Chicago is a livable city. Or so says The Economist. So stick it, Trump!

I have long been a boaster of the merits of Chicago, thinking that this city on the shores of Lake Michigan is one of the world’s greatest.

Even with its pollution, the Chicago River brings a beauty to the city. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

So I’m not about to dispute the study by The Economist’s intelligence unit that says amongst U.S. cities, Chicago is one of the most livable. Even though I’m sure that President Donald J. Trump with his constantly-snotty criticisms of our city would have his own objecting opinion to that.

THE BRITISH-INFLUENCED news magazine did its annual Global Livability Ranking, which studies 140 cities around the world in various categories, including their economic stability, healthcare and the quality of their infrastructure.

I can’t say personally that they’re full of it in saying that Melbourne, Australia is the most livable city in the world. I’ve never been there. It may well be a wonderful place to live.

Yet I’m not inclined to make a move from Chicago’s Sout’ Side to the land Down Under any time soon.

Amongst the city's cultural amenities

For what it’s worth, the study acknowledges 10 U.S. cities, and finds that in the United States, only Honolulu, Washington and Boston outrank it.

PERSONALLY, I’VE VISITED D.C. and Boston and thought they were interesting places. Although I wouldn’t be inclined to want to move there any time soon.

An edible treat with its Chicago origins

As for Honolulu, I’m sure the weather is fantastic. But the islands’ isolation from the mainland U.S. – or just about any other place on Earth – create complications for daily life.

Our city's nameplate

Everything out there gets ridiculously expensive. I’d hate to hear from the people who are complaining that the pop tax makes the cost of a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola too costly having to deal with life in a place where a gallon of milk can cost $6 (compared to the $1.99 I usually pay).

As for the only other Midwestern city to make the Economist intelligence unit study – Minneapolis – I’ll give my aunt Christine some credit when she says her move from Chicago to Illinois several decades ago was the best thing she ever did in life.

PERSONALLY, I’M INCLINED to like Chicago so much because it has a wide variety of just about everything. Even in terms of weather. When it gets ridiculously humid here, I am eased by thinking that it won’t be much longer before the weather becomes more moderate.

An entry point

And that soon after that, it will be so ridiculously cold that I’ll be wishing the humidity would could back.

There’s also the ethnic composition that includes large groups of Irish, Mexicans and Poles, but also manages to work in just about every other ethnicity on Planet Earth so that you literally can find a trace of anyone and everyone in this city.

While I’m sure that wasn’t a factor The Economist took into account when putting together its study, it’s certainly something I’m going to want to see. I can’t envision living life in places where everybody is alike. I have had short life stints in such places, and they’re the reason why Chicago always winds up feeling like a magnet to my spirit – perpetually pulling me back.

A blot on Chicago's image?

TO THE POINT where the reporter-type person in me couldn’t envision wanting to write about any place other than Chicago. Even when our city takes on a seedy character, it usually manages to do so in a way that intrigues ourselves and makes us wonder how we’ll work our way out of our predicaments.

There is one part of this study that manages to catch my attention. New York City doesn’t manage to make it into the 10 most livable cities in this country – let alone the world.

My guess is that the city can be so expensive that that winds up striking them down. Although I have my own theory that I’d love to believe has some truth to it.

Trump is a New York native and has done some of his most vulgar contributions to architecture and real estate development in that city. Perhaps the notion of being a part of the same city as Trump just makes the thought of having to live there just a little too noxious to tolerate.

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Come back, grads! Come back to Chi

I found it amusing to learn that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is going about these days urging high school graduates not to give up on Chicago.

The Chicago Tribune reported about Emanuel speaking at three commencement ceremonies on Saturday, giving essentially the same message.

WHEN THOSE STUDENTS finish their education elsewhere, they ought to make sure to make a return trip to Chicago. Apply that education here. Make something of themselves in the Second City.

“You are our future,” Emanuel told one group of students, according to the newspaper. “We have a great future as long as you make Chicago home.”

What next? Will he be calling out for “Shane” to, “Come back!”

Although my guess is that Emanuel is far from the only political person who worries about the potential for brain drain causing problems for the future. I have heard too many instances of Michigan residents who, upon completing college, make a beehive right for Chicago.

THOSE WITH AN education and some special skills seem to think our metro area is a finer place to have a life than Detroit, or anywhere else in Michigan – a place many Chicagoans with some financial means use as a place for the summer cottage, of sorts.

Maybe Emanuel figures that Chicagoans with the same spirit of wanting to move up will make the same beehive for New York (except for those geeks who studied political science who will rush for the District of Columbia instead).

Although I just stumbled across New York Times story about the added cost of living in New York – to the point where many people who wish to live there just can’t swing it. Particularly if they also have significant financial debt that put themselves through college in the first place.

So where do lifelong New Yorkers with greater aspirations in life make a beehive to? Are they the ones who decide that they just have to live in Paris (if their education included any foreign language training) or London (if it didn’t)?

OR DO THE most sensible of those people realize how much nicer Chicago is in terms of being a place to actually live a life. Primarily for the fact that New York costs of living really do make Chicago out to be a financial bargain (unless you’re one of those people who thinks that slumming it is living anywhere outside of a penthouse apartment in the Trump Tower that sits on top of the foundation of the Sun-Times Building of old).

 

Am I alone in looking at Trump Tower and longing for what used to be?

Personally, I don’t think Emanuel has much to worry about. I believe many of those younger people who leave Chicago for a four- or five-year stretch (depending on how studious they are) will wind up returning.

I know I did. The only area college I applied to (Columbia College on Michigan Avenue) was purely my backup, and I quit thinking about the place once I learned I had options to experience life elsewhere for a few years.

Which was a smart move on my part. I got exposed to other people I never would have encountered here. While also having summer breaks to roam about the city and soak it in to the point where I couldn’t get in the car and drive back up Interstate 55 fast enough the day I graduated some 27 years ago.

EVEN WHEN I took work elsewhere (including a seven-year stretch in Springfield), I always have managed to come back to Chicago. The city just has a lure to bring people back.

And as for those who just aren’t latched by that lure? The ones who somehow decide that some place like Southern California is more attractive?

As far as I’m concerned, they can live in fear that the big earthquake will come along, and they will drop into the Pacific – a long way away from here where we'll enjoy the shores and beaches of Lake Michigan.

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