, the Chicago School of Architecture flourished, with its international reach. The city becomes the laboratory of architectural experiments: in 1885, the Home Insurance Building, the world's first skyscraper, was built there. Frank Lloyd Wright arrived in Chicago in 1889 and developed a new style of domestic architecture, the prairie houses. In 1909, architect-planner Daniel Burnham created the Chicago Plan Commission, a commission set up to develop the 1909 Chicago Plan, known as the Burnham Plan. This is a new urban planning plan that includes urban restructuring of the city center, renovation and expansion of existing boulevards, construction of several municipal buildings, construction of a new railway, construction of harbor facilities, and the development of many green spaces in the neighborhoods along Lake Michigan. Chicago welcomes the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as early as 1938 who helped spread the influence of Bauhaus in America.

The Home Insurance Building in 1885 became the world's first skyscraper.

The period 1871-1950 saw the creation of cultural institutions that still make Chicago's reputation today. In 1893, the Chicago Cultural Center became the city's largest library, and in 1977 became the city's Center for Art and Culture. In 1991, the Harold Washington Library became Chicago's central library. The Art Institute of Chicago (1879), the Field Museum of Natural History (1893) and the Museum of Science and Industry (1933) are among the most important museums in the United States. In 1889, the Auditorium Theater opened its doors and hosted several dance companies including the Joffrey Ballet. Founded in 1891, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is one of the oldest and most important in the American continent.

Chicago is becoming a cultural home rival to the East Coast metropolises of the United States, including New York. The University of Chicago was inaugurated in 1892, thanks to the donation of the entrepreneur John Davison Rockefeller. It is developed in the style of German universities and opens its doors to girls and blacks from the beginning. The university was distinguished by the creation of a department of sociology as early as 1892 (Chicago School), which had its golden age between 1918 and 1935. The natural sciences are also well represented: The University of Chicago was the site of the first controlled nuclear reaction, carried out on December 2, 1942 by the physicist Enrico Fermi.

Finally, with New Orleans, Chicago became one of the cradles of jazz in the early ^twentieth century. It was on February 26, 1917 that Livery Stable Blues was recorded by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a quintet composed of white musicians led by cornettist Nick La Rocca. In the 1920s, the city also hosted Louis Armstrong, who made his first recordings and worked with Joe "King" Oliver. One of the main reasons for the arrival of Black musicians in Chicago is the decree closing of "Storyville", the New Orleans entertainment district, thus triggering a major movement for the arrival of musicians in the city. At the time, Friar's Inn was the favorite place for all Chicago jazz fans.

Economic and urban crisis (1950-1990)

The slaughterhouses in New City (Union Stock Yards) in 1947.

Started during the war, African-American immigration is increasing sharply in the city. The most surface-intensive industries such as meat and steel are closed. Chicago is at the crossroads of the air and is becoming a global metropolis. The spatial segregation and the strong demographic and cultural surge of the African-American community is marked by the actions of the Democrat Richard Joseph Daley, Mayor of Chicago from 1955 to 1976. During his 21 years in office, he provided the city with a convention center, several expressways including the Kennedy Expressway, the Northwest Expressway, the Chicago Skyway, the Dan Ryan Expressway, and the Southwest Expressway, which built O'Hare International Airport in 1963, and developed the Loop area, where several towers emerged. Built between 1970 and 1973, the Willis Tower became one of the pride spots of the city. With its 110 floors and 442 meters high, the building remains the highest in the world until 1998 and the second highest in the western hemisphere to date. The black ghettos are partly renovated. The 1959 International Trade Fair celebrates the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Chicago receives the visit of Queen Elizabeth II. However, Daley's mandates are marked by deindustrialization: whereas in 1954 Chicago was the first American city for steel production, the next decade saw cascading closures. Steel is not the only economic sector affected: the slaughterhouses were relocated to Kansas City in 1971; unemployment is rising and brownfields are multiplying. Between 1954 and 1982, the number of unskilled industrial jobs in Chicago increased from nearly 500,000 to 162,000.

From the 1950s onwards, the upper and middle classes left the city and moved to the suburbs. On 1 December 1958, a fire broke out at the Notre-Dame des Anges school in the Humboldt Park neighborhood: 92 students and three nuns perish in the tragedy. This drama is helping to improve fire-fighting systems in schools across the country. In 1963, boycotts of black public schools were organized to protest the overcrowded classrooms and segregation operated by the Chicago Public Schools. In 1966, Martin Luther King launched an anti-discrimination campaign, the Chicago Freedom Movement. Part of the civil rights movement is being radicalized with the Black Panther Party: the mayor of the time murdered two influential members by the police. On July 12, 1966, several black neighborhoods in West Side were the scene of violent riots that killed three people.

Richard M. Daley, Mayor of Chicago from 1989 to 2011.

On 4 and 5 April 1968, riots occurred following the assassination of Martin Luther King in the black neighborhoods of West Side and South Side. The National Guard must intervene and the death toll is nine. In August of the same year, during the Democratic Party Convention, the mayor conducted a repressive policy that resulted in 660 arrests, 1,000 injured and one death. It was not until 1983 that the city elected its first black mayor, Harold Washington. He died during his tenure of office from a heart attack in 1987, shortly after being re-elected for a second term.

In the 1960s, the municipality, the University of Chicago, and several associations implemented a "renovation" program in Hyde Park based on the destruction of low-level residential buildings and the eviction of poor and generally black tenants. The university also pressured banks and insurance companies not to lend to unwanted owners and not to renew fire insurance policies. Between 1960 and 1970, the number of homes in Hyde Park fell by 20% and the number of black people by 40%.

Between January 13 and 14, 1979, 12 years after the blizzard of 1967, a major snowstorm hit Chicago and its region. On January 13, 41.9 cm of snow fell on Chicago, setting a new snow record in one day, after the 1967 one. By the end of the 2^th day, 47.8 cm of snow fell. This causes significant complications on the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) public transportation system, particularly for the Union Loop air subway, which has frozen rails. The response of the mayor's administration, Michael A. Bilandic, in these bad weather conditions, is so bad that she ends up electing Jane Byrne, the first woman to become mayor of Chicago.

On April 13, 1992, a flood took place in the financial sector of the Loop when the wall of a service tunnel passing under the damaged Chicago River opened a breach that is estimated to leave one million cubic meters of water flooding underground basements and equipment throughout the neighborhood. Known as the "Chicago Flood," this flood is causing a lot of damage, estimated at about $1.95 billion. This is one of the biggest disasters the city experienced, after the great fire of 1871 and the derailment of the subway on the Union Loop in 1977.

Innovations and international outreach (1990-2010)

View of Chicago River from Michigan Avenue Bridge with left to right: 360 North Michigan, Kemper Building, Leo Burnett Building, 77 West Wacker Drive and Trump Tower.

Since the 1990's, Chicago has been gaining inhabitants again. Some neighborhoods have undergone a gentrification process in recent years, as in other American cities. They are being renovated and are once again attracting a middle-class or even affluent population. Residential areas in the north of the city on the lake front are experiencing a demographic revival.

The ambition of Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley and Mayor of Chicago from 1989 to 2011, has been promoting environmental protection while maintaining Chicago as one of the world’s most influential metropolises. Recent developments and projects mark this ambition. Many skyscrapers are coming out of the ground, demonstrating Chicago's economic prosperity. The green spaces are spread out and the city center is safer at night. The latest project is the Chicago Spire: work begun in june 2007 and due to be completed in 2012 was halted following the 2008 financial crisis, with no recovery date. The building was to be the tallest in the American continent with 150 floors and 609.60 meters high.

With a new horizon by 2020, the city center is developing faster with a more dense and breathable atmosphere. The Chicago Department of Buildings is a city agency responsible for implementing the Chicago Building Code, which governs the construction and rehabilitation and maintenance of buildings, and the Chicago Park District, the Chicago Park District, which manages municipal parks and green spaces, are working together on the project to restore biodiversity and rehabilitate areas damaged by the restoration of some of the city's buildings as well as the creation of new buildings, such as the creation of a garden on the rooftops of flat-surface skyscrapers. Such is the case with the Chicago City Hall (Chicago City Hall), which has had a green roof for several years.

Downtown Chicago view with left to right: the Aon Center, the Two Prudential Plaza, the Trump Tower and the Willis Tower from 875 North Michigan Avenue.

When it comes to crime, the city has almost definitively forgotten its bad reputation, inherited from the turbulent period of prohibition in the 1930s. In 2006, it was no longer on the list of the 25 least safe US cities. This decrease in feeling of insecurity is due to the strengthening of the police presence, which is almost permanent in some areas of South Side and West Side that have long remained poorly known.

On May 16, 2007, the city of Chicago is selected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as one of the four official Candidate Cities for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Its competitors are Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo. Despite the support of many influential figures, Chicago was eliminated in the first round.

In 2008, Chicago won the title of "City of the Year" by GQ magazine for its recent architectural and literary innovations, the world of politics, its famous museums, its prestigious universities, and its downtown area, which is at the forefront in The Dark Knight movies: The Black Knight in 2008 and Transformers 3: The Hidden Face of the Moon in 2011. The city is also estimated in 2003 to have the most balanced economy in the United States due to its high level of diversification. In 2009, the financial services company UBS placed Chicago 9^th on the list of the richest cities in the world. In 2014, Chicago is at the 5^th place of the most visited American cities.

Satellite image from Chicago.

Situation and physical environment

Chicago is located in the center-east of the United States, specifically in the northeastern state of Illinois, whose capital is Springfield. It is located at the center of the Midwest Agricultural Region (also known as the Middle West), a geographic entity comprised of eight states in the Great Lakes region. Its geographical coordinates are 41° 52′ 55″ N, 87° 34′ 40″ W, which is the same latitude as Ajaccio, Rome or Hakodate. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the city of Chicago developed westward and on the shores of Lake Michigan and reached a north-south length of approximately 45 km on an east-west width of 25 km, with a total area of 606 km² (including 588 km) 2 of land and 11 square miles of water). The municipalities of Norridge and Harwood Heights are landlocked in the northwest city of Chicago. Much of the city's territory is located in Cook County, while a small portion of the area where O'Hare International Airport is located in DuPage County. It's relatively easy to find your way around Chicago, as the streets are built according to a rectangular pattern. The city is covered by two regional telephone codes: area code 312 (which is limited to Downtown Chicago) and area code 773 (which coincides with the rest of the city of Chicago, except Downtown).

Chicago is 703 km west-southwest of Toronto, Canada's largest city, 957 km west-northwest of the federal capital, Washington, and 1,146 km west of New York, 1,341 km north of New Orleans 1,800 miles east-northeast of Los Angeles and 4,000 miles west-northwest of Paris. Finally, Chicago belongs to three important economic groupings: the former Manufacturing Belt industrial region (the "mill belt"), now called Rust Belt ("rust belt"), the Midwest agricultural region (better known as "Corn Belt"), and the Great Lakes transportation route. This advantageous situation partly explains the rise of the town.

The Chicago lighthouse, bathed by Lake Michigan, guards the entrance to the city and the port of Chicago.

The town has an average altitude of about 176 meters above the average sea level. The highest point (224 m) is located south of the city, in the residential area of Hegewisch. The Chicago site has long been a marshy plain (Chicago Plain) drained by the Chicago River and Calumet River. Further west flows the Plains River which flows into the Illinois River, a tributary of the Mississippi. Chicago is therefore on the Atlantic-Gulf water-sharing line. All of these streams are connected by canals. In the southeastern part of the city is Lake Calumet, a large body of water that used to flow through the emissary of the Calumet River to Lake Michigan through two arms, the Petit Calumet and the Grand Calumet.

Chicago rests on a rocky base dating back to Silurian (443.7-416 million years) covered by sedimentary deposits during the last glaciation of the Equality Formation. Lake Michigan forms at the end of the last ice age (Wisconsin glaciation), about 10,000 years ago, when Laurentian ice sheet recedes by leaving large quantities of meltwater. The Great Lakes region is part of the Great Central Depression of North America, extending southward towards the Mississippi Plain. Part of the present shore is the result of a polarization with the embankments of the great fire of 1871. Lake Michigan has always been a source of drinking water and a major transportation route, connecting with the other Great Lakes. It enabled the installation of the port of Chicago and the development of recreational activities.

Climate

Chicago Climate Graph.

According to Köppen's classification with Midway station: the average temperature of the coldest month is less than 0 °C (January with -3.7°C) and that of the hottest month is more than 10 °C (July with 24.3°C) so it is a continental climate. The precipitation is stable, so it is a cold continental climate without a dry season. Summer is hot because the average temperature of the hottest month is above 22 °C (July with 24.3°C).

So the climate of Chicago is classified as Dfa in the Köppen classification, which is a humid continental climate with hot summer.

Located inland, the city is marked by the continental character of the climate and the meridian circulation of the air masses: the average annual temperature is 11 °C. The annual thermal amplitude is high (28 °C); rainfall, which is just over 900 mm per year, is more irregular than on the atlantic coast, and the maximum comes in the form of hot showers, often due to heat storms that can sometimes produce hail, strong winds and more rarely tornadoes. Temperature and weather can change dramatically in winter and summer.

Winters are cold or even harsh: frost persists for a long time, generally from november to march. It is caused by the coldwaves (coldwaves) coming from Canada which do not find any mountain obstacles. Lake Michigan freezes partially every winter. While snow may fall in early fall and spring, it is more important in winter. The blizzard occurs in winter and can paralyze the city, such as ATC motorways and public transport. During the year, it falls on average 97 cm of snow.

In the summer, Chicago residents can enjoy the city's many beaches, such as here at North Avenue Beach.

Summers are hot and humid because of the heat waves that go up from the Gulf of Mexico and cause heat waves and the famous "Indian summers" in early autumn. The nickname of the "City of Winds" (Windy City) comes in part from the winds blowing from Lake Michigan and flowing into the streets of the metropolis. There are climate nuances in the built-up area: the climate is milder on the shores of Lake Michigan, which acts as a heat regulator by cooling temperatures in summer, making them milder in winter. Chicago enjoys relatively high sunshine for a northern city with an average of 2508.4 hours per year.

43 °C is the record for heat raised on 24 July 1934; -32.7 °C is the record of cold raised on January 20, 1985. The most violent burst ever recorded took place on February 12, 1894: 80 miles an hour. In July 1995, an extreme heat wave of several consecutive days from 37 °C to 41°C with a heat index of 52°C killed hundreds of people. On 27 January 1967, a major snowstorm hit the Chicago area; the snow height is 58.4 cm on average, with freezers of about 1.80 meters in some streets. In 1979, another snowstorm that hit the city generated a lot of criticism against the municipality of Chicago. The blizzards of 1967 and 1979 are the most virulent in the history of Chicago.

Some remarkable weather facts:

• In July 1934, Chicago experienced six consecutive days with temperatures above 39 °C including five consecutive days with temperatures above 40°C.
• In July 1936, the city had nine consecutive days of temperature exceeding 37.8 °C, or 37.8°C.
• On January 27 and 28, 1967, the city was hit by a blizzard with a record snow height of 60 cm in 35 hours.
• On January 2, 1999, Chicago experienced the highest amount of snow in 24 hours with 47.2 cm.
• On July 18, 2011, the city experienced the highest 24-hour rainfall with 174.2 mm recorded in O'Hare.
• On January 6, 2014, a polar vortex kept the temperature at -24 °C during the afternoon, which was only 2°C above the minimum morning temperature.

Boundary communes

Sectors and districts

Map of the city of Chicago represented with its 77 community sectors.

