I have two kids in Chicago - one in the city itself, and one in the suburbs. They and one of their wives work in the city. Yes, there are neighborhoods they avoid, but what American city doesn’t have neighborhoods people avoid.
Whenever my wife and I visit there, we are impressed by the amount of life on the streets throughout the city - not just the tourist areas.
And to be clear, Target came into Chicago long before WalMart, built a strong base there and dared WalMart to come at them. WalMart lost. A couple of years ago Target closed stores in nine cities, citing crime and violence. No Chicago-area stores were on the list. In fact, Target has 24 stores within the Chicago city limits.
Memphis, TN scored #1 for violent crime, #2 for property crime, and #5 for arson in the link @RitterSport provided upstream. That’s quite impressive. Nashville wasn’t too far down the list, either.
Isn’t the violent crime in Chicago limited to certain areas of the city, where tourists are not likely to go. And isn’t the gun violence related to the proximity to Indiana, where less strict gun laws allow firearms to be purchased more easily and brought into the city (another cudgel Republicans use to bash Chicago “see, your strict gun laws do the opposite!”).
Violent crime in every city is more concentrated in certain area, Chicago is no different. While a lot of guns come from out of state I don’t think the proximity to Indiana matters. The south side has some of the more violent areas, but that’s poverty driven / coincidence. If Wisconsin had the most lax gun laws on the planet, the north side wouldn’t turn violent.
He’ll, it’s not as bad as it was in the early-90s here, crime statswise, not even close, no matter how much some people my age may rose-colored-glass their youth.
I don’t know about Portland, but in NJ, there’s a Delaware Memorial Bridge, so I assume that Delaware is no more. Probably roving gangs of shoppers looking for that sweet zero sales tax.
A week ago I drove down Central (5600W) from Belmont to the Eisenhower. I was impressed at how much nicer it looked than the last time I’d been there (my old stomping grounds), maybe 10-15 years ago. The next day I saw a news report describing 2 shootings later that night/morning just a few blocks west of where I had been. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend driving around Austin (the not great neighborhood west of Central and N of the expressway) at 2-3 a.m. on a Sunday…
(Hope that is fact-specific enough to not be an improper anecdote.)
Sure, something crazy could happen to you at noon right downtown, but you could get hit by lightning too.
Walmart is a poor metric for Chicago. The city was very resistant to letting Walmart in. The first one took many years of negotiations and did not open until 2006, the second one in 2012.
I think there were 8 at the peak and a few years ago 4 of them closed.
Well, they stopped making Portlandia so I can only infer that Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen were slaughtered by Antifa. Too bad, I really liked that show and have been hoping for a Sleater-Kinney revival.
We were in Chicago downtown last year to see the art gallery. We wandered the downtown area. As far as I could tell, things were fine, we walked around until well after dark. The area around the main downtown was lively; as far as I could see, all the retail space was occupied. Many stores along the main part of Michigan Ave were selling tourist-targeted things like souvenirs and t-shirts so presumably, a lot of tourists still coming there. People were walking and jogging along the canal, the cafes were busy. We were not harrassed. I don’t remember panhandlers. (I see more of that in Canada) I did not notice empty retail space or boarded up anything… so… Just like NYC.
We’re not quite at pre-pandemic levels, but 2024 was our best year since 2019, which was the peak year for Chicago tourism. In 2024 we had 55M visitors (61M in 2019). Cite.
Yeah, there’s still plenty of tourists, and it’s still a beautiful city, my favorite in the world. Right-wingers have a real fucked-up notion of what it is like here (or what it’s like in any big city.)
Actually, that should make you feel safer. NYC has a fairly rigorous program of requiring building facades be inspected & repaired every x years. While those heavy-duty scaffolding tunnels are there to prevent anything from accidentally falling on your during work, the overall program goes a long way towards making sure nothing falls on you on a random day. Brick facades need maintenance & repointing every so often.
If you sort by violent crime, Chicago is #92 highest on that chart. Click to the right of “Aggravated Assault” where it says “Total.” That “total” is for violent crime per 100,000. Chicago is #48 when sorted overall by yearly crime rates per 100,000. (That’s the first “total” column when reading from left-to-right. That includes property crimes and arson, I guess, as arson doesn’t seem to be sorted in either the violent crime or property crime categories.) To be complete, Chicago is #71 in arson, and #41 in property crimes.
I do find it somewhat surprising, as Milwaukee is #8 in terms of violent crime per capita vs Chicago’s #92. I would never have guessed. I mean, I know there’s bad parts of the city, and my friends who grew up there have told me tales of going to high school, and it didn’t seem like Happy Days, but I’m shocked there’s that it ranks that much higher than Chicago. Even just going by murder/non-negligent manslaughter rate, it’s #12 Milwaukee and #22 Chicago.
Historically, yes, but one thing that may have changed in the past few years are the smash-and-grab robberies at stores that happen with some frequency now in the “nicer” retail districts (Michigan Avenue, Gold Coast, etc.). Those get a fair amount of coverage in the local news here, and probably add to anxiety about “crime is everywhere,” even if that’s not the reality of things.
