There is nothing cheap about Chicago. The decade and a half before the pandemic saw most nicer areas of the city become unaffordable to people who aren’t at least upper middle class. Before that, it was much better. The pandemic made things cheaper for a while, but now rents and home prices are skyrocketing, and wages will never keep up with this kind of increase. Chicago remains objectively more affordable than NYC or Boston, but that’s relative. You only have to be a simple millionaire rather than a decamillionaire to live well. Oh, how nice. The fact of the matter is that middle-middle class people could live much more comfortably in Chicago and some near suburbs in the 90s through about 2010 than they have been able to since.
I've long thought it would be a great idea to create a "Local Growth Visa" that would let people come to the United States and receive a green card on the condition that they live and work in a given locality until they become naturalized citizens, at which point they would be free to move wherever they want. The number of visas for any given locality would be decided by the local government. I think this would be a huge win-win in letting people into the US and revitalizing declining localities. Many would move once they were able, but many others would put down roots and choose to stay. It would also be a politically easier way to admit immigrants, because localities that don't want immigrants wouldn't have to allow any LGVs and immigrants who did choose to move after gaining citizenship would largely be conversant in English and at least partially assimilated by that time, making them less threatening to immigration-skeptical people.
My 24 year old son went to a Midwest college and couldn’t wait to move to Chicago. Two years later many of his friends have already left and he is leaving this fall. They are all terrified due to the growing crime wave in their Lincoln Park neighborhood. Many victims are young people, like him, who carry iPhones & credit cards. Recently there was an early morning armed robbery of a dog walker off Armitage, before that a shooting at the Armitage L station. This is just 2 of many instances. If LL doesn’t get a handle on the surge in crime not only will the exodus continue but many young graduates won’t move there in the 1st place.
I generally agree with this, but believe you're slightly overthinking it. Chicago, even pre-pandemic, had structural issues that made it an underperformer relative to the New Yorks, Bostons, and San Franciscos of the world, and the pandemic only magnified these issues. In short, Chicago just isn't desirable enough. It's cheap and getting cheaper because it doesn't have enough urban oomph to attract urbanites, and has too many other issues (crime, taxes, regulation) that repels the non-urbanites. As a hardcore urbanist I always thought Chicago is just too sparse and auto-oriented, with the long blocks, parking podiums, sketchy transit, etc. It always seemed cheaper than the coastal cities for very good reasons. NYC is the only "real" urban and transit-oriented city in the U.S., and SF, Boston, Philly and DC are much more cohesive urban environments than Chicago.
More immigration is basically the answer to a lot of our problems but, sadly, the Trumpist wing of the GOP and the Bernie wing of the Dems have horseshoe-theoried the whole idea into oblivion.
I'm a transplant from the east coast to Chicago, I've lived here on and off for almost 20 years, and love the city. For your dollar it is among the best urban areas in the US. But I think Matt is right to worry about what the rise of remote work means for Chicago. I originally moved to Chicago to go to law school in the 1990s, and my experience was that fellow law school classmates from the coasts and the south came to Chicago with either no real sense of the city or a vaguely negative sense, and were surprised once forced to live here how great it is. I've continued to have this experience from friends and family outside the Midwest after moving here. The envision Chicago as a frigid, super-cold place (kind of like Calgary or Edmonton) that they vaguely associate with the SNL Superfans skit, decaying midwest industry, and crime. Once they come here and visit, the scales fall off their eyes. But you have to get them to spend time here before their regional bias against the midwest/Rust Belt is overcome. For example: My niece who lives in a warm SW state has been remote working since she graduated from college, and her job recently pulled the plug and required people to come back in. Her company has offices in Chicago and Provo, and all else equal she would have picked Chicago over Provo, but neither if she could continue remote working. If that story is typical, my fear is remote work will increase Chicago's reliance on intra-Midwest inflow, and as population stagnates in the Midwest, that will pose problems long-term (in 20 year time horizon) for the city. Obviously the crime, fiscal situation, and continuing problems with a pretty awful set of public sector unions here, if unresolved, only make things worse.
Matt - thank you so much for your work in general & this article in particular. Keep it up. My son is going to start college next month & I am going to introduce him to supply & demand with this article and your charts. Head start in his Econ class & chance to bond!