The City of Chicago is divided into 77 community areas: Community Areas), defined in the late 1920s by the Social Sciences Research Committee of the University of Chicago. These community sectors were primarily created for the demographic and statistical data of the City of Chicago and the United States Census Office and also serve as the basis for a variety of urban planning initiatives, both at the local and municipal levels.

For a long time a land of immigration, Chicago is home to many communities of foreign origin, including Irish, Italians, Russians, Germans, Spaniards, Poles, Chinese, Koreans and Mexicans. They display a desire for integration, even if each remains attached to the neighborhood of their community, and are a living example of a "melting pot" that, here more than anywhere else in the US, gives the city its cosmopolitan character.

Geographically, the city of Chicago is divided by the Chicago River (Chicago River) into four sections: North Side, Downtown, West Side and South Side, each of which includes many areas and neighborhoods of the city. The Downtown Chicago section is the smallest and consists of the three central areas that make up the city center (as well as the central business district): Near North Side, Loop and Near South Side. The largest section is South Side, which alone covers about 60% of Chicago's total area.

Chicago has about 228 neighborhoods (Neighborhoods) spread across the city's 77 community areas. Some of them are "ethnic" neighborhoods, each of which maintains a strong identity; The most famous are located close to the Loop's financial sector, such as Little Italy, Chinatown, Pilsen, Bronzeville, Greek Town, Bridgeport, Little Vietnam, Indian Village and Ukrainian Village, as well as German, Polish, African-American and Hispanic-American neighborhoods, which are not far away. The city also has neighborhoods that, although not ethnic, are very attractive to both its inhabitants and visitors. Rogers Park, in the North Side, a student area known to be home to Loyola University, is considered one of the city's most popular. North Center and Uptown are two business-related areas with many shopping centers, shops and restaurants. Jefferson Park, a historic and popular area in the north of the city, known in Chicago for its eponymous park. Lakeview, located north of Lincoln Park, is one of the city's most dynamic areas and is considered very attractive with its bars, nightclubs and shops. Lincoln Park is best known as the area that includes the largest urban public park in the city, Lincoln Park. In the South Side, the historic Pullman area is known to have housed the Pullman Company's factories and employees, and the Hyde Park area to include the University of Chicago and Jackson Park.

Downtown Chicago

Loop

The subway's skyline, which forms a loop called Union Loop, is located in the heart of downtown Chicago, hence the name of the Loop's financial sector.

The Loop sector (which in French means "the loop") represents the central part of Downtown Chicago, which is the second largest business district in the United States after Manhattan in New York. The Loop area stretches over several miles between the shores of Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. It includes several neighborhoods including New Eastside, located in the northeast of the Loop, which has the particularity of having a network of streets that intertwine on a triple level, South Loop, a new and lively neighborhood, and Printer's Row, the "artists' quarter". The eastern part of the Loop area is made up of Grant Park, which contains the Millennium Park.

The Union Loop is the airline infrastructure of the Chicago subway, where all the lines of the network intersect (except the yellow line) and whose loop-shaped circuit is located in the heart of the Loop, hence the name of the area. It is one of the oldest metro networks in the world.

The numbering system of the streets of the city begins in the Loop at the intersection of State and Madison, thus marking the importance of this neighborhood for the whole city. This area, once a bad name, has given way to the financial centers, shops and high-rise buildings that make up part of the skyline. It is bordered to the north and west by the Chicago River, to the east by Lake Michigan, and to the south by Roosevelt Road. It is home to many skyscrapers, including the Home Insurance Building (destroyed in 1931), considered to be the oldest in the world, and the Willis Tower, the second tallest in the American continent after New York's One World Trade Center.

Streeterville

Located in the Near North Side area, Streeterville is home to many hotels, restaurants, luxury boutiques, high-rise residential buildings, universities, medical facilities, and cultural attractions. In recent years, the neighborhood has seen an economic boom and many vacant lots in Streeterville have been converted into residential and commercial properties. Several historic areas are located in Streeterville, including the Old Chicago Water Tower District and the Michigan-Wacker Historic District. The Old Chicago Water Tower District includes prestigious buildings such as the Chicago Water Tower, a neogothic-style tower-shaped water tower, and the Pumping Station, a pumping station dating from 1869. The Michigan-Wacker Historic District extends around the Michigan Avenue Bridge and includes the Tribune Tower, the seat of the Chicago Tribune, the Wrigley Building and several historic buildings dating back to the 1920s such as 333 North Michigan.

Main ethnic neighborhoods

Chinatown

Wentworth Avenue at night, the main artery of Chinatown, with the Pui Tak Center (left).

Located in the Armor Square area, to the southwest of the Loop, the Chinese district is very characteristic with its shopping street, its Chinese city hall and its chamber of commerce (both gathered within the Pui Tak Center), its Chinese temple, its Ling Long museum (which traces the history of the inhabitants of the neighborhood), and its Asian park: the Ping Tom Memorial Park. Today, it is home to descendants of the first Chinese immigrants who arrived in the city around 1870, long after the first settlements of California, Oregon, and Washington, and of the second wave of immigrants, which came to settle in the 1950s and 1960s after the communist revolution in China.

The Chinese district of Chicago is famous for its many banks, Chinese restaurants, shops, grocery stores, Chinese medicine stores, and has a wide range of services for people interested in Chinese culture.

In addition to being home to a Chinese community, the neighborhood is a regional business hub for Chinese living in the Midwest region, as well as a tourist destination. Chicago's Chinese district is the third-largest in the country in terms of population, behind New York and San Francisco. Chicago has other Asian neighborhoods like Little Vietnam, which is located in the Uptown area, where a population predominantly of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai and Lao origin lives.

Bronzeville

The whole of Prairie Shores in Bronzeville.

Bronzeville is the main African-American neighborhood in Chicago. It spans the Douglas and Grand Boulevard areas around the Illinois Institute of Technology. Wabash Avenue YMCA, a historic social center and Ida B are located in this area. Wells-Barnett House, residence of the civil rights lawyer Ida B. Wells. Built in 1927 in Bronzeville, the Victory Monument is a Chicago Landmark dedicated to the 8^th Regiment of the National Guard of Illinois, an African-American unit that served in France during the First World War.

At the beginning of the ^twentieth century, Bronzeville was known as the "black metropolis"; the neighborhood is one of the nation's most significant Chicago Landmarks in terms of African-American urban history. Between 1910 and 1920, during the peak of the "Great Migration," the sector's population grew considerably as thousands of African-Americans, oppressed and driven out by the South, migrated to Chicago in search of employment in the industry.

Pilsen

Pilsen is a Mexican neighborhood located in the Lower West Side area. At the end of the ^19th century, it was inhabited by Czech immigrants who called it "Plzeň", after a region and a city of the Czech Republic. It also receives a smaller number of other ethnic groups from the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Hungarians and Austrians, but also immigrants of Polish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian heritage. At the beginning of the ^twentieth century, these immigrants worked in large numbers in the industrial parks and nearby factories, which were then American urban neighborhoods. Pilsen is as rich as he is poor, his inhabitants, mostly of Slavic ancestry, are not especially welcome in other residential areas of Chicago. Nowadays Pilsen is a Mexican-dominated neighborhood and consists mainly of residential developments.

Births of skyscrapers

The Tower Tribune.

Chicago's architecture has long influenced and reflected the history of American architecture. The city of Chicago includes some of the first buildings to be built by world-renowned architects. As most downtown buildings were destroyed by the great Chicago fire of 1871, the Chicago buildings are known for their originality rather than for their seniority. The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was an opportunity to implement the theories of the City Beautiful movement and to build buildings of Beaux-Arts and Neo-Classical styles such as the Field Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Chicago Cultural Center or the Art Institute of Chicago.

It was in the early 1880s that the Chicago School of Architecture and Town Planning gained its international fame in steel frame construction and, from the 1890s, in the use of window panes for facades. Until the 1900s, Chicago's architecture was marked by the achievements of Daniel Burnham, Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, William Holabird, Martin Roche and John Wellborn Root, all from the Chicago School. Among the city's first modern buildings, the Home Insurance Building, built in 1885 by William Le Baron Jenney, is often considered the first skyscraper in history. Although most of the building was made of brick and stone, it is the first high-rise building with metal frame with cast iron columns and steel beams. The architects of the Chicago School focus on the foundations of a uniquely American architecture that promotes simplicity of shapes. In the early ^20th century, Chicago was the main focus of the Prairie School's architectural movement with Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings, many of which are classified as Chicago Landmarks such as James Charnley House (1892) and Robie House (1908-1910).

The Montauk Building, designed between 1882-1883 by John Wellborn Root and Daniel Burnham, was the first building to be built using steel as the main material. In his book on the Universal Exhibition of 1893, Erik Larson said that the Montauk Building became the first building to be called a "skyscraper". In 1885, the first steel-framed skyscraper rose in Chicago, triggering the era of skyscrapers in the United States, including New York, and then the rest of the world. In the mid-1890s, Daniel Burnham, Racine, and Charles Atwood designed buildings with steel frames, glass, and terracotta. This new approach to architecture was made possible by modern entrepreneurs like George A. Fuller and professional engineers, in particular those from European migration.

Architectural diversity and heritage

The Chicago Water Tower.

Like other American metropolises, the architecture of Chicago is characterized by a great diversity. For example, the buildings on the University of Chicago campus, the Tribune Tower, and several churches such as the Second Presbyterian Church and the Chicago Temple Building are neogothic in style. The Notre-Dame-des-Pains Basilica in Chicago and the Sainte-Hedwige Church are neo-Renaissance in style. The Art Deco style was established in the late 1920s and exploded in 1930 with the Chicago Board of Trade Building, the Merchandise Mart and the Carbide & Carbon Building. The International Style was especially established after 1945 with the Crown Hall. Finally, ethnic districts are distinguished by their imported architectural styles, such as Chinatown with its Chinese temple and chamber of commerce (Pui Tak Center) or Ukrainian Village with its Orthodox bulb churches, such as the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. In the 1960s and 1970s, the desire to preserve the city's architectural heritage grew. In 1966, the Chicago Architecture Foundation was created to safeguard one of Chicago's oldest homes, the John J. Glessner House, built between 1885 and 1886 by architect Henry Hobson Richardson.

Today, Chicago's urban panorama is among the most important in the world. Indeed, in August 2009, there were 1,098 skyscrapers in the city, making Chicago the second metropolis on the American continent behind New York to have so many towering buildings within its municipal boundaries. By the number of skyscrapers, Chicago is the fourth largest city in the world after Hong Kong, New York and Tokyo. Historic downtown buildings include the Chicago Savings Bank Building, the 35 East Wacker, the Mather Tower or the Second Leiter Building in the Loop. Many historic buildings are located along Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. The Loop's second-largest business center, the Willis Tower, is located behind Manhattan's. completed in 1973 and comprising 108 floors, the tower is the tallest skyscraper in the world until 1998, and the United States until 2013. Already built skyscrapers like the 111 W. Wacker, the Trump International Hotel and Tower, and the 200 North Riverside Plaza, currently under construction like the Wanda Vista Tower (361 m) or under construction like the One Chicago Square (295 m), redesign Chicago's urban landscape.

Postal code 60602 is considered by Forbes magazine to be the country's most charismatic U.S. address, including, within its boundaries, buildings listed in prestigious lists of protected sites and buildings, such as Chicago Landmarks (municipal) and National Historic Landmarks (federal). Buildings such as the Auditorium Building, the Rookery Building and the Fine Arts Building are listed here. The latest generation of Chicagoans skyscrapers is located in the Near North Side and Near South Side areas, respectively north and south of the Loop area. Although the vast majority of high-rise buildings are located in the Loop, the city's business district (Central business district) has been extended for several years to adjacent areas. Multiple types of urban houses, condominiums and buildings can be found in different parts of Chicago. Located on the shores of Lake Michigan, large residential areas stretching over long north-south strips are characterized by pavilions built during the early ^20th century and after the Second World War.

Urban view of Downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan from Adler Planetarium.

Urban Morphology

Since its founding in 1770, the development of Chicago has resulted from a succession of bets by urban planners to make it an attractive city. Chicago has played a leading role in the history of the United States, having succeeded in asserting itself as a key element of the territorial organization. It wasn't planned, and that would have allowed the city to expand into these inhospitable places, and to see it become, in just a few decades, one of the most powerful cities in North America.

Detailed map of Chicago with its checkered street system (1878).

The natural constraints of the site on which Chicago is built posed management problems for the authorities. Indeed, the site was for a long time a marshy plain and the city suffered from this environment which made it very difficult to install roads and sewers. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the city of Chicago developed westward and along the shores of Lake Michigan to reach a north-south length of approximately 45 kilometers on an east-west width of 25 kilometers (in its widest part), with a total land area of 588 kilometers². With an average altitude of about 176 meters above the average sea level, the city of Chicago is built on quite flat land.

Like many American cities, Chicago's urban structure is designed according to a grid-like street system (called the "hippodamian plan") in which it is easy to navigate because the streets are straight and cross at a right angle, creating square or rectangular urban islands. This system was taken over from the ^seventeenth century by urban planners for the construction of cities on the American continent as was the case in Chicago. The New Eastside neighborhood, in the northeast of the Loop, consists largely of a multi-level street system; at the time the lack of building space led engineers to invent street floors.

View of Chicago's urban sprawl, with its orthogonal street system and the clear contrast between the vertical lines of its downtown and residential neighborhoods.

Before the Great Fire of 1871 ravaged much of Chicago, the city had only a few-story building. In the aftermath of the event, the rebuilding of Chicago allowed architects and planners to think about the city on much more modern criteria. As a result, the fire is a turning point in the history of Chicago. It is also common to date the city as we know it today in relation to this event. The first high-rise buildings to emerge in the late ^nineteenth century were not completed until the city was rebuilt. Today, the Loop's financial center is composed largely of skyscrapers and buildings with at least 10 floors. The areas bordering the Loop are also composed mainly of high density buildings. However, the further you go to the outside, the smaller the buildings, with less than 10 floors. Within a 5-kilometer radius of downtown, buildings are shrinking, and brownstones-like urban houses with 4 to 5 floors follow one another. Within a 10-kilometer radius of the Loop, the peri-urban areas consist mainly of cobblestone areas and housing estates consisting of single houses and duplexes, or sometimes apartment buildings.

In 1906, under the administration of Mayor Edward Dunne, the municipality called on architects-planners Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennett's massive urban restructuring project (called the "Chicago Plan") aimed at redefining Chicago's street system from modern criteria adapted to the context of the time, because the car is democratizing, the city earns 500,000 inhabitants per decade, and the city's tax base enables major city projects to be launched. Starting in 1909, the Chicago Plan Commission, a commission set up by the municipal authorities in Chicago, validated the plan of Burnham and Bennett, which provides for a large checkered street system for the city, including the construction of new streets on the concept of alignment; the restructuring, enlargement and embellishment of the already existing boulevards; the construction of several large municipal buildings; the installation of new parks and green spaces (such as Grant Park and Jackson Park); the establishment of a new railway; the creation of new port facilities; and the modernization of most boulevards and avenues.

Parks and green spaces

View from the Aon Center: Millennium Park (which has been an integral part of Grant Park since 2004) is a 10ha complex consisting of facilities such as Cloud Gate, Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Crown Fountain, Lurie Garden, Harris Theater, McCormick Tribune Plaza and BP Bridge, which makes it one of the most attractive parks in the city.

When Chicago incorporated itself as a municipality in 1837, it chose the motto "Urbs in Horto," a Latin expression that means "city in a garden." Today, Chicago is the second city after New York to have the most parks and green spaces in the United States, totaling 570 municipal parks - more than 20 miles of greenery, but also 33 beaches, 16 historic lagoons and 9 ports along Lake Michigan, making the Chicago Park District the largest urban management system and maintenance of the nation's green spaces.

