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Chicago metropolitan area

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Chicagoland
Map
Population
9,785,747 (2,007 est.)

The Chicago metropolitan area is the metropolitan area associated with the city of Chicago in the United States and its suburbs. It is the area that is closely linked to the city through social, economic, and cultural ties. There are several definitions of the area, the two most common being the area under the jurisdiction of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (a metropolitan planning organization), and the area defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet-Gary, IL-IN-WI Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).

The metropolitan area is also informally known by residents as Chicagoland, a term which may include areas outside the MSA as part of the broader Combined Statistical Area (CSA). The Indiana portion of the area is known as Northwest Indiana, and the Wisconsin portion is known as Kenosha.

The Chicago metropolitan area is sometimes grouped together with Milwaukee and Racine in Wisconsin, creating a megalopolis, gradually spreading toward nearby urban centers like Rockford, South Bend, Elkhart, Benton Harbor, Janesville, and Madison.

Definitions

Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) is responsible for transportation infrastructure, land use, and long term economic development planning for the areas under its jurisdiction.[1] The area has a population of 8.15 million (as of the 2000 Census).[2] It consists of seven counties in the state of Illinois:

Metropolitan statistical area

The Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was originally designated by the United States Census Bureau in 1950 and consisted of the Illinois counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, and Will along with Lake County in Indiana. As surrounding counties saw an increase in their population densities and the number of their residents employed within Cook County, they met Census criteria to be added to the MSA. The Chicago MSA is the third largest MSA by population in the United States with a population of 9,524,673 (2007 estimate).[3]

The MSA is further subdivided into the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL Metropolitan Division, corresponding roughly to the CMAP region, the Gary, IN Metropolitan Division consisting of the Indiana Counties of Lake and Porter as well as two surrounding counties, and the Lake County-Kenosha County, IL-WI Metropolitan Division. The components of the MSA and their 2007 populations[3] are:

Combined statistical area

The OMB also defines a slightly larger region, the Combined Statistical Area (CSA), combining the metropolitan areas of Chicago, Michigan City (in Indiana), and Kankakee (in Illinois). This area represents the extent of the labor market pool for the entire region. The combined statistical area, of which the Chicago metropolitan area is part, has a population of 9,745,165 (as of 2007).[3]

Chicagoland

File:Chicagoland Area Update.GIF
Different viewpoints of the boundarys of the Chicago metro area and the Chicagoland area (Click on Image for better detail)

"Chicagoland" is an informal name for the Chicago metropolitan area, used primarily by copywriters, advertising agencies, and traffic reporters.[citation needed] There is no precise definition for the term "Chicagoland," which may be larger than the MSA and include portions of the greater CSA. The Chicago Tribune, which coined the term, includes the city of Chicago, the rest of Cook County, eight nearby Illinois counties; Lake, McHenry, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Grundy, Will and Kankakee, and two counties in Indiana; Lake and Porter.[4] The Illinois Department of Tourism defines Chicagoland as Cook County without the city of Chicago, and only Lake, DuPage, Kane and Will counties.[5] The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce defines it as all of Cook, and DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties. [6]

Colonel Robert R. McCormick, editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, usually gets credit for placing the term in common use.[7][8] McCormick's conception of Chicagoland stretched all the way to nearby parts of Iowa and Michigan.[9] The first usage came on July 27, 1926 (page 1) with the headline: "Chicagoland's Shrines: A Tour of Discoveries" by reporter James O'Donnell Bennett. He claimed that Chicagoland comprised everything in a 200 mile radius in every direction and reported on many different places in the area. The Tribune was the dominant newspaper in a vast area stretching to the west of the city, and that hinterland was closely tied to the metropolis by rail lines and commercial links.[10]

What exactly is considered to be a part of "Chicagoland" depends largely on the viewpoint of those asked. For example, certain residents of Dekalb, Illinois or Bourbonnais, Illinois may consider themselves to be within the Chicago metro area, while others may not. Many residents in Crown Point, Indiana may consider themselves Chicagoans, and others may not. Often, a person who moved from Chicago may move to an outlying area, and although perhaps they now reside more than an hour's drive from downtown Chicago still consider themselves local enough to still be "in Chicago." In the same line of thought, the opposite may be true of someone moving to the Chicago area from another part of the country. In general, the Chicago area itself is about 300 miles around, from Kenosha, Wisconsin, to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, down to Dekalb, southwest to Kankakee, and up to Portage, Indiana. What is not open to debate is that the areas that are beginning to be considered part of the metro area is expanding at an extremely rapid pace. Beyond "Chicagoland," the area is also referred to as "The Greater Chicagoland area," which implies an even larger area.

Other nearby metropolitan areas which satellite the larger Chicago metro area are the Rockford and Peoria metro areas in Illinois, the Milwaukee metropolitan area in Wisconsin, and the Indianapolis metropolitan area in Indiana. When referring to the Greater Chicagoland area," the Rockford metro area is often included in the terminology, as are southern parts of the Milwaukee area. This term is generally used for advertising.

Geography of Chicago

Main article:Geography of Chicago

The city of Chicago is in the Chicago Plain, a flat and broad area characterized by little topographical relief. The few low hills here are sand ridges. North of the Chicago Plain, steep bluffs and ravines run alongside Lake Michigan. Along the southern shore of the Chicago Plain, there are sand dunes that run alongside the lake, but no bluffs. The tallest dunes reach up to near 200 feet and are found in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Surrounding the low plain are bands of moraines in the south and west suburbs. These areas are higher and hillier than the Chicago Plain. A continental divide runs through the Chicago area.

Demographics

Airborne view of the dense southern part of the Chicago area, running alongside Lake Michigan. Downtown Chicago is visible in the left center of the photo.

