[reg45]

If Chicago were divided into twenty six smaller cities of 100,000 people each, twenty of those cities would actually be quite nice. I haven’t been there in a while but Rahm Emmanuel’s neighborhood is supposed to be quite nice.

I was born in Chicago, but my family left in 1950.

[Ken H]

St Louis has many nice, clean, safe towns surrounding it. The city itself is just over 300K, but the metro area is 2.8M.

[ThunderSleeps]

Last time I was there, admittedly a few years now, the western suburbs were fairly nice. Lombard and Villa Park areas for example.

[HotHunt]

".... I was born in Chicago, but my family left in 1950....."

Reminds me of when I lived in Arizona and would regularly stop by a hot dog vendor in Mesa for lunch. He had a table and chairs set out in the shade of a tree for people to eat and visit.

The hot dog vendor was from Chicago and his so his stand attracted a lot of former Chicago residents. They would hang out and swap stories.

One day, I was listening to these guys tell their stories about how great Chicago was. How nice a place it was to live. And on and on and on.

So, curious, I asked them if Chicago was such a great place to live, why had all of them moved to Arizona?

Their response? "Well it's not that great."