Established in 1843, Lincoln Park spreads over an area of 4.9 km², making it the largest public park in the city. Named to honor President Abraham Lincoln, it welcomes nearly 20 million visitors annually, ranking it second after Central Park in New York. The park is home to Lincoln Park Zoo (Lincoln Park Zoo) and Lincoln Park Botanical Garden (Lincoln Park Conservatory). Garfield Park includes Garfield Park's botanical garden, one of the largest conservatories in the United States. Designed by urban planner William Le Baron Jenney, the conservatory covers an area of about 18,000 m² and contains a wide variety of rare plants and trees from around the world. With a surface area of 2.42 km², Burnham Park spans 9.66 km along Lake Michigan and is home to important municipal structures such as Soldier Field's soccer stadium and McCormick Place's convention center. Nearby is the Museum Campus (the "museum park").

Grant Park is a vast public park with a surface area of 1.29 km² located in the east of the Loop financial sector (Downtown Chicago); you can see the famous Buckingham Fountain, a monumental interactive fountain in the center. Between June 1999 and July 2004, Grant Park underwent extensive development in its northwest part to accommodate one of the city's most attractive places: the Millennium Park, which has been a real success since its opening. Jackson Park, one of the city's most popular parks, is located in the South Side and spreads over an area of approximately 2 km² straddling the Woodlawn and Hyde Park areas. It is best known for the work of the sculptor Henry Bacon, the statue of the Republic, which was erected in 1918 for the celebration of the 25^th anniversary of the 1893 Universal Exhibition and the centenary of the State of Illinois. The park, which has a Japanese garden, is popular with tourists and residents for its proximity to the beaches. Named Potter Palmer, an influential Chicago businessman from the 1900s, the Palmer Park was created by a man who donated to the city of Chicago in 1904. This park is popular for its mural frescoes and facilities that include baseball courts, a fitness room, meeting rooms, an outdoor swimming pool and tennis courts.

Located on Lake Michigan, Calumet Park is one of the largest parks in Chicago and is located in the East Side area. Crossed by the Calumet River, it stretches over nearly 14 miles². In addition to the ongoing beautification projects for the many existing parks, a number of parks have been created in recent years, such as the Ping Tom Memorial Park in the Chinese neighborhood, located along the Chicago River, with its bamboo gardens and dragon boats.

The World Organization for Environmental Protection Greenpeace, in partnership with the City of Chicago and Cook County, have signed a charter for the protection and conservation of forests in the northwest of the city, including the Dunning, O'Hare and Norwood Park areas. For several years these forests that were threatened by urban expansion have now been protected and classified as natural parks. Founded in 1975, Friends of the Parks is an association that aims to monitor and defend the environment in the Chicago area; more specifically, it monitors the proper maintenance and safety of public parks under the responsibility of the Chicago Park District and the Cook County Forest Reserves.

Demographics

General view of Downtown Chicago skyscrapers.

The historic buildings of the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower on the Magnificent Mile, a portion of the prestigious Michigan Avenue.

With its economic development, the population of Chicago exploded from the 1850s: it multiplies 3.7 times in a decade and ranks ninth among the most populous cities in the United States. In the late ^nineteenth century, Chicago was the fifth-largest city in the world. Chicago is for almost a century, the second largest city in the United States behind New York. The city's population peak was reached in 1950, and then declined until the 1990's, with suburbanization of the middle class bringing the city's population down to residential suburbs, giving way to Los Angeles as the country's second-largest city.

In 2017, according to estimates by the US Census Bureau, the city of Chicago has a population of 2,716,450, which is just over one-fifth of the total population of Illinois.

Chicago is now the third most populous city in the United States, behind New York and Los Angeles. The average density is 4,923 inhabitants per square kilometer: This is a higher number than in Los Angeles, but much less important than in New York. Chicago is the seat of Cook County, with a population of 5,231,351 in 2012, the second most populous county in the United States after Los Angeles.

The median income for a household in the city is $38,625, and $42,724 for a family. Men have median incomes of $35,907 on average, compared to $30,536 for women. The per capita income in the city is $20,175. 19.6 per cent of the population lived below the poverty line, of which 16.6 per cent included families. Of the total population, 28.1% of those under 18 and 15.5% of those over 65 live below the poverty line. Of the city's total population, 26.2% are under 18, 11.2% are between 18 and 24, 33.4% are between 25 and 44, 18.9% are between 45 and 64, and 10.3% are over 65. The median age is 32. For about 100 women, there are 94 men. For 100 women aged 18 and over, there are 91 men.

The proportion of African-Americans is relatively high (32%) compared to other cities such as New York (28%) or Los Angeles (12%). However, it remains lower than in Detroit, Atlanta or Washington, D.C. Hispanics and Latinos account for 29% of the population, equivalent to New York but less than Los Angeles. Three-quarters of them are Mexican.

Distribution of ethnic groups in 2010, with each point representing 25 people: Non-Hispanic whites, blacks, Asians and Latinos.

In 2008, the Chicago metropolitan area (commonly referred to as "Chicagoland") comprised some 9,526,434 million people, making it the third largest in the United States and the fourth largest in North America after Mexico, New York and Los Angeles. The Chicago-Naperville-Joliet metropolitan area (MSA) includes 252 municipalities, including Chicago, the city center. It spans three states and includes fourteen counties, including nine counties in northeastern Illinois (Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will), four counties in northwestern Indiana (Jasper, Lake, Newton and Porter), and one county in southeastern Wisconsin (Kenosha) covering a total area of 24,800 km². Across the American continent (the Americas), it is the seventh largest urban area after Mexico City, New York, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, and Buenos Aires, and ranks 26th in the world for its population.

According to the American Community Survey for the period 2010-2014, 64.11% of the population over 5 years of age reported speaking English at home, 24.5% reported speaking Spanish, 2.04% said Polish, 1.65% said Chinese, 0.83% said Tagalog, 0.0 53% Arabic and 6.34% another language.

In 2015, according to a survey by the Gallup Organization, 3.8% of the city's population identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (3.6% nationally).

The gap in life expectancy between residents of wealthy and poor neighborhoods can be as high as 30 years

Religion

Inside the Basilica of Our Lady of Pain.

On the occasion of St. Patrick's Day, the Chicago River is tinted green.

With its cosmopolitan history, Chicago has a rich religious heritage as represented by architecture and institutions throughout the city.

Christianity is the dominant religion of the city's population (about 54.14% of the Chicagoans). It is represented through its various denominations, thus including Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Anglicans and Eastern Christians (Churches of the Three Councils). Immigration from countries of ancient Christianity in Europe (Ireland, Italy, Poland...), Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Cuba...) and Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Congo, Nigeria...) is still growing. La francophonie is a tangible sign of the French historical presence in the region, and Chicago is also composed of a Francophone Catholic community. Other religions are represented in Chicago, such as Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism and Baha'ism. In 2015, about 59.87% of Chicago's residents were affiliated with a religion. Because of this diversity, Chicago has a diverse religious architecture.

Thanks to its size and reputation, the city of Chicago has gained some worldwide recognition in the field of religion. It hosted the first two meetings of the Parliament of the World Religions. The first took place in 1893, the same year as the Universal Exhibition and the second in 1993. Chicago is home to many theological institutions, including seminars, many schools, colleges such as the Moody Biblical Institute, and universities such as DePaul University and the Jesuit University of Loyola, for example. Chicago is the seat of many religious leaders and a whole series of bishops from a wide range of Christian denominations. The only temple of the Bahá'í faith in North America is located in Wilmette, in the north suburbs of Chicago.

Many prominent religious figures visited the city, including the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa. Pope John Paul II visited Chicago in 1979 as part of his first trip to the United States after being elected to the papacy in 1978.

The city has a large number of religious buildings, with no less than two hundred churches on its territory. Chicago is home to the largest Catholic Archdiocese in the United States. Among the most famous and visited buildings, there is the New Renaissance-style Chicago Notre-Dame-des-Pains Basilica, which is one of the three parishes of the city of Chicago to be named the Basilica. It was the first to obtain this title in 1956 by special authorization of Pope Pius XII. There is also the St. Name's Cathedral of Chicago, which is one of the city's main Catholic sanctuaries, and the St. James Cathedral of Chicago, which has been the mother church of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago since 1955. The city also has several Orthodox churches, the most famous of which is without a doubt the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. Founded in 1888, the St. Hedwige Church in Chicago is a monumental Catholic church belonging to the Archdiocese of Chicago. Built in the neo-Renaissance style, its architecture recalls the splendor of the Polish-Lithuanian Union; it is dedicated to Saint Hedwige.

The home of the Congregation of the First United Methodist Church of Chicago, the Chicago Temple Building is 173 meters high and the highest church in the world. Administered by the Archdiocese of Chicago and intended for young people preparing for the priesthood, the Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary trained nearly 2,500 priests, two cardinals, more than forty bishops, two experts from the Second Vatican Council and many recipients of the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Chicago is the archepiscopal or episcopal seat of several churches:

• Archdiocese of Chicago, Catholic (see also: List of Bishops and Archbishops of Chicago).
• Eparchy of Saint Nicholas of Chicago, Greco-Catholic of Ukrainian rite (see also: Eparchy of Saint Nicholas of Chicago of Ukrainians).
• Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle of Chicago of Syro-Malabars, Catholic of Syro-Malabar rite.
• Archdiocese of St. Thomas of Chicago.
• Archdiocese of Chicago

Crime and security

A CPD patrol vehicle, the Chicago police.

Chicago almost definitively overlooked its bad reputation, inherited from the turbulent period of prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s, when the activities of Al Capone and the underworld earned it the nickname "Capital of Crime". Since the late 1990s, the feeling of insecurity has declined sharply, and it is entirely possible to walk safely in most areas of North Side and Downtown. This is partly due to the strengthening of the police presence. Tourists are advised to be more vigilant and avoid areas of South Side such as Fuller Park, South Shore, Roseland, Englewood, Douglas and West Pullman, and areas of West Side such as West Garfield Park and Austin, both day and night.

In 2006, according to the Chicago Police Department (CPD), violent crime dropped in the city of Chicago. Between 1997 and 2006, the number of crimes (theft, burglary, violence, rape, murder, arson, willful degradation, etc.) decreased by 34%, from 254,573 to 166,057. There were 761 murders in the city in 1997, 467 in 2006, and a further slight increase with 508 homicides in 2012, of which 82.4% were with a firearm; murders account for 1.3% of violence against persons. Despite a spike in homicides in the city in 2012, this remains lower than smaller cities like Detroit and New Orleans.

However, in 2016, the city saw a resurgence of murders and set a new record for the last twenty years with 762 murders. The city thus totaled 5,376 murders in 10 years. Only one-third of murder cases were resolved in 2016.

List of mayors

List of mayors of Chicago

No	Portrait	Identity	Period		Duration	Label
			Start	Finish
1		William Butler Ogden (15 June 1805 - 3 August 1877)	1837	1838	1 year	Democratic Party
2		Buckner Stith Morris (19 August 1800 - 16 December 1879)	1838	1839	1 year	Whig Party
1		Benjamin Wright Raymond (15 June 1801 - 6 April 1883)	1839	1840	1 year	Whig Party
4		Alexander Loyd (en) (19 August 1805 - 7 May 1872)	1840	1841	1 year	Democratic Party
5		Francis Cornwall Sherman (18 September 1805 - 7 November 1870)	1841	1842	1 year	Democratic Party
6		Benjamin Wright Raymond (15 June 1801 - 6 April 1883)	1842	1843	1 year	Whig Party
7		Augustus Garrett (1801 - 30 November 1848)	1843	1844	1 year	Democratic Party
8		Alson Sherman (en) (21 April 1811 - 27 September 1903)	1844	1845	1 year	unlabeled
9		Augustus Garrett (1801 - 30 November 1848)	1845	1846	1 year	Democratic Party
10		John Putnam Chapin (21 April 1810 - 27 July 1864)	1846	1847	1 year	Whig Party
11		James Curtiss (7 April 1803 - 2 November 1859)	1847	1848	1 year	Democratic Party
12		James Hutchinson Woodworth (en) (4 December 1804 - 26 March 1869)	1848	1850	2 years	unlabeled
13		James Curtiss (7 April 1803 - 2 November 1859)	1850	1851	1 year	Democratic Party
14		Walter S. Gurnee (en) (9 March 1813 - 18 April 1903)	1851	1853	2 years	Democratic Party
15		Charles McNeill Gray (en) (7 March 1807 - 17 October 1885)	1853	1854	1 year	Democratic Party
16		Isaac Lawrence Milliken (en) (29 August 1815 - 2 December 1885)	1854	1855	1 year	Democratic Party
17		Levi Boone (6 December 1808 - 24 January 1882)	1855	1856	1 year	Know Nothing
18		Thomas Dyer (13 January 1805 - 6 June 1862)	1856	1857	1 year	Democratic Party
19		John Wentworth (5 March 1815 - 16 October 1888)	1857	1858	1 year	Republican Party
20		John Charles Haines (en) (26 May 1818 - 4 July 1896)	1858	1860	2 years	Democratic Party
21		John Wentworth (5 March 1815 - 16 October 1888)	1860	1861	1 year	Republican Party
22		Julian Sidney Rumsey (en) (3 April 1823 - 20 April 1886)	1861	1862	1 year	Republican Party
23		Francis Cornwall Sherman (18 September 1805 - 7 November 1870)	1862	1865	3 years	Democratic Party
24		John B. Rice (en) (23 June 1832 - 14 January 1893)	1865	1869	4 years	Republican Party
25		Roswell B. Mason (19 September 1805 - 1 January 1892)	1869	1871	2 years
26		Joseph Medill (6 April 1823 - 16 March 1899)	1871	September 1873	2 years	Republican Party
		Lester L. Bond (in ) (27 October 1829 - 15 April 1903)	August 18, 1873	December 1, 1873	3 months and 13 days	Republican Party
27		Harvey Doolittle Colvin (en) (18 December 1815 - 16 April 1892)	December 1, 1873	1875	2 years	Republican Party
28		Monroe Heath (en) (27 March 1827 - 21 October 1894)	1876	1879	3 years	Republican Party
29		Carter Harrison (15 February 1825 - 28 October 1893)	1879	1887	8 years	Democratic Party
30		John A. Rock (in ) (12 August 1844 - 10 February 1904)	1887	1889	2 years	Republican Party
31		DeWitt Clinton Cregier (en) (1 June 1829 - 9 November 1898)	1889	1891	2 years	Democratic Party
32		Hempstead Washburne (11 November 1852 - 13 April 1919)	1891	1893	2 years	Republican Party
33		Carter Harrison (15 February 1825 - 28 October 1893)	1893	October 28, 1893 (death in office (en ))	less than one year	Democratic Party
34		George Bell Swift (en) (14 December 1845 - 2 July 1912)	November 9, 1893	1893	less than one year	Republican Party
35		John Patrick Hopkins (29 October 1858 - 13 October 1918)	December 27, 1893	1895	2 years	Democratic Party
36		George Bell Swift (en) (14 December 1845 - 2 July 1912)	April 8, 1895	1897	2 years	Republican Party
37		Carter Harrison (fr) (23 April 1860 - 25 December 1953)	1897	1905	8 years	Democratic Party
38		Edward Dunne (12 October 1853 - 24 May 1937)	1905	1907	2 years	Democratic Party
39		Fred A. Busse (in ) (3 March 1866 - 9 July 1914)	1907	1911	4 years	Republican Party
40		Carter Harrison (fr) (23 April 1860 - 25 December 1953)	1911	1915	4 years	Democratic Party
41		William Hale Thompson (14 May 1869 - 19 March 1944)	1915	1923	8 years	Republican Party
42		William Emmett Dever (13 March 1862 - 13 September 1929)	1923	1927	4 years	Democratic Party
43		William Hale Thompson (14 May 1869 - 19 March 1944)	1927	1931	4 years	Republican Party
44		Anton Cermak (9 May 1873 - 6 March 1933)	April 7, 1931	March 6, 1933 (death in office (en ))	1 year, 10 months and 27 days	Democratic Party
45		Frank J. Corr (en) (12 January 1877 - 3 June 1934)	March 15, 1933	April 8, 1933	24 days	Democratic Party
46		Edward Joseph Kelly (1 May 1876 - 20 October 1950)	April 17, 1933	April 15, 1947	13 years, 11 months and 29 days	Democratic Party
47		Martin H. Kennelly (11 August 1887 - 29 November 1961)	April 15, 1947	April 20, 1955	8 years and 5 days	Democratic Party
48		Richard Daley (15 May 1902 - 20 December 1976)	April 20, 1955	December 20, 1976 (death in office (en ))	21 years and 8 months	Democratic Party
49		Michael Anthony Bilandic (13 February 1923 - 15 January 2002)	December 20, 1976	April 16, 1979	2 years, 3 months and 27 days	Democratic Party
50		Jane Byrne (24 May 1934 - 14 November 2014)	April 16, 1979	April 29, 1983	4 years and 13 days	Democratic Party
51		Harold Washington (15 April 1922 - 25 November 1987)	April 29, 1983	November 25, 1987 (death in office (en ))	4 years, 6 months and 27 days	Democratic Party
52		David Duvall Orr (born 4 October 1944)	November 25, 1987	December 2, 1987	7 days	Democratic Party
53		Eugene Sawyer (3 September 1934 - 19 January 2008)	December 2, 1987	April 24, 1989	1 year, 4 months and 22 days	Democratic Party
54		Richard M. Daley (born 24 april 1942)	April 24, 1989	May 16, 2011	22 years and 22 days	Democratic Party
55		Rahm Emanuel (born 29 November 1959)	May 16, 2011	May 20, 2019	8 years and 4 days	Democratic Party
56		Lori Lightfoot (born 4 August 1962)	May 20, 2019	In progress	1 year, 5 months and 21 days	Democratic Party

Municipal Organization

Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago since May 2019.