Question Matt: while the Midwest lacks good weather, we are plentiful in water resources. Does this start changing their economic fortunes in a few decades when water becomes the number one concern for mankind?
Was an exceptional bargain as far as cities went during my time there. Winter sucked and some places were unsafe, but I had a fantastic time taking the bus and train around. Was also during Obama's rise so everything happening there just felt important.
I don't think Chicago will ever become Detroit but it would still be a shame for a city with such great amenities to stagnate.
I'm curious as to why Minneapolis has done so well economically. Does anyone here have an idea? I mean...it has some large corporate headquarters and (I think) a relatively well-educated population...is that really all there is to it? It just seems like such an anomaly.
I'm having a hard time understanding why owners would be disincentivized from upkeeping their properties when the building-value/construction-cost ratio dips bellow one. In fact the opposite intuitively seems true, if 95% of the value of your property comes from land then it seems like you'd have little incentive to maintain the structure. Even if the ratio dips below 1 it's not magically cost effective to destroy the structure and build a new one. It is still in your interests to preserve the value as long as it is not *very* far below 1. But easy to see 0.9 or 0.8 being fine. What am I missing?
I've been living in Chicago (in the loop) for the past year, after moving from New York. My feeling is that the city does live up to the lure of affordable urbanism. I live in the core, don't need a car to get around, and can find way more interesting stuff to do than I actually have time for. But the city does have a serious problem: crime. It's seriously unsafe here relative to New York, and the nature of local politics is that there seems to be a total disinterest in dealing with the problem. Beyond the immediate effect of it being unpleasant to live in a place where you may be assaulted, we've also struggled to hire people for (high skill) roles because they're afraid to move to the city.
Really though, if Chicago would fix its violent crime problem, I think it'd be the best place in the united states to live.
There is nothing cheap about Chicago. The decade and a half before the pandemic saw most nicer areas of the city become unaffordable to people who aren’t at least upper middle class. Before that, it was much better. The pandemic made things cheaper for a while, but now rents and home prices are skyrocketing, and wages will never keep up with this kind of increase. Chicago remains objectively more affordable than NYC or Boston, but that’s relative. You only have to be a simple millionaire rather than a decamillionaire to live well. Oh, how nice. The fact of the matter is that middle-middle class people could live much more comfortably in Chicago and some near suburbs in the 90s through about 2010 than they have been able to since.
An entire article about the (possible? likely?) decline of Chicago with zero mention of crime.
I've long thought it would be a great idea to create a "Local Growth Visa" that would let people come to the United States and receive a green card on the condition that they live and work in a given locality until they become naturalized citizens, at which point they would be free to move wherever they want. The number of visas for any given locality would be decided by the local government. I think this would be a huge win-win in letting people into the US and revitalizing declining localities. Many would move once they were able, but many others would put down roots and choose to stay. It would also be a politically easier way to admit immigrants, because localities that don't want immigrants wouldn't have to allow any LGVs and immigrants who did choose to move after gaining citizenship would largely be conversant in English and at least partially assimilated by that time, making them less threatening to immigration-skeptical people.
My 24 year old son went to a Midwest college and couldn’t wait to move to Chicago. Two years later many of his friends have already left and he is leaving this fall. They are all terrified due to the growing crime wave in their Lincoln Park neighborhood. Many victims are young people, like him, who carry iPhones & credit cards. Recently there was an early morning armed robbery of a dog walker off Armitage, before that a shooting at the Armitage L station. This is just 2 of many instances. If LL doesn’t get a handle on the surge in crime not only will the exodus continue but many young graduates won’t move there in the 1st place.
Thank you for using Comic Sans to distinguish the slightly tongue in cheek graphs from the serious ones.
I generally agree with this, but believe you're slightly overthinking it. Chicago, even pre-pandemic, had structural issues that made it an underperformer relative to the New Yorks, Bostons, and San Franciscos of the world, and the pandemic only magnified these issues. In short, Chicago just isn't desirable enough. It's cheap and getting cheaper because it doesn't have enough urban oomph to attract urbanites, and has too many other issues (crime, taxes, regulation) that repels the non-urbanites. As a hardcore urbanist I always thought Chicago is just too sparse and auto-oriented, with the long blocks, parking podiums, sketchy transit, etc. It always seemed cheaper than the coastal cities for very good reasons. NYC is the only "real" urban and transit-oriented city in the U.S., and SF, Boston, Philly and DC are much more cohesive urban environments than Chicago.