The City of Chicago government is divided into executive and legislative branches.

The Mayor of Chicago is the Chief Executive Officer of the Mayor of Chicago: chief executive). He is elected for four years and applies all orders. It is responsible for controlling all the departments and agencies of the city (Departments), as well as the various specialized administrations. The mayor directs and supervises the various chiefs he appoints as head of these municipal services and has a veto power in the city council. He is the most powerful person in the city administration. Since 1931, all mayors in Chicago have been Democratic.

The Chicago City Council (Chicago City Council) consists of 50 elected representatives (alderman or alderwoman) who represent each of the 50 constituencies (wards) of the City of Chicago and form the legislative branch of the Chicago government: it monitors the proper functioning of municipal services, enacts legislation, enacts municipal orders and approves the annual budget in november. The terms of office of the Councilors are four years.

The Chicago City Hall (Chicago City Hall) is the official seat of the City of Chicago Government. Adjacent to the two buildings of the Richard J. Daley Center and James R. The Thompson Center, the Town Hall, houses the offices of the Mayor, the City Clerk, the City Treasurer and some of the city's services. The Chicago City Council rooms are located on the west side of the building.

In 2005, the city's budget is more than $5 billion: major expenditures are related to the Chicago Police Department, the Chicago Fire Department, the maintenance and renovation of the highway, the Chicago Department of Transportation, and debt repayment.

Mayor of Chicago from 1989 to 2011, Richard M. Daley received more than 70% of the votes in the municipal elections of 1999, 2003, and 2007, with little opposition. Indeed, Daley is an ambitious mayor who has had many successes since his first term in 1989, and is responsible for many innovations in modernizing his city and refurbishing its cities, the environment, resurgence in tourism, and international influence in economic and cultural terms; he played an important role in selecting the city of Chicago for the 2016 Summer Olympics. In 2010, he was named "the best mayor of the five largest cities in the United States" and as a "charismatic and powerful" man by Time magazine. He will also be dubbed "the boss" by the Liberation newspaper and several politicians during his career. However, in September 2010 he announced that he would not run for a new term in 2011. Richard M. Daley has been in charge of the Chicago government for 22 years. He was replaced by Rahm Emanuel on May 16, 2011, elected mayor of Chicago with 55% of the vote.

Like many other US cities, Chicago is facing the collapse of its pension system. The pensions of his ex-civil servants are not always paid now.

Environmental protection

Since 2004, Chicago City Hall has had a green roof.

Mayor Richard M. Daley’s ambition during his tenure was to promote environmental protection while keeping Chicago among the world’s most influential metropolises. With a new urban horizon over the next few years, the city center is developing faster with a denser and more breathable atmosphere. The Chicago Park District, the body responsible for managing Chicago's parks and green spaces, is committed to the biodiversity recovery plan. He is in charge of converting the abandoned areas of the city into green spaces. The vacant lots and abandoned parking lots are transformed into parks and gardens are created above the flat-surface skyscrapers. The roofs of many Chicago buildings are painted white. The white roofs cool buildings and thus fight against the heat island effect that characterizes major urban centers. Indeed, white has an important albedo. In other words, it sends a large amount of solar radiation back to space.

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is the world's first greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme. In 2003, the CCX launched its trading platform. In 2005, the CCX launched the European Climate Exchange (EXC), an important player in intra-EU trade. The mayor also signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement ("US Mayors' Agreement on Climate Protection") to achieve or exceed the Kyoto Protocol's GHG reduction targets.

The city of Chicago was recently featured in a New York Times edition as a pioneering city in sustainability in the United States. However, the city is not looking for media hype about its ecological initiatives, but rather smart decisions about new infrastructure that will help the city of winds cope with the drastic climate change it has been experiencing for the past three decades.

Chicago is nicknamed "Green Roofs City": the roofs of plants represent a total area of more than 418,000 m² spread over 359 roofs of the city. Former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has made his city North America's first "green roof" city, thanks to tax incentives that have been in place since the early 2000s. Since 1989, 500,000 trees have been planted in Chicago.

Chicago is the most dangerous city in the United States for migratory birds. Many die by striking the façades of the buildings in the skyscrapers.

A powerful metropolis with a diverse economy

The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT); Chicago Trade Exchange) is the world's largest commodity exchange.

Chicago is one of the world’s global cities: the tertiary sector is well represented by numerous head offices and branches in the fields of accounting, advertising, finance and legal services. The city is an economic decision-making center, as shown by the concentration of corporate headquarters of multinational firms in the business district, which remains the country's second-largest after New York. Chicago is the economic engine of the entire Great Lakes region.

The economic weight of the Chicago agglomeration is considerable: the GNP of the metropolis was $349 billion in 2002 and $390 billion in 2005: If Chicago were to be a country, it would be the 18^th economic power of the world. In its history, Chicago has brought over $506 billion to the US economy. In 2008, the financial services company UBS placed Chicago 5^th on the list of the richest cities in the world for its GDP of more than $570 billion. According to U.S. Metro Economies, Chicago's GDP stood at $630 billion in 2014/2015. The Department of Community Development (DCD) is an organization that works on the economic development of the entire city, including the management of local chambers of commerce.

Chicago's economic activity is diversified: the industry has a relatively significant place there. The transport and trade sector is highly developed and offers a first-class multimodal network in the country. Today, the city is the second-largest stock exchange in the United States and holds the world's largest commodity exchange. It is the second largest American city for publishing behind New York. It is the Midwest's economic and nerve center, and the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the seventh of the twelve districts of the US Federal Reserve covering nearly two-thirds of the states of Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana, about half of the state of Wisconsin, and the entire state of Iowa. It ranks third in the country for trade fairs, congresses and conventions. The McCormick Place is the largest convention center in the country and the third largest in the world. It welcomes approximately 3 million visitors each year.

The CME Building (headquarters of the CME Group), in the Loop sector, one of the largest financial centers in the world.

The number of assets in Chicago is 4.2 million (August 2006). The unemployment rate was 5.5 per cent in July 2006, a higher figure than the national average, but has been declining for three years. The Mayor's Office of Workforce Development (MOWD) helps the unemployed find a job. In 2003, the city's first employer was the federal government (88,000 employees), followed by public schools (46,184 employees) and the municipality (39,275 employees).

The most important companies in terms of the number of employees are Jewel-Osco supermarket chain (39,220 employees), Advocate Health Care (25,293 employees), SBC Communications (21,000 employees) and United Parcel Service (19,063 employees). Other firms dominate the economic life of the metropolitan area: McDonald's and Portillo's (fast food); Kraft Foods Group, Mondelez International, Quaker Oats Company (agro-food); Tropicana (drinks); Target Corporation, Sears Holdings (large distribution); Walgreens, Abbott Laboratories (pharmaceutical industries); Playboy Enterprises (Playboy Magazine, Playboy TV) (show and charm magazine); Budget (car rental); Chicago Climate Exchange BFG Technologies (computer hardware); United Airlines, Boeing, Motorola (transport and communications); Williams Electronics Games, Stern Electronics; Yellow Cab Company; Allstate, Bank One (insurance and finance), etc.

Agri-food, metallurgy and printing are the three most labor-intensive industries in Chicago.

Grain Essor and Transportation Center in the ^19th

Before 1833, the region's main activity was the fur trade. Then it underwent a major industrial development phase, attracting investors, speculators and entrepreneurs, making it one of the major cities of Manufacturing Belt. The port on Lake Michigan is developing rapidly, and with it, shipbuilding.

The city also became an important grain center, enjoying the outlet of the Grandes Plaines agricultural region, the United States attic, throughout the ^19th century. Chicago became the world's largest grain port in the 1840s.

Beginning in the mid-^19th century, the agrifood industries for the processing of pork and beef were multiplying there, notably under the impetus of Gustavus F. Swift and Philip Armor. In 1865, in a marshy neighborhood (now part of New City), huge slaughterhouses called the Union Stock Yards were founded there, which from 1900 produced 82% of the meat consumed in the United States, making the city a major center for the treatment of cattle. In reference to these activities, which make up a large part of its wealth and reputation, beef becomes one of the symbols of Chicago. If the slaughterhouses were transferred to Kansas City in 1971, the name of the basketball team, the "Bulls", refers directly to this butcher tradition.

In the mid-^19th century, the city became an important railway hub. Chicago is the departure town of Illinois Central Railroad, which connects it to New Orleans via Memphis in 1856. It is connected to Sioux City westward following the opening of the Chicago Central Railroad (a branch of the Illinois Central Railroad) in 1870. Chicago became the starting city of the Union Pacific Railway, which reached San Francisco following the completion of the first transcontinental railway in 1869. The Amtrak Railway Crossing, Chicago, along with Saint-Louis, Memphis and New Orleans, became one of the four Union Pacific rigs linking the east and west of the United States.

Industrial, technological and financial development

From left to right: 333 North Michigan, Carbide & Carbon Building, Guarantee Building, Mather Tower, 35 East Wacker, Kemper Building and Leo Burnett Building, from Michigan Avenue Bridge.

Between 1954 and 1982, the number of unskilled industrial jobs increased from nearly 500,000 to 162,000.

Chicago is still one of the world's leading grain markets. The powerful agri-food sector provides a large part of the industrial employment of the metropolitan area. The furniture industry also developed in the ^19th century.

Big American companies have set up in Chicago: Sears Holdings, Amoco, Sara Lee, United Airlines, Wrigley Company and Walgreens. Boeing also moved its headquarters to Seattle. Finally, McDonald's also had its head office in Chicago in the 1970s, but the company was then moved to Oak Brook in the nearby suburbs. However, the company relocated its headquarters to Chicago in the spring of 2018.

The weapons industry, which supplied troops during the Civil War, also prospered in the ^twentieth century. As part of the Manhattan project, on December 2, 1942, the first controlled nuclear reaction took place at the University of Chicago.

The industrial and urban development of the ^20th century pushed the municipality to pump water from Lake Michigan further and further. The industrial sector recently benefited from a close alliance between universities, laboratories, and businesses.

This concerns, above all, the field of high technology: IT and electronics with Spyglass software, Motorola company and US Robotics Corporation. This does not prevent the region from continuing heavy production such as steel, despite strong foreign competition.

View of the Heritage at Millennium Park, the Crain Communications Building, the One and Two Prudential Plaza from the BP Bridge.

Of course, the importance of the metropolis gives it first-rate tertiary functions. Chicago is a major financial center, which was the first to launch the derivatives market, following the Chicago School economists' work on quantitative financial analysis in the 1950's and 1970's. It is now home to the world's first stock exchange in terms of volume of transactions processed (capitalization of $30 billion), owing to the merger between the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), decided by shareholders on July 9, 2007, to form the CME Group.

Tourist dynamism also plays an important role in promoting the city's economic development, as Chicago is home to some of the most famous attractions, museums and universities in the United States. In 2002, Chicago attracted more than 28 million visitors, one million of whom came from abroad and spent more than $8.7 billion in Chicago and generated $442 million in taxes. The city has 26,630 hotel rooms. Numerous congresses and meetings are held here every year. The main tourist and leisure sites are the Navy Pier (8.6 million visitors in 2005), Lincoln Park Zoo (3 million), John G Aquarium. Shedd and the Museum of Science and Industry (1.8 million each).

For several years, the city center has undergone a revival, including the construction of hotels and offices such as the Trump International Hotel and Tower (condominiums and lofts), the Aqua Building and the Waldorf Astoria (luxury hotels), the 340 on the Park, the 300 North LaSalle, and the construction of a chic neighborhood around the River Esplanade Park, in The Loop sector is one of the most recent projects that demonstrate the city's prosperity. Since the recession, some projects, including the Chicago Spire (a 600-meter-high residential skyscraper), have now been canceled. Some areas of the city such as Logan Square, Uptown, Near North Side, Near South Side and Rogers Park are experiencing rapid population growth and gentrification. The expansion and modernization of O'Hare International Airport and the reconstruction of Dan Ryan Expressway are also underway and will be models for development in the years ahead.

A Metra commuter train exits the Ogilvie Transportation Center, a station in downtown Chicago, and crosses the Wolf Point neighborhood northward.

Chicago is one of the leading communication nodes in North America. From the ^18th century, with the fur trade and the trade in wood and agricultural products, the city was marked by its commercial vocation. Today, the metropolitan area is a crossroads of five federal highways and six railway lines of national importance. The various facilities and infrastructure make Chicago a major multimodal platform in the United States.

The city is served by a large bus and metro network, but also by suburban trains and Amtrak's high-capacity national trains. Chicago is the fourth largest city in the United States for the number of users on the Amtrak network. The Amtrak is a public railway company that links Chicago to major U.S. cities, and the Metra is a public railway company in the Chicago area that operates as a regional express network (RER) system across six counties in the greater Chicago area.

The main stations in Chicago served by the Amtrak and the Metra are:

• Union Station
• Millennium Station
• Ogilvie Transportation Center
• LaSalle Street Station
• Van Buren Street Station

Public transport

A bus from the Chicago Transit Authority.

The city of Chicago has a large subway network and also has extensive bus lines. The Chicago Transit Authority, known as "CTA", is the city of Chicago's public transportation operator (subway and bus management). The company is the second of its kind in the United States and the fourth in North America. The CTA offers bus and subway services within the city of Chicago to forty nearby municipalities, as well as to O'Hare and Midway airports.

But the city faces a major problem: the age, aging and aging of these important infrastructure and rolling stock. Indeed, its subway was inaugurated in 1892, making it one of the oldest networks in the world still in service. Some of the current portions of the network date back to that time, with the majority of routes being maintained. In addition, 500 Chicago buses, or a quarter of the fleet, are over 16 years old, with the meter averaging 900,000 kilometers. Maintenance of the 500 buses costs $16 million per year (compared to $3 million to maintain the remaining 1,500). The Chicago Transit Authority estimates that it will invest $6 billion to modernize its lines (a $10 billion investment by adding commuter buses). The budget of the ATC is approximately $1 billion per year, mainly from users (41 per cent) and from subsidies from the State of Illinois (41.5 per cent). Chicago and Cook County account for only 0.4%. The CTA also does not receive a federal grant.

Chicago Metro

Map of Chicago subway lines.

Chicago has a vast network of subway lines, with 767,730 commuters per day. Inaugurated on 6 June 1892, the Chicago Underground is one of the oldest networks in the world still in service, since it is the second oldest network on the American continent after that of New York (1868) and the third in the world after that of London (1863); the Chicago subway is often referred to as the "L'L" or the "EL" of the English (because most of its network is air; it is also the emblem of the Chicago Transit Authority, which calls it "L" only.

Some sections of the network date back to the late ^nineteenth century, when Chicago followed New York's example by building subway lines. Unlike New York, which in the early ^twentieth century began replacing its airlines with underground lines in Manhattan, Chicago still uses most of its original routes today.

Managed by the Chicago Transit Authority, the network is 171 kilometers long; it is composed of eight lines, 145 stations (92 of which are accessible to people with reduced mobility at the end of 2010), 19 kilometers in a tunnel with 21 stations, 59 kilometers on the surface with 42 stations and 92 kilometers by air with 89 stations. All the lines, except the yellow line, leave from the center of the city where some of them form the famous airline loop, the Union Loop, now considered the limit of the Community sector of the Loop. Two lines, the blue and the red, cross the Loop area underground.

Most of the network lines are located within the boundaries of the City of Chicago, except for a few kilometers at the ends of the lines pink (Cicero), purple (Wilmette), yellow (Skokie), green (Oak Park) and blue (Forest Park). The 'L' serves both Chicago airports, O'Hare Airport on the blue line (45 minutes from downtown) and Midway Airport on the orange line (30 minutes from downtown). O'Hare Airport has its own fully automated tires subway system called Airport Transit System (ATS). Operating 24 hours a day and with free service, the ATS loops through the airport, serving five stations.

A subway train on the orange line to Midway.

Chicago's subway stations feature several architectural styles that coexist, ranging from the Queen Anne style of the ^19th century, to the Italian style of the ^20th century, to decidedly modern design structures. Some resorts are decorated with works of art, while others retain a utilitarian form. Since the major reorganization of the network and the allocation of a distinctive color to each line in 1993, stations have been named according to the name of the street or avenue they cross, or, more generally, the street where their main entrance is located.

The CTA has been planning for many years to create a second loop, called the Circle Line. The proposed new line, introduced in 2002, includes rail sharing with the red line to Chinatown, followed by the orange line to Ashland. From there, a new viaduct will take you to the pink line and the United Center (the Bulls arena) at the crossing with the blue line. From this crossing, a second viaduct 4 miles long leads to the red line and the Dearborn tunnel. This project is still under consideration, and this new line, as well as the major developments it entails, should not be implemented until 2025.

Urban and long-distance buses

Managed by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Chicago's urban bus network is much larger than its subway system, because it serves, with its many stops, the entire city and part of its conurbation in Cook County. The ATC fleet consists of a fleet of approximately 1,879 buses running on the 140 lines of the network, representing a combined total of 3,658 km. In June 2015, these buses transported more than 25 million passengers per month, an average of about 872,090 people per day, through more than 12,000 stops throughout the city of Chicago and around 40 municipalities in its immediate suburbs. Some lines do not circulate on weekends in the suburbs.

Operated and funded by the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), the Pace Bus Network is a long distance bus network in the greater suburbs of Chicago that serves a vast area of approximately 9,553 km². With 213 lines, this network is much larger than the CTA because it serves, in addition to Cook County, five other counties in the greater Chicago area: DuPage, Lake, Will, Kane and McHenry. Nearly 100,000 people use the network on a daily basis (2016 figures) and about 28,392,400 people per year. The Pace network connects the main towns in the area, including Aurora, Joliet, Waukegan, Elgin, Evanston and Naperville.

Air transport

General view of O'Hare International Airport.

With 66.7 million passengers in 2010, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport is the third-largest in the world by the number of passengers behind Beijing International Airport (second) and Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. From 1996 to 2009, O'Hare Airport was ranked second in the world in terms of passenger numbers. Located approximately 17 miles northwest of the Loop financial sector (30 to 40 minutes by car), it is accessible via the Kennedy Expressway, the blue line subway and buses from the Chicago Transit Authority. The ATS shuttles serve five stations spread over a loop through the terminals and the furthest car parks in the perimeter of the airport. O'Hare airport is experiencing problems of saturation, delays, even cancelation of certain flights. A plan to modernize and redesign the runways and the terminal was launched to increase its capabilities. It serves as the main hub for United Airlines with its headquarters in downtown Chicago, as well as for American Airlines.

Chicago's Midway International Airport is Chicago's second largest airport with 18.8 million passengers in 2006 and is about 17 kilometers southwest of the Loop. It is mainly used by low-cost airlines for domestic flights. Midway's most represented airline is the low cost Texas airline Southwest Airlines. Both O'Hare and Midway airports are located on the territory of the City of Chicago, the first in the O'Hare area at the northwest end of the city, and the second straddling the Clearing and Garfield Ridge areas in the southwest of the city. There is also a third airport in the area, Gary/Chicago. It is located on the territory of the industrial town of Gary in the southeastern suburbs of the neighboring state of Indiana, about 10 kilometers from the territorial limit of Chicago (40 kilometers from Downtown).

Chicago has an AITA code common to all airports: CHI.

Road network

Map of the highways and main arteries of the city of Chicago.

Chicago is the starting point of Route 66. This historic road, now declassified, is east-west and stretches over a total length of 2,000 miles, crossing eight states. From 1926 to 1985, it joined Chicago in Santa Monica (a city on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in California), passing through the vast agricultural expanses of Illinois and Missouri, the Kansas and Oklahoma plains, the Texas oil fields, the New Mexico mountains and the Arizona deserts.. In Chicago, the official starting point has varied from time to time, once located in Grant Park at the Buckingham Fountain, a sign is now on Adams Street, near the Chicago Institute of Art in downtown Chicago.

The city of Chicago has more than 6,437 km of streets, 2,732 intersections, 250,000 street lights, nearly 300 road bridges, including 36 mobile bridges across the Chicago River, and 180 kilometers of bicycle lanes. These infrastructure are supported by the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT), the municipal service responsible for the maintenance, construction and management of the roads (streets, sidewalks, bridges, road signs, public lighting, etc.) of the City of Chicago. The highways and state roads that pass through the territory of Chicago are run by the state of Illinois.

Chicago and its region are at the heart of an extensive road and highway system, including federal highways (U.S. highway), Interstate highways, federal highways (U.S. Route) and state roads (State Route). These transportation infrastructure are essential to sustaining Chicago's growth and economic vitality, thereby enabling the city's 9.5 million people to move around and easily connect to the road access that ensures suburban access and convergence to Downtown Chicago.

Urban highways

The Jane Byrne Interchange, a highway interchange where the Kennedy, Eisenhower and Dan Ryan highways converge in downtown Chicago.

Five inter-state highways (Interstate highways) converge towards the city center to facilitate trips across the city and its suburbs. Three of Chicago's largest motorways join the Jane Byrne Interchange, one of the Midwest's most heavily used motorway exchangers with a daily traffic of about 300,000 vehicles.

The Kennedy Expressway is 17.55 miles long and starts in Downtown and reaches O'Hare International Airport northwest, serving the north (North Side) neighborhoods where it connects the Three States Highway (Tri-State Expressway), the main north-south highway. The Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) and the Adlai E. Stevenson Expressway are two highways leading to the western and southwest suburbs where they are also connected to the Three States. The Dan Ryan Expressway, a continuation of the Kennedy Expressway, is 11 miles long and is heading south. The Dan Ryan connects to Interstate 94 south of the Chicago Skyway, 6.49 km away. The Chicago Skyway, a relatively short 12.6 km highway, connects Interstate 90 to Dan Ryan Expressway and crosses the South Side before stopping at the Indiana State border in the southeast of the city.

The Chicago area opens onto the vast plains of the Midwest and has the advantage of a motorway complex that is one of the most successful in North America. Indeed, it allows the third metropolis of the United States to easily reach other cities of regional importance, including Milwaukee, 150 km north (via I-94), Indianapolis, 290 km south (via I-65), Detroit, 455 km northeast (via l I-94), Saint-Louis at 477 km southwest (via I-55), Columbus at 520 km east (via Route 30), Des Moines at 535 km west (via I-80), Cleveland at 550 km l East (by I-90), Minneapolis 660 km northwest (by I-90), Kansas City 820 km southwest (by I-55 and I-72), and Toronto, Canada 830 km northeast (by I-6) 9 and I-94).

Traffic and parking in the city

The traffic is relatively smooth, except at the exit of the office, around 6:00 p.m. With its grid-like street system, inherited from the Chicago Plan of 1909, it is easy to get around Chicago because the streets are long but few in number and are perpendicular to each other. The highest towers can serve as landmarks but are misleading and can distort the notion of distance. To move easily from north to south of the city and vice versa, it is advisable to take the East ring road (Lake Shore Drive) that runs along Lake Michigan and passes through immense lawns overlooking the skyscrapers of the business district.

Parking in Chicago is very difficult, mainly in the downtown area. All the parking lots are charged extra, and the prices are too high: 7 to 30 $for 12 hours. Parometers only accept 25-cent coins and generally operate from 9:00am to 7:00pm. It is impossible to plan the night for the next morning. It is therefore important to scrutinize the parking ban signs, because the City of Chicago is known for the very fast removal of poorly parked cars and the laying of cars, even if they do not interfere with traffic or pedestrians.

Self-service bicycles

Divvy bikes at Clinton-Madison station.

According to municipal authorities, the city of Chicago has just over 180 km of bicycle lanes covering much of its territory.

Since 2013, the city of Chicago has had a self-service bicycle system called "Divvy." In 2016, it operated 5,837 bicycles at 576 stations in a large area of downtown Chicago, bounded by 75th Street to the south, Touhy Avenue to the north, Lake Michigan to the east, and Pulaski Road to the west. Named "Divvy" to represent the idea of "Divide and Share", it is the latest addition to the Chicago transit system. Designed to help the Chicagoans travel the "last mile" of their journey through its fleet of 3-speed bicycles, it also makes it easier to explore the metropolis. According to 2014 figures, bicycles were borrowed by more than 13,000 users per day. Bikes and stations are developed in Montreal, Quebec by PBSC Solutions Urbaines.

In 2007, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley came up with the idea of building a bicycle rental system. Indeed, it was during a visit to Paris that Daley said he was interested in the project after trying self-service bicycles. Back in Chicago, Richard M. Daley, known for his commitment to environmental protection, sets himself the goal of providing his city with a similar system. The project will not be completed until 2013.

River transport

Chicago is a port on Lake Michigan. Its assets are linked to its exceptional location in the heart of the Great Lakes region and enabled the industrial development of the city in the ^19th century. Thanks to a system of waterways, the port of Chicago is connected eastward to the Atlantic Ocean by the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, and to the Gulf of Mexico to the south, via the Mississippi River. Its 14 maritime terminals are managed by the Illinois International Port District.

With total traffic of between 23 and 26 million tons per year, the port of Chicago was 32^th in the United States in 2005. The bulk of the traffic is destined for the internal market (23 074 136 tons). Various goods pass through the port of Chicago: non-ferrous metals, ores, coke, sugar, cereals, petrochemicals, steel, cement, etc.

Water taxis

A water taxi passing under Wabash Avenue bridge.

Water taxis are taxi boats (taxi-boat) that operate as small ferries on a closed circuit route along the Chicago River and on Lake Michigan from March to December. They have five stops on its way that connects several key points in downtown Chicago, including Chinatown (at Ping Tom Memorial Park), Madison Street, LaSalle/Clark (near Merchandise Mart), Michigan Avenue (on Magnificent Mile), and North Avenue (on Goose Island). Boats also travel on Lake Michigan, on the side of the Navy Pier, offering visitors a privileged view of the Chicago skyline.

While this is not the most efficient way to get around the city, it is certainly the most popular tourist, as this mode of transport offers visitors a breathtaking view of the skyscrapers and historic buildings along the Chicago River. In 2014, about 350,000 people took taxi-boats. Many are tourists, but 30% are Chicagoans.

During summer, departures and arrivals are Monday to Friday from 6:45 to 21:00 AM, on weekends from 10:00 AM to 8:30 PM and on Saturday evenings until 23:00 PM for the stop located on Navy Pier. Ticket outlets can be found at 400 North Michigan Avenue and Trump River Plaza.

Every year, the Irish people of Bridgeport celebrate St. Patrick's Day, with its ceremony and large parade in the streets of the city center.

For centuries, the Amerindians used the "She-caw-gu" (Chicago portage) as a practical link between the upper reaches of the Mississippi and the vast expanses of water in the Great Lakes. In 1779, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, a merchant of skins of Franco-African descent, created the first colony at this strategic location. Since then, Chicago has attracted immigrants from around the world. In 1930, of a population of 3.4 million living in Chicago, 2.46 million were foreign-born or American-born parents. Their ethnic enclaves are reflected in the many culturally distinct neighborhoods. Chicago is home to many communities including Irish, Italian, Romanian, German, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Albanian, Finnish, Scottish, Czech, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, Jewish, Afro-American, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Mexican, Cuban, Colombian, Haitian, Puerto Rican. Dominican, Indian, iranian, arabic, armenian, lebanese and african, living the example of this "melting pot" which, more than in any other american city, has succeeded in giving the city its cosmopolitan character. Chicago is also the largest Polish city outside of Poland. The city's most popular ethnic neighborhoods include Greek Town, Little Italy, Chinatown, Little Vietnam, Little Saigon, Bridgeport, Ukrainian Village, Pilsen (Mexican but Czech neighborhood in the past) and Humboldt Park (Puerto Rican neighborhood), all located near the financial sector Loop, and the German, Polish, Afro-American and Hispano-American districts are not far away. Each neighborhood offers a distinct cultural air, with grocery stores, restaurants, and specialty shops.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is one of the most prestigious symphony orchestras in the world.

Classical music plays an important role in this city. Founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is considered one of the best orchestras in the world. He regularly offers artistic performances at the Symphony Center. The Chicago Sinfonietta Orchestra is a multicultural symphony orchestra that is much more diverse than the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. During the summer, many outdoor concerts are held at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. Located in Highland Park, about 25 miles north of Chicago, the Ravinia Festival is also a favorite destination for many Chicagoans, the oldest open-air festival in the United States, and also offers classical music concerts. Other performances such as the Joffrey Ballet and the Chicago Festival Ballet are given at the Harris Theater, a 1,525-seat performance venue located at Grant Park. The Civic Opera House is the second largest opera in North America. With a capacity of 3,563, it has been home to Chicago's opera house since 1929. The opera Jūratė Kastytis, presented by Kazimieras Viktoras Banaitis, performed in Chicago in 1996, and the Lithuanian Opera Company of Chicago was founded in 1956 by the Lithuanian community of Chicago. The city is home to several other modern dance and jazz bands, such as the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.