More immigration is basically the answer to a lot of our problems but, sadly, the Trumpist wing of the GOP and the Bernie wing of the Dems have horseshoe-theoried the whole idea into oblivion.
I'm a transplant from the east coast to Chicago, I've lived here on and off for almost 20 years, and love the city. For your dollar it is among the best urban areas in the US. But I think Matt is right to worry about what the rise of remote work means for Chicago. I originally moved to Chicago to go to law school in the 1990s, and my experience was that fellow law school classmates from the coasts and the south came to Chicago with either no real sense of the city or a vaguely negative sense, and were surprised once forced to live here how great it is. I've continued to have this experience from friends and family outside the Midwest after moving here. The envision Chicago as a frigid, super-cold place (kind of like Calgary or Edmonton) that they vaguely associate with the SNL Superfans skit, decaying midwest industry, and crime. Once they come here and visit, the scales fall off their eyes. But you have to get them to spend time here before their regional bias against the midwest/Rust Belt is overcome. For example: My niece who lives in a warm SW state has been remote working since she graduated from college, and her job recently pulled the plug and required people to come back in. Her company has offices in Chicago and Provo, and all else equal she would have picked Chicago over Provo, but neither if she could continue remote working. If that story is typical, my fear is remote work will increase Chicago's reliance on intra-Midwest inflow, and as population stagnates in the Midwest, that will pose problems long-term (in 20 year time horizon) for the city. Obviously the crime, fiscal situation, and continuing problems with a pretty awful set of public sector unions here, if unresolved, only make things worse.
Matt - thank you so much for your work in general & this article in particular. Keep it up. My son is going to start college next month & I am going to introduce him to supply & demand with this article and your charts. Head start in his Econ class & chance to bond!
Question Matt: while the Midwest lacks good weather, we are plentiful in water resources. Does this start changing their economic fortunes in a few decades when water becomes the number one concern for mankind?
Was an exceptional bargain as far as cities went during my time there. Winter sucked and some places were unsafe, but I had a fantastic time taking the bus and train around. Was also during Obama's rise so everything happening there just felt important.
I don't think Chicago will ever become Detroit but it would still be a shame for a city with such great amenities to stagnate.
Crime. Taxes. Poor governance. Corruption.
Also these things.
Minneapolis seems really out of place on this list, it's not a decaying rust belt city at all.
I'm curious as to why Minneapolis has done so well economically. Does anyone here have an idea? I mean...it has some large corporate headquarters and (I think) a relatively well-educated population...is that really all there is to it? It just seems like such an anomaly.
Its proximity to Lake Wobegon gives it a leg up.
I suppose it helps when the entire populace is above-average.
I'm having a hard time understanding why owners would be disincentivized from upkeeping their properties when the building-value/construction-cost ratio dips bellow one. In fact the opposite intuitively seems true, if 95% of the value of your property comes from land then it seems like you'd have little incentive to maintain the structure. Even if the ratio dips below 1 it's not magically cost effective to destroy the structure and build a new one. It is still in your interests to preserve the value as long as it is not *very* far below 1. But easy to see 0.9 or 0.8 being fine. What am I missing?
I've been living in Chicago (in the loop) for the past year, after moving from New York. My feeling is that the city does live up to the lure of affordable urbanism. I live in the core, don't need a car to get around, and can find way more interesting stuff to do than I actually have time for. But the city does have a serious problem: crime. It's seriously unsafe here relative to New York, and the nature of local politics is that there seems to be a total disinterest in dealing with the problem. Beyond the immediate effect of it being unpleasant to live in a place where you may be assaulted, we've also struggled to hire people for (high skill) roles because they're afraid to move to the city.
Really though, if Chicago would fix its violent crime problem, I think it'd be the best place in the united states to live.
Which is more important to the economic health of a city: the gleaming downtown office towers or the unglamorous industrial districts?
Depends on what the global economy is like at the time. Is unglamorous industry growing or shrinking as a result of technological developments?