Various types of music are part of the city's cultural heritage: Chicago blues, Chicago soul, Chicago jazz, Chicago house, Chicago punk hardcore and Chicago rock. The city is the cradle of House music, a stream of electronic music that it saw born in the early 1980s. During this period, Chicago is also a major center of the punk movement and the new wave. In the 1980s and 1990s, this influence was dominated by alternative rock. In 1985, the city was the epicenter of Rave culture, before it was gradually replaced by hardcore punk and independent rock, two flourishing cultures in the first half of the 1980s. Chicago's hip-hop scene has been influential since the mid-1990s, and includes famous artists like Twista or Common. Since 2005, many festivals representing all musical genres, from rock to electro, have been held every year at the Lollapalooza, with numerous international groups and artists representing each other, including Guns N' Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, the Irish band U2, the French band Daft Punk, the German band Scorpions or the English bands Police and Oasis.

Located on State Street, the Chicago Theater is one of the country's largest theaters.

The city has nearly 200 theaters, the main one being the Auditorium Theater, built in 1889 with a capacity of more than 4,000. The Uptown Theater (4,381 seats), the Chicago Theater (3,600 seats), the Goodman Theater, the Harris Theater, the Congress Theater (3,500 seats), and the Mayfair Theater are also worth a mention. Chicago's community theaters produced modern improvisation theaters. The Second City and the I.O. (↑Olympic) are two improvisation troops known to have launched actors such as Bill Murray, Mike Myers or John Candy. The city's most renowned improvisation theater companies include Steppenwolf Theater, Goodman Theater, and Victory Gardens Theater. Chicago's theater and entertainment venues provide Broadway entertainment in prestigious venues such as the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theater, the Bank of America Theater, the Cadillac Palace Theater, the Auditorium Theater (in the Auditorium Building), and the Drury Lane Theater (in the Water Tower Place). The productions dedicated to the Polish community emerged in 1930 and are represented at the Gateway Theater in Jefferson Park. Since 1968, the Joseph Jefferson Awards have been awarded annually to the best theaters in Chicago.

With nine million books, the Harold Washington Library is Chicago's largest public library. Opened in 1991, it is located in the heart of Downtown Chicago in the Loop financial sector, close to the Art Institute of Chicago, and is managed by the Chicago Public Library (CPL), a municipal institution that has 79 libraries (an average of one per sector) across the city of Chicago. Among the most important are the Conrad Sulzer Regional Library and Carter G. Woodson Regional Library.

The reconstruction of Chicago, ravaged by the great fire of 1871, made it the cradle of modern architecture. Since then, Chicago has maintained its reputation as a city of art wonderfully. In addition to the richness of its architecture (Gothic, Chicago style, modern and Art Deco) that has made it its world renown, the city has an undeniable number of sculptures, fountains and statues, making the city a real open-air museum. For much of the ^twentieth century, it nurtured a strong style of figurative surrealism, as in the works of Ivan Albright and Ed Paschke. In 1968 and 1969, members of the Chicago Imagists such as Roger Brown, Leon Golub, Robert Lostutter, Jim Nutt and Barbara Rossi produced figurative paintings. Today, Robert Guinan paints realistic portraits of Chicagoans popular in Paris, although he is little known in Chicago itself.

Kitchen

The Italian beef sandwich from Portillo's, a fast food chain serving Chicago specialties.

Chicago is a world-renowned culinary destination, with more than 7,000 restaurants serving all kinds of cuisines. It is also the only city in the country with New York and San Francisco having a 3-star restaurant. Chicago is home to famous chefs such as Charlie Trotter, Rick Bayless, Art Smith, Grant Achatz, Rick Tramonto, Graham Elliot Bowles and Gale Gand. At the same time, the city honors culinary traditions with local specialties such as Chicago pizza, Italian beef sandwich, Chicago hot dogs and Chicago Polish sandwich. Chicago's great culinary history, combined with the visions of experienced chefs and restaurateurs as well as catering professionals, has made the city one of America's gastronomic paradises.

Chicago pizza (locally known as Chicago-style pizza) is probably the most famous chicagoon specialty in the United States, and has a tradition that goes back to the 1940s. Chicago locals and visitors alike appreciate Chicago’s deep dish pizza, made from buttered dough, lots of cheese, tomato sauce with pieces and a myriad of toppings such as Italian sausage, pepperoni, peppers, onions and mushrooms. It is served in hundreds of restaurants in the city.

The city is known for its Italian Beef Sandwich (Italian Beef Sandwich) or simply Italian Beef, which has been an iconic specialty of the city of Chicago since 1938. This sandwich consists of a baguette-type bread richly topped with thin slices of juicy and seasoned rosbif. The bread may have been soaked in the meat sauce beforehand. The whole is covered with small sautéed peppers in its soft version, or spicy topping of the type Giardiniera in its stronger version. This type of sandwich is found mainly in the Chicago area.

The Chicago hot dog.

The Chicago-style hot dog is another pillar of the city’s culinary art. A Chicago hot dog is a steamed or boiled beef sausage on a poppy-seed bread. The hot dog is topped with mustard, onion, sweet pickle relish, dill pickles, slices or quarters of tomatoes, sweet pepper, a pinch of celery salt but never ketchup.

The Chicago Polish sandwich (commonly known as the Maxwell Street Polish) has been a Chicago specialty for nearly a century. Created in 1939 by Jimmy Stefanovic, this sandwich is considered a "classic" of Chicago street cooking. This is a grilled kiełbasa sausage (of Polish origin) topped with sautéed onions and peppers, served as a hot dog, in a brown bread with amenities such as mustard.

Several local fast food outlets offer local specialties such as Portillo's, Superdawg and The Wieners Circle. These food chains are represented at the gastronomic festival known as Taste of Chicago. This must-see event for many Chicagoans since 1980 is the largest gastronomic festival in the world with an average of 3.5 million visitors each year. The Billy Goat Tavern, a chain of taverns in the city, is known for the quality of its food and its drinks. For several years, Chicago has been known for its restaurants specializing in molecular gastronomy, with chefs such as Grant Achatz or Homaro Cantu. In 2008, Maxim magazine gave Chicago the title of "Tastiest City" literally "tasty city." Finally, Chicago offers a wide range of vegetarian and vegan dishes, with a selection of more than 170 vegetarian restaurants scattered throughout the city.

Finally, brownie, a chocolate cake containing pieces of nuts, was invented by a chef at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago in 1893, a hotel that belonged to Palmer Cox. Brownie's name is based on the names of Brownie characters that he drew as an illustrator.

Museums

Science and Industry Museum.

Chicago is known worldwide as a city of museums. It is home to no less than 70 of them, all different. They offer a fairly complete view of the history, the arts, and the sciences of many civilizations. Among the most prominent are the Art Institute of Chicago. Thanks to numerous patrons from Chicago's wealthy backgrounds, this museum, the second largest art museum in the United States after the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, is particularly renowned for its collections on various American arts. Although its collections represent 5,000 years of art history in the world, it holds the largest number of Impressionist paintings outside of Paris, and welcomes around 1,450,000 visitors in 2005.

The Museum of Science and Industry, known as MSI, was inaugurated at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. It is located in Jackson Park, Hyde Park and is located in what was originally the Chicago Fine Arts Palace. Designed by architect Charles B. Atwood, the building was built in the Greek style of the classical era and was inspired by the buildings of the Acropolis of Athens. In recent years, the museum has undergone major modernization and now covers an area of 14 hectares. Since 2009, it has ranked as the city's second most important cultural attraction.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, known as MCA, is one of the world's largest contemporary art museums. Founded in 1967 as a temporary exhibition gallery, it acquired permanent collections in 1974, still specialized in post-World War II creations. Now downtown, it is located in the Streeterville area, at 220 East Chicago Avenue, near Water Tower Place. Although its exhibitions are particularly renowned, its permanent background, which places a particular emphasis on surrealism, minimalism, conceptual photography and the work of local artists, consists of over 6,000 contemporary works.

The John G Aquarium. Shedd.

Chicago also offers one of the world's largest aquariums, the John G Aquarium. Shedd. Inaugurated in 1930, thanks to the generous donation of $3,000,000 from the entrepreneur John G. Shedd, the aquarium is becoming the largest in the world with a total of 19 million liters of water and some 25,000 fish and cetaceans of several hundred different species from all over the world. It receives visits from more than two million tourists each year, making it one of the busiest public aquariums in the United States.

The Museum of Contemporary Photography, founded in 1984 by Columbia College, is located on Michigan Avenue in the Near South Side area. He is interested in contemporary photography, focusing on America and residents of the United States. His collection, composed of 7,000 photographs, includes works by Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Irving Penn, Aaron Siskind and Victor Skrebneski. It also allows you to discover different types of cameras, color prints, digital songs, slideshows and photograms.

The Terra Museum of American aims to bring together works by American artists. Located on Michigan Avenue, it is managed by the Terra Foundation for American Art, named after its creator Daniel J. Terra, an American businessman who founded the Giverny Impressionism Museum (MIG) in 1992. The Terra Museum houses a large collection of paintings of many works by artists from the Impressionist movement. On October 31, 2004, it closed its doors permanently after 24 years of existence.

Field Museum of Natural History.

The Field Museum (Field Museum of Natural History) is located at the Museum Campus (a municipal park that also houses the John G Aquarium. Shedd and Adler Planetarium), southeast of Grant Park between Lake Shore Drive and Lake Michigan. Built by architect Daniel Burnham in the neo-classical style initiated at the World Columbian Exposition, it opened in 1893 as the Columbian Museum of Chicago. Renamed Field Museum in 1905, in honor of businessman and donor Marshall Field, it is organized into four main departments: anthropology, zoology, botany and geology. Since 1997, the museum has housed the largest known skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex, nicknamed "Sue", named Sue Hendrickson, the paleontologist who discovered it. In 2006, the museum welcomed 1.7 million visitors, becoming the city's main cultural attraction.

The Chicago History Museum, inherited from the Chicago Historical Society, is a museum founded in 1856. Located in the Lincoln Park area, it has more than 22 million objects and documents that provide evidence and testimonies to trace the entire history of Chicago, from the origins of the city before its founding to the modern metropolis that it is today.

The Adler Planetarium (Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum), built in 1930, is the oldest planetarium on the American continent. Coupled with a museum of astronomy and astrophysics, it offers a range of celestial exhibitions and a virtual reality environment, allowing you to discover the constellations and history of space exploration. He also highlights America's bold plans to travel on the moon.

The American Police Center Museum (APCM) is the result of a collection initiated in 1974 by the Chicago Patrolmen’s Association concerning the Chicago Police Department. Located in the South Loop district, at 1717 South State Street, the museum opened in 1989. It gathers a variety of objects, including contraband weapons and a replica of an electric chair. In addition to photos (including some from the 1886 Haymarket Square massacre) and documents related to law enforcement, he presents a collection of police badges and uniforms. It has sections dedicated to the struggles that the city has been able to fight against the mafia, or drug addiction, whose scenography sometimes favors the spectacular.

Museum DuSable of African-Americans.

Chicago also offers museums dedicated to the history and culture of certain ethnicities, religions or nationalities. For example, the National Museum of Mexican Art, abbreviated as NMMA, founded in 1982 and located since 1987 at Harrison Park in the Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen, is the main repository for Mexican art and chicano culture. Its permanent collection includes more than 6,000 objects. The Polish Museum of America (Polish Museum of America), for its part, is dedicated to "collecting, retaining and presenting historical content related to Poland", while the Ling Long Museum, located in Chinatown, focuses on the history and culture of Chinese immigrants to the United States. The DuSable Museum of African American History, from the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art, opens its doors with the aim of correcting the lack of perception of black history and culture in academia. Since 1968, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, a mixed-race man born to a white father and a black mother, who as the first permanent settler, can be considered the "founder of Chicago", the DuSable Museum is the oldest of its kind dedicated to the study and conservation of history, culture and Afro art American. Founded in 1896, the East Institute of Chicago is the museum of a university structure, the Oriental Institute, itself attached to the University of Chicago. The museum and the Institute are supported by billionaire John Davison Rockefeller from their creation. Held in a building that houses the museum and the institute since 1931, its attendance is approximately 60,000 visitors per year. It is home to over 100,000 objects, mainly from excavations conducted by the Oriental Institute. As one of the largest collections of archeological objects in the United States, it presents a fairly comprehensive set of information about the ancient Middle East.

Chicago Cultural Center.

The Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago Cultural Center), located on Washington Street in the Loop area, is the city's tenth tourist attraction. It was built in 1897 and was the first municipal library in Chicago. It was converted into a cultural center in 1977 and offers programs and exhibitions throughout the year, ranging from performing and visual arts to literary arts. The buildings themselves present interesting architectural aspects, including spectacular stained-glass domes, sometimes inspired by complicated Renaissance models. The Preston Bradley room is topped with the world's largest stained-glass dome.

The National Veterans Art Museum (National Vietnamese Veterans Art Museum, which became National Veterans Art Museum in 2010), known as NVAM, is a collection of art organized in 1981 by a few Vietnamese veterans, gathered within the Vietnam Veterans Art Group. Understood as a humanist and timeless declaration against war, and worn in various museums and galleries in the United States, this collection became permanent in 1996, after Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, personally moved by this artistic testimony, allocated a building to it. It presents works that offer a unique perspective on the controversial subject of war, with a fragile balance that reflects beauty and horror, giving a unique perspective on the psychic of veterans.

The Chicago Children’s Museum (in French, Chicago Children’s Museum) has been located on the Navy Pier since 1995 and presents the originality of being a museum specifically adapted for children. Founded in 1982 by an association league, it is intended as a compensatory response to cuts in programs and activities in the city's public schools. Covering 5300 m² of exhibition space, it comprises three floors of educational exhibitions, public education programs, fun activities and special events. With a capacity of up to 657,000 people each year, it is the fourth largest children’s museum in the United States.

Music

Benny Goodman in 1971.

As the third largest city in the United States, Chicago is well known for having music in the soul and has always been a major center for music in the Midwest, especially in the early 1900s, when the "great migration" of poor African-American workers from the country's southern industrial cities brought traditional music like jazz and blues to Chicago, with jazz having given it birth of the local scene known as Chicago Jazz. In folk music, Chicago had a thriving scene, especially in the 1960s and 1970s when many local artists would gather to play in downtown bars.

Chicago's jazz scene is remarkable for its many renowned musicians. Major artists in Chicago include George Lewis, Ray Anderson, Muggsy Spanier, Jimmy McPartland, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon, Bud Freeman, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Frank Teschemacher, and Frank Trumbauer. In the early ^twentieth century, Chicago became one of the cradles of jazz with New Orleans. Most of the Chicagoan artists performed at the Aragon Ballroom, a ballroom that became very popular in the 1930s; It is located in Uptown and has hosted almost all the big band names of the era, including Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey. In the ^21st century, Chicago still has a vibrant and innovative jazz scene, thanks in particular to its annual jazz festival (Chicago Jazz Festival). Celebrities who popularized the festival include world-renowned musicians such as Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, Benny Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Anthony Braxton, Betty Carter, Lionel Hampton, Chico O'Farrill orchestra, Jimmy Dawkins, Von Freeman, Johnny Frigo, Slide Hampton, Roy Haynes, and many others. The most important musicians across all the living eras of jazz continue to perform regularly in town, make recordings and travel all over the country to Europe. John Prine, Steve Goodman, and Bonnie Koloc were the most prominent folk songwriters of this period. Being a big fan of the Cubs team, Steve Goodman remains the artist most closely linked to the city.

Maurice White in 1975, singer of funk Earth, Wind and Fire.

Earth, Wind and Fire was formed in Chicago in 1969 by Maurice White. Earth, Wind and Fire was one of the most popular bands in the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, selling albums by millions around the world. Their musical style and a mixture of jazz-funk and disco-funk; they will revolutionize the genre and influence many groups and artists.

Chicago is also famous for being the birthplace of "House music" and some of its sub-genres such as Acid house, Chicago house, Hip-house, Deep house, Tech house and Diva house that are other kinds of electronic music directly linked to House Music. Its leading representatives are world-renowned and include Fingers, Inc., Marshall Jefferson, Steve Hurley, Curtis Jones, Ron Carroll, Keith Farley, Larry Heard, Jesse Saunders, Paul Johnson, Adonis, Lil' Louis, Ten City, Anthony Nicholson or Vince Lawrence.

Regarding classical music, Chicago has two major orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of the nation's oldest and most respected orchestras, and the Chicago Sinfonietta Orchestra, which, along with its band, is recognized as the "most diverse orchestra of the nation." Grant Park Music Festival offers an annual series of classical music concerts at Grant Park. It is the only open-air classical music festival and is currently held in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park. The Grant Park Music Festival has been a "Chicago tradition" since 1931, and even a must since Mayor Anton Cermak offered free concerts to raise the morale of Chicago residents during the Great Depression. The festival, sponsored by the Chicago Park District, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Grant Park Orchestral Association, presents the Grammy Awards nominees.

The hardcore scene in Chicago unconditionally developed hardcore punk in the early 1980s. It was much more experimental than in other major cities in the United States and the rest of the world. It developed in 1982, in and around bars and meeting places in the northern parts of the city. Today, the most popular hardcore punk groups are Naked Raygun, The Effigies, Rise Against, Fall Out Boy, and The Blackad.

Patrick Stump in 2011, singer of the rock band Fall Out Boy.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the Chicago Rock music scene became very popular, particularly the hard rock and punk rock scene, such as The Smashing Pumpkins, The Jesus Lizard, Chicago, Ministry, Survivor, and Patti Smith. Today, the city's punk and rock scenes are still popular, and since the early 1990s, many bands and artists have burst into the city with Chevelle, The Effigies, The Lawrence Arms, Venomous Concept, Fall Out Boy, The Killers, Sidewalk, Shellac, Gastrac del Sol, Rise Against, Naked Raygun, Tar, Veruca Salt, Dark Star Orchestra, Allá and Big Black. Chicago also has many underground rock bands, so they are not known outside the borders of Illinois, or even the city.

Chicago's hip-hop scene became very influential in the mid-1990s and became popular with artists like Twista, Kanye West, Common, Lupe Fiasco, Da Brat, Rhymefest and even Shawnna. Known today as "Chicago hip-hop," the chicagoon hip-hop scene has few representatives. The genre Chicago hip-hop or Chicago Rap Music (literally "Chicago rap music"), does not have its uniform or standard hip-hop style similar to that of Midwest rap or Rap East Coast. The style of Chicago rappers often varies, and depending on the chicagoon neighborhoods from which the artists come, their styles change, from Hipster rap to Gangsta rap, or even from Rap hardcore to Political Rap. West Side rappers tend to claim hardcore Rap style, unlike South Side's who claim political Rap and rap mixed with soul, funk or blues influences. Today, the dominant rap style in Chicago is Drill music, a style born in 2011 in the South Side with the rise in popularity of rappers who are members of chicagoon gangs such as Chief Keef, Lil Jay, FBG Duck, Fredo Santana or Lil Durk.

In Chicago, the contemporary RnB developed in the late 1980s and began to grow in the mid-1990s, including artists who had exported to Europe such as Donell Jones, singer Jennifer Hudson, but also and above all R. Kelly, considered since its inception in the first half of the 1990s, to be the most charismatic American RnB artist and one of the most sellers.

Finally, Chicago is also known for its many musical scenes and for being home to certain genres: the Chicago Blues, the Chicago Jazz, the Chicago Soul, the Chicago House that gave birth to "House music" in the early 1980s, the Chicago Rock, the Chicago hip-hop and the Chicago Punk hardcore.

Cinema

Urban view of Chicago from Lake Michigan at night.

Chicago is one of the country's leading film production centers after New York and Los Angeles. Many films from the 1920s and 1930s have been shot in Chicago, mainly police and gangster films (Scarface, The Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, The Chicago Gangster, The Al Capone Affair, The Incorruptible) that draw. their origins in organized crime in the city of the 1920s and 1930s and heroes like Al Capone. The historical context is usually that of prohibition or the Great Depression.

Because of the turbulent past and the sultry reputation of being a "mafia-like and corrupt city" that has been conveyed around the world for many decades, Chicago has been trying to show another image of itself by fighting back in the early 1990s against gangster and other violent films by simply banning them^{. necessary]}, believing that this time is indeed over and that today the city is no longer what it used to be. That's why for several years these are mostly romantic comedies (When Harry meets Sally, A bottle at the sea, Shall We Dance?), thrillers, police movies (The Fugitive, US Marshals, Primal Fear), action movies (Code Mercury, Wanted: Choose your destiny, Prosecution), films for teenagers (College Attitude, American Pie) or fantastic films and science fiction (I, Robot, The Dark Knight: The Black Knight, Transformers 3: The Hidden Face of the Moon, Transformers 4) which are turned there.

Some films about the city of Chicago:

Video Games

Many video games, the most famous of which are listed below, are set in the city of Chicago:

• Lethal Enforcers, a gun shot game, released in 1992 on arcade terminal.
• Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, released in 2002, is a game set in the 1930s in the fictional city of Lost Heaven (modeled on Chicago). The player plays Tommy Angelo, a taxi driver who will have to prove his worth to the city mafia.
• Chicago 1930, released in 2003, inspired by Chicago during the prohibition era.
• Driver 2, released in 2000, is a game that takes place in four cities including Chicago, the other three cities being Havana, Rio de Janeiro and Las Vegas.
• Still Life is an adventure video game released in April 2005 on PC and Xbox.
• Midtown Madness is a racing video game released in 1999. It stands out from other racing games because of its "Cruise" mode of play, with a totally free urban environment, without a predefined circuit.
• Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City is a platform game released in 1994 for the Super Nintendo. The game features the famous basketball player Michael Jordan as a player character, but you don't really play basketball there.
• I Am Alive, an action game released in 2012, is taking place in a post-apocalyptic Chicago.
• GRID 2 is a racing game that came out on May 28, 2013, which has different races on circuits across several different countries and cities including Chicago, where the circuit makes a loop around the Loop neighborhood.
• Watch Dogs, an action/adventure game released on May 27, 2014, takes place in Chicago where Aiden Pierce, a hacker, can hack all the city's computer systems (metro, camera, traffic lights, etc.) with his mobile phone to achieve its goals.
• Hitman: Absolution, fifth game of the Hitman series, Chicago is the frame of a large part of the game.

Media

Teaches at the entrance of the Chicago Tribune headquarters.

Chicago is the third home for publishing behind New York and Los Angeles. The Chicago Tribune is the leading newspaper in the city and Midwest region; its headquarters are located in the Tribune Tower and it belongs to the Tribune Company. Founded on 10 June 1847, the title is now conservative; It is seen as one of the best newspapers in the United States. He was one of the first American dailies to support Abraham Lincoln's candidacy for the US presidency and to demand the abolition of slavery.

With more than 950,000 copies on Sundays, the Chicago Tribune is one of the ten most sold dailies in the United States. The Chicago Daily News was a very popular daily newspaper in the city between 1876 and 1978, winning a total of thirteen Pulitzer awards during its existence. The Daily News was a pioneer in some areas of news, opening one of its offices abroad, and rose to the top of the American daily newspaper in 1898.

NBC Tower.

The other newspapers have lower prints: the Chicago Sun-Times, which adopted the tabloid format, or the Daily Southtown, which covers the southern part of the city. Others cover specialized areas such as the Chicago Sports Review for sports or the Chicago Defender for the African-American community. In the 1940s and 1950s, John H. Johnson created the Ebony and Jet magazines, both dedicated to the black community of Chicago. The Windy City Times and the Chicago Free Press are weekly newspapers for the gay community in Boystown and the rest of the region.

The Chicago Reader is another weekly magazine distributed in Chicago that is part of what Americans call alternative newspapers which are newspapers or magazines that focus on news and surveys about the local life of a given city or region. The Chicago Reader is one of the pioneers of the free weekly publications movement. It was founded in 1971 by a group of students.

Some parts of the city have their own newspaper, such as Hyde Park with the Hyde Park Herald, Bridgeport with the Bridgeport News or Hegewisch with the Our Neighborhood Times. These newspapers cover information in the area and in the surrounding areas; they are generally used to inform the residents of the neighborhood about what is going on there and provide more details and specificities than newspapers throughout the city are likely to bring, such as advertisements and job searches, real estate offers, advertising for local merchants or even neighborhood celebrations.

Chicago is the cradle of the Talk Show: The Oprah Winfrey Show, hosted by Oprah Winfrey since 1986, is one of the most watched in the United States. The Jerry Springer Show, hosted by Jerry Springer since 1991, and the Jenny Jones Show (en) are held in the NBC Tower.

Television series

A few TV series are based on the city of Chicago and its metropolitan area:

Events and festivals

Entrance of the Taste of Chicago festival.

In 2005, the Taste of Chicago Gastronomic Festival attracted some 3,640,000 visitors. It is the largest festival dedicated to gastronomy in the world where you can taste local and regional specialties. Other major events of the year are the Blues, Country, Jazz and Gospel festivals at Millennium Park, each of which brings together approximately 300,000 people.

Some notable music festivals:

• Chicago Jazz Festival, an annual four-day jazz festival in Grant Park. Founded in 1979, it is organized by the Jazz Institute of Chicago during Labor Day, and produces world-class and local artists.
• Grant Park Music Festival, an annual classical music festival held every year at Grant Park. It is the only open-air classical music festival. It is currently held at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.
• Lollapalooza, an annual rock music festival, set as underground at the time of its creation, which traveled the United States and Canada every summer from 1991 to 1997. It's been in Chicago since 2005.
• Pitchfork Music Festival, an annual music festival organized by Pitchfork since 2006. Every July, it is held for three days on the lawns of Union Park, which can accommodate up to 20,000 people.
• Alehorn of Power, heavy metal festival formed in 2006 by Greg Spalding.
• Chicago Air & Water Show, annual air show on Lake Michigan.

In 2015, Chicago attracted about 52 million tourists from across the nation and abroad. These visitors brought $12.8 billion to the Chicago economy. Luxury shops along the Magnificent Mile, its numerous restaurants and museums, its beaches along Lake Michigan along Lake Shore Drive, and its distinguished and unique Chicago architecture, continue to fascinate tourists. The exhibition halls and large theaters are also the city's main assets. The eastern part of Oak Street (between Michigan Avenue and Rush Street), is one of the most prestigious destinations for shopping in Chicago, it includes chains of stores, major shopping centers, and is known in the gastronomy world for its great restaurants.

One of Chicago's last prides is the Millennium Park, which opened on July 16, 2004. Work began in June 1999 but the construction was delayed for several years. Millennium Park is part of Grant Park, one of the largest public gardens in the city of Chicago. It is specially designed for architecture and contemporary art and includes many public facilities such as the McCormick Tribune Plaza, a complex with an outdoor exhibition space, and an outdoor terrace restaurant that turns into a winter ice rink, the Lurie Garden, which prides itself on being the world's largest public garden in the heart of a megacity, the Harris Theater ater, as well as various walks. The park also includes some of the city's most popular attractions, including the Cloud Gate, a reflective urban sculpture (dubbed The Bean - "The Bean"), created by British artist Anish Kapoor and financed by private investments for $23 million. 10 meters high, the base of this monumental sculpture measures 20 m × 13 m for a total weight of 99.8 tons. Its appearance is inspired by liquid mercury. Its polished exterior reflects and distorts the city's skyline. Visitors are invited to walk around and below the 3.70 m high arch containing a concave room called "omphalos" which multiplies and distorts by reverb the image of the spectators.

The Jay Pritzker Hall music kiosk, designed by architect Frank Gehry, is one of the most successful open-air venues for Chicago's cultural and festive events. Central to Millennium Park, the pavilion hosts the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra (Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Chorus) and the Grant Park Music Festival, one of the last free outdoor classical music festivals in the United States. It also hosts a wide range of musical ensembles and, each year, a large event of live shows. Artists, from rock bands to classical music to opera singers, represent themselves there. All rehearsals at the pavilion are open to the public. It also hosts fitness activities such as yoga.

The Crown Fountain, which was designed by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa, is also a major attraction of the park. This fountain consists of a black granite water mirror placed between two glass brick towers. The towers, which are more than 15 meters high, are each made up of a screen made up of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which allow to display digital videos that depict the faces of famous Chicagoans in the form of a portrait, with water flowing from their lips. Water flows from the two towers in the form of an intermittent waterfall through a nozzle placed on the façade of each tower. The construction and design of the Crown Fountain cost approximately $17 million. Weather permitting, the fountain is open from May to October.

Built in 1929, the Adler Planetarium is the oldest planetarium on the American continent and was founded by philanthropist Max Adler. This museum, specialized in astronomy and astrophysics, offers different reproductions and models of the planets of the solar system. The Field Museum of Natural History, one of the largest in the United States, is home to the largest of the Tyrannosaurus rex complete skeletons and the best preserved. Opened in 1893, this museum has four main themes: anthropology, zoology, botany and geology. In 2006, the Field Museum welcomed 1.7 million visitors. The Science and Industry Museum is the city's fourth-largest cultural attraction, with nearly 35,000 works and 1.67 million visitors in 2007. Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum are located at the Museum Campus, a park that also includes the John G Aquarium. Shedd.

Bordering Lake Michigan, Chicago's beaches are popular in summer. Indeed, the city of Chicago has 33 beaches over 28 miles of shoreline along the shores of Lake Michigan. The most famous and busiest is without a doubt Oak Street Beach, located close to the city center, in the Streeterville neighborhood.

Frequented by more than eight million visitors each year, the Navy Pier has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since September 13, 1979. Its 46-meter-high Ferris wheel offers an exceptional view of the buildings of Downtown, especially at night. Located north of Grant Park, just off Lake Michigan, its ferry is one of the most visited attractions in the entire Midwest region, attracting approximately 8.7 million people each year. Originally the city's central library until its conversion in 1977, the Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago Cultural Center) is now one of the country's largest cultural centers. It houses the Chicago Tourism Office, several shopping malls, exhibition halls, and the Preston Bradley Hall, whose ceiling is topped by an 11-meter glass dome.

Founded in 1868, the Lincoln Park Zoo (Lincoln Park Zoo) is a zoological park that is home to a wide variety of animals including polar bears, penguins, gorillas, different kinds of reptiles and monkeys, as well as other species for a total number of nearly 1,250 animals. A Quercus macrocarpa is at the Lincoln Park Zoo, a tree species dating back to 1830, three years before the city of Chicago was founded. There is also a course and specific places inside the park to entertain children, such as playrooms, a farm with horses and ponies. In 2005, the park attracted more than 3 million people.

Finally, the city is the main conventional destination of the United States and the third largest in the world. Most conventions are held at McCormick Place, just south of Soldier Field.

Remarkable places and tourist sites

Historic Michigan Boulevard District buildings.

Lincoln Park and its water body.

The Art Institute of Chicago.

• State Street is one of the city's most important tourist streets, home to the Chicago Theater and a few TV studios and department stores.
• The Willis Tower, formerly known as "Sears Tower", was the world's tallest building (442 meters and 108 floors) from 1973 to 1998. Today, it is the second tallest skyscraper on the American continent after the One World Trade Center in New York.
• New Eastside, a neighborhood just north of Grant Park, has a multi-level street system.
• The Wrigley Building whose architecture is inspired by the Giralda Tower in Seville combined with influences from the French Renaissance.
• LaSalle Street is the financial artery where the two major stock exchanges in Chicago, both of which are now part of the CME Group, are located: the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).
• Streeterville, an upscale neighborhood in the Near North Side area, features luxury buildings and shops.
• Millennium Park is a public park of monumental contemporary works. He is a member of Grant Park and opened to the public in 2004. It includes the Crown Fountain (an interactive digital fountain 15 meters high), the Jay Pritzker pavilion (a 11,000-seat music kiosk), the Cloud Gate (a monumental sculpture made of fully polished stainless steel), the Harris Theater (a 15-seat performance room) 25 places), the Lurie Garden (a large garden composed of perennial plants, bulbs, grasses and shrubs) and the BP footbridge.
• The Navy Pier is a half-mile-long jetty consisting of an amusement park and a promenade along the shores of Lake Michigan. The Chicago lighthouse can be seen from the end of the jetty.
• Lincoln Park, the city's largest public park and the second largest in the United States after Central Park, was named in memory of the president during the Civil War. It includes the Lincoln Park Botanical Garden, Lincoln Park Zoo and the Chicago History Museum.
• The Great Lakes Fountain is an allegorical bronze fountain located south of the Art Institute of Chicago.
• The Gold Coast Historic District is an upscale historic area with many Victorian architecture houses.
• Grant Park: gardens created in 1835 and built in 1893 to host the universal exhibition. In 1901, the Olmsted brothers wanted to imitate the gardens of Versailles. With an area of 1.29 km², it is one of the most attractive parks in the city. There are Millennium Park, cultural institutions (including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum Campus) and monuments (such as the Buckingham Fountain, an interactive fountain between Columbus Drive and Congress Parkway). The Chicagoans gather there for music festivals in summer.
• Historic Michigan Boulevard District is a historic area that revolves around Michigan Avenue between 11th Street and Roosevelt Road. It includes some of the most prestigious buildings in downtown Chicago.
• Oak Street is a shopping street that includes luxury shopping chains and major shopping centers.
• The John G Aquarium. Shedd has 19 million liters of water and 25,000 fish, one of the largest in the world.
• Wrigley Field, located in the Lakeview area, is one of the largest baseball stadiums in North America.
• Michigan Avenue, known as Chicago's "Champs-Elysées", includes the "Magnificent Mile", a section of historic monuments and luxury shops.

Public and private schools

The University's Reynolds Club, on the campus of the University of Chicago.

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is the school district that controls 613 public primary and secondary schools in the city of Chicago. It concerns some 426,000 students and is headed by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ron Huberman. Like other urban school districts across the country, the Chicago Public Schools are experiencing staffing problems, lack of financial resources, and management difficulties. In 1987, Secretary of State for Education William Bennett declared the Chicago Public Schools to be the worst in the nation (worst in the nation). Since then, several reforms have been implemented to improve the situation: creation of a system of councils (Local School Councils), charter schools (Charter Schools), etc. The most obsolete schools are demolished, while the others are expanded and/or renovated, and new schools are built.

There are nine high-level selective enrollment schools in Chicago's public schools. They are designed to meet the needs of students with higher than average school levels. Selective schools offer a rigorous curriculum and above all offer a specific and advanced program. Advanced Placement).

The Archdiocese of Chicago manages the city's Catholic schools. There are also private schools, the most renowned of which are the Latin School of Chicago and the Francis W. Parker School in the Lincoln Park area. The Chicago Laboratory Schools and the Chicago Booth School of Business, located in the Hyde Park area of the city's South Side, are also worth a mention.

Universities and higher education

The Chicago Theological Seminary, on the University of Chicago campus.

The city of Chicago has no less than 97 universities, some of which are among the most prestigious in the United States. Among the largest institutions are the Illinois Institute of Technology commonly known as IIT (private), the University of Illinois in Chicago commonly known as UIC (public), and DePaul University (private). Founded in 1898 by the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, DePaul University is the largest Catholic university in the country.

Since the 1890s, Chicago has been one of the world's leading cities for education and research. The city has two of the best university centers in the United States: the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, both private. Founded in 1890 by philanthropist John Davison Rockefeller, the University of Chicago extends over a vast campus in the Hyde Park area; it is known for its influential academic movements such as the Chicago School of Economics, the Chicago School of Sociology, its literary criticism, and the law and economics movement in legal analysis; the Chicago Booth School of Business is the Business School of the University of Chicago and has a downtown campus. Northwestern University was founded in 1851 by the Methodists of Chicago; it has a 97-hectare campus in the northern suburb of Evanston. Vocational education is located in downtown Chicago.

Loyola University in Chicago, another Catholic university, has a campus in Rogers Park, an area of North Side (in the north of the city), a second campus in the Loop area, and a medical center in the western suburbs of Maywood. It is the largest Jesuit university in the United States. Northwestern University's medical and law schools are located in Streeterville, a neighborhood in the Near North Side area. With over 21,000 students, the University of Illinois in Chicago is the city's largest university; It includes the largest American medical school, the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Founded in 1867, the State University of Chicago has more than 6,800 students. It is one of the city's most important higher education institutions, along with the University of Northeast Illinois. Based on the principles of social justice, Roosevelt University is named after the thirty-second president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, two weeks after his death.

One of the Illinois Institute of Technology campuses in Chicago.

Founded in 1940 in Chicago, the Illinois Institute of Technology or IIT has five campuses, the main of which is in the Bronzeville neighborhood; it offers renowned programs in engineering and architecture, and prides itself on having hosted the famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for many years; in fact, the architect is largely responsible for the Institute's main campus, which covers an area of 50 hectares. He is a member of the Association of Independent Technological Universities, which includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Vandercook College of Music (en) and Shimer College share the same campus as the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Rush Medical College, which is now part of Rush University, is the first institution of higher education established in Illinois State and one of the first open medical schools west of the Alleghenies. Rush University includes Rush Medical College, Rush University College of Nursing, Rush University College of Health Sciences, and College of Rush University. The Rush Medical College obtained its charter on March 2, 1837, two days before the incorporation of the city of Chicago.

The Chicago area has 12 accredited theological schools representing Catholics and most of the Protestant currents. The Chicago Theological Seminary is the city's oldest higher education institution. Its seminars are part of a consortium known as the Association of Chicago Theological Schools (ACTS). The Moody Bible Institute is not far from the city center. North Park University is affiliated with the Evangelical Covenant Church and is located in the North Park area. The French High School in Chicago, a private non-profit institution belonging to the French school network, was established in 1995. Its teaching, in line with that of French National Education, is given in two languages, French and English. It welcomes 389 students from kindergarten to high school.

The United Center.

Chicago is several times named the best sports city in the United States by the American magazine The Sporting News (in 1993, 2006 and 2010). The city of Chicago has two major league baseball professional teams (Cubs and White Sox), an American football club (Bears), an ice hockey team (Blackhawks), and the famous basketball team (Bulls). Cubs play at Wrigley Field in the Lakeview area (North Side) while White Sox play at the Guaranteed Rate Field (formerly U.S. Cellular Field) in the Armor Square area (South Side). Although they belong to the same city, there is great rivalry between the two teams. The White Sox won the Major League Baseball World Series in 2005. Chicago is the only city in North America to have more than one MLB concession since the creation of the American League in 1900. The Chicago Bears, the NFL's founding team, won nine NFL championships (1921, 1932, 1933, 1940, 1941, 1943, 1946 and 1963) and a Super Bowl (1983) 6). The Bears play their home games at Soldier Field, located near the Museum Campus in the Near South Side area.

The Chicago Bulls basketball team, which is in the NBA, is one of the most famous in the world. In the 1990s, thanks to Michael Jordan (the star player from 1984 to 1998), the Bulls won six NBA championships (1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 1999) 8) in eight seasons. The Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League, have played since 1926 and have won six Stanley Cups, the last in 2014-2015. Bulls and Blackhawks play at the United Center Stadium, located in the Near West Side area, directly west of the Loop financial sector.

The Guaranteed Rate Field.

Three-time winners of the World Series (1906, 1917 and 2005) and the American League (1901, 1906, 1917, 1919, 1959 and 2005), the Chicago White Sox, l one of the LMB's most popular teams was responsible for the biggest scandal in the history of baseball, then known as "Black Sox". In 1919, eight Sox players accepted bribes to lose the World Series. They'll be written off for life. Richard M. Daley, a former mayor of Chicago, has been an unconditional fan of the White Sox since his childhood.

Founded in 1920 by George Halas, the "Decatur Staley's" were renamed the "Chicago Staley's" in 1921 and the Chicago Bears in 1922. They won their first title in 1921. The last success of the Bears in the Super Bowl was a triumph in 1986 with an overwhelming 46-10 victory against the Patriots of New England. Their main rivals are the Green Bay Packers.

The Chicago Fire Football Club is a member of Major League Soccer (MLS). The Fire has won an MLS championship and four US Open Cups since their inaugural season in 1998. In 2006, the club moved out of the city of Chicago, Toyota Park in Bridgeview, after playing its first eight seasons at Soldier Field in downtown Chicago, and at the cardinal stadium in Naperville in the western suburbs. The club is now the fourth professional soccer team in Chicago, the first two being the Chicago Sting of the North American Soccer League (and later the Major Indoor Soccer League's interior team); Chicago Power of NPSL-AISA, and finally the professional women's team of the Chicago Red Stars formed in 2007. The Chicago Rush, the Arena Football League, the MFN Chicago Bandits and the AHL Chicago Wolves also play in Chicago. As a member of the Women's National Basketball Association, the Chicago Sky women's basketball team began playing in 2006. The team trains at the UIC Pavilion's multi-sports stadium in the Near West Side area.

On April 14, 2007, Chicago is selected by the US National Olympic Committee to represent the United States as the host country for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Among the American cities that came forward: Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco and Philadelphia. On June 4, 2008, the International Olympic Committee selected Chicago as one of the four Candidate Cities for the 2016 Games. Its three competing cities are Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro. Chicago will finally be eliminated on the first round of voting, October 2, 2009.

Chicago hosted the 1959 Pan American Games and the 2006 Gay Games VII. The city was also chosen to host the 1904 Olympic Games, but the 1904 Olympic Games were transferred to Saint-Louis, Missouri to coincide with the Universal Exhibition.

Wrigley Field.

Dating back to 1870, Wrigley Field remains one of the oldest baseball parks in the country. In 1914, Charles Weeghman decided to build a new ground for the Federal League Chicago Whales, at the corner of Clark and Addison Streets. Originally called Weeghman Park, the construction of this new stadium with a capacity of 14,000 seats began on 23 February 1914 and an official ceremony was held on 4 March 1914. Since the 1940s, Wrigley Field has changed little. In 1981, the Tribune Company bought the Cubs and began to talk about installing lights after the 1981 season. Wrigley Field hosts three Major League Baseball Star Matches: in 1947, 1962 and 1990. In 1982, an electronic bulletin board was placed under the central field display board.

After the 2003 season, the Cubs add 200 seats directly behind the marble, bringing the spectators even closer to the field. After the 2005 season, the Cubs added another 1,800 seats to the stands, bringing the capacity to just over 41,000 seats. In the future, a multi-purpose building housing a theme restaurant and launch cages for players will be built on the west side of Wrigley Field.

With 61,500 seats, Soldier Field is one of the largest sports facilities in Chicago. In 2005, Wrigley Field's baseball stadium hosted a total of 3.1 million spectators. In 2003, the city had 791 baseball courts, 704 tennis courts, 258 sports complexes, 180 gymnasiums, 90 swimming pools and 6 golf courses. There are also over 160 km of bike paths.

The Guaranteed Rate Field opened on April 18, 1991 as Comiskey Park (the second in the name) and costs $167 million. In July 2003, it is the venue of the 2003 Major League Baseball Star Match. U.S. Cellular purchased the building's naming rights for $68 million over 20 years.

Every year, the Chicago Marathon takes place on the Lake Shore Drive expressway; It is part of the World Marathon Majors and is recognized as one of the fastest marathons in the world.

Located northeast of the Loop, Streeterville (Near North Side area) is one of the most dynamic neighborhoods in the city.

Chicago is the birthplace of many personalities, some of whom have gained international fame.

Thus, the beginning of the ^20th century saw the birth, in a family of carpenter craftsmen domiciled on Tripp Avenue, of the one who, with the invention of Mickey Mouse, the master of the cartoon, Walt Disney.

During the years of prohibition, Eliot Ness, another child of the city, who, from 1925 to 1932, waged a merciless war on Al Capone, the godfather of the mafia.

The children of Chicago are also present in the art of music. In 1909, the city saw the birth of a king of swing, the jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman, and in 1927, Bob Fosse, a famous choreographer and director of musical comedies. Chicago is also home to Quincy Jones, and Patricia Lee Smith, better known as Patti Smith, an icon of Beat poetry from the 1960s and 1970s. Born in 1968, Anastacia is famous for its soul and powerful voice. Three other Chicagoans are rap stars: Twista, renowned for its rapid flow, the "dirty kid" Da Brat, and Common, known for his pacifist and erudite writing. Finally, Chicago is the birthplace of the R'n'B star, R. Kelly, whose influence is on hip-hop, rap, soul and gospel.

Cinema is an industry in which many Chicago natives express themselves, whether as an actor (Raquel Welch, Harrison Ford, John Belushi, Robin Williams, Michael Madsen, Jessica Harper, Adam Baldwin, Virginia Madsen, Gillian Anderson, Jennifer Beals, Brit Marling, John C. Reilly...), or as a screenwriter, director, or producer. Vincente Minnelli, Michael Mann, Robert Zemeckis, John Landis, Stuart Gordon, Harold Ramis, Michael Crichton...).

The chess player Bobby Fischer, a 14-year-old United States champion in 1957-1958, who won in 1972, against a cold war background, the "match of the century" against the Soviet Boris Spassky, was also born in Chicago. This is also the case of Phillip Brooks, a famous wrestler, seven times world champion, better known as CM Punk and Mister T.

Chicago is the birthplace of Hugh Hefner, founder of the charm magazine Playboy, of the novelist Tina DeRosa, and is also the birthplace of three first ladies, Betty Ford, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and also American sportsmen such as the former NHL hockey defender admitted in 2013 as a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, Chris Chelios, as well as basketball players Derrick Rose, Dwyane Wade, and Anthony Davis.

Every year, the Chicago Twinning Festival offers food and music from these cooperations. Chicago is twinned with 30 cities around the world. In 1996, it also signed covenants of friendship and economic, cultural and political cooperation with cities such as Paris, the French capital.

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• View of Lake Michigan and Monroe Marina from Grant Park.

• Downtown Chicago from the observatory of 875 North Michigan Avenue.

• The Chicago River bordering the New Eastside (left) and Streeterville (right) buildings with the Trump Tower (center) from Lake Shore Drive.

• The City of Chicago, seen from the International Space Station (ISS) during expedition 47.

• Chicago panorama from Museum Campus.

• Loop's financial sector, South Loop and Near South Side (north).

• The Willis Tower.

• 

  Mobile bridges over the Chicago River.

• Downtown, the beginning of the Magnificent Mile.

• The Trump Tower

• View of Lake Michigan

• View of the Willis Tower

• Statue of Michael Jordan, legend of the local team, at the United Center

• Inside a train on the blue line of the metro.

• View of the Chicago skyline from Guaranteed Rate Field.

References