The suburbs, surrounded by easily annexed flat ground, have been expanding at a tremendous rate since the early 1960s. Naperville is noteworthy for being one of only a few boomburbs outside the Sunbelt, West Coast and Mountain States regions, and exurban Kendall County ranked as the fastest-growing county in the United States with a population greater than 10,000 between 2000 and 2007.[11]

Settlement patterns in the Chicago metropolitan area tend to follow those in the city proper: the northern suburbs along the shore of Lake Michigan are comparatively affluent, while the southern suburbs (sometimes known as Chicago Southland) are less so, with lower median incomes and a lower cost of living. However, there is a major exception to this. While Chicago's west side is the poorest section of the city, the western and northwestern suburbs contain many affluent areas. According to the 2000 Census, DuPage County had the highest median household income of any county in the Midwest.

According to the 2000 US Census, poverty rates of the largest counties from least poverty to most are as follows: McHenry 3.70%, Dupage 5.90%, Will 6.70%, Lake 6.90%, Kane 7.40%, Cook 14.50%.

In an in-depth historical analysis, Keating (2004, 2005) examined the origins of 233 settlements that by 1900 had become suburbs or city neighborhoods of the Chicago metropolitan area . The settlements began as farm centers (41%), industrial towns (30%), residential railroad suburbs (15%), and recreational/institutional centers (13%). Although relations between the different settlement types were at times contentious, there also was cooperation in such undertakings as the construction of high schools.

Population

Census Area July 1, 2007 Census 2000 1990 Census 1980 Census 1970 Census 1960 Census 1950 Census
Chicago- Naperville- Joliet, IL-IN-WI 9,524,673 9,098,316 8,065,633 7,869,542 7,612,314 6,794,461 5,495,364
Cook County, Illinois 5,285,107 5,376,741 5,105,067 5,253,655 5,492,369 5,129,725 4,508,792
DeKalb County, Illinois 103,729 88,969 77,932 74,624 71,654 51,714 40,781
DuPage County, Illinois 929,192 904,161 781,666 658,835 491,882 313,459 154,599
Grundy County, Illinois 47,144 37,535 32,337 30,582 26,535 22,350 19,217
Kane County, Illinois 501,021 404,119 317,471 278,405 251,005 208,246 150,388
Kendall County, Illinois 96,818 54,544 39,413 37,202 26,374 17,540 12,115
Lake County, Illinois 710,241 644,356 516,418 440,372 382,638 293,656 179,097
McHenry County, Illinois 315,943 260,077 183,241 147,897 111,555 84,210 50,656
Will County, Illinois 673,586 502,266 357,313 324,460 249,498 191,617 134,336
Jasper County, Indiana 32,275 30,043 24,960 26,138 20,429 18,842 17,031
Lake County, Indiana 492,104 484,564 475,594 522,965 546,253 513,269 368,152
Newton County, Indiana 14,014 14,566 13,551 14,844 11,606 11,502 11,006
Porter County, Indiana 160,578 146,798 128,932 119,816 87,114 60,279 40,076
Kenosha County, Wisconsin 162,921 149,577 128,181 123,137 117,917 100,615 75,238
Any county population listed with a light gray background was not included in the total because the county was not a part of the statistical area at the time of that Census.

As the Chicago metropolitan area has grown, more counties have been partly or totally assimilated with the taking of each decennial census.

Average Home Values

In October 2007, Chicago Magazine's home prices of various towns are as follows:

(Data is from National Assoc of Realtors)

Economy

Main article: Economy of Chicago
See also: List of major companies in the Chicago metropolitan area and Economy of Illinois

The Chicago metropolitan area is home to the corporate headquarters of 57 Fortune 1000 companies, including Boeing, McDonalds, Motorola, Discover Financial Services, and UAL, representing a diverse group of industries [12]. The area is a major financial center in North America, and is home to the largest futures exchange in the United States, the CME Group.

A key piece of infrastructure for several generations was the Union Stock Yards of Chicago, which from 1865 until 1971 penned and slaughtered millions of cattle and hogs into standardized cuts of beef and pork.

The Chicago area, meanwhile, began to produce significant quantities of telecommunications gear, electronics, steel, automobiles, and industrial capital goods.

By the early 2000s, Illinois's economy had moved toward a dependence on high-value-added services such as financial trading, higher education, logistics, and health care. In some cases, these services clustered around institutions that hearkened back to Illinois's earlier economies. For example, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a trading exchange for global derivatives, had begun its life as an agricultural futures market.

In 2007, the area ranked first among U.S. metro areas in the number of new and expanded corporate facilities. [13]

The Wall Street Journal summarized the Chicago area's economy in November 2006 with the comment that "Chicago has survived by repeatedly reinventing itself." [14]

Principal municipalities

Over 1,000,000 population

Suburbs over 100,000 population

Suburbs over 60,000 population

Urban areas within the Chicago CSA

The extent of the 16-county Chicago CSA (in black) and the 16 counties that share a border with the Chicago CSA (in gray), with counties divided into Minor Civil Divisions. In Illinois and Indiana, townships are intermediate between counties and municipalities (with the latter lying within townships and crossing township borders, while in Michigan and Wisconsin, townships are municipal equivalents.

Within the boundary of the 16-county Chicago Consolidated Statistical Area lies the Chicago urban area, as well as 27 smaller urban areas and clusters. Smallest gap indicates the shortest distance between the given urban area or cluster and the Chicago urban area.


Rank Urban area type Population
(2000 census) 		Land Area
(km²) 		Smallest gap
(km)
1 Chicago-Aurora-Elgin-Joliet-Waukegan, IL-IN UA 8,307,904 5,498.1 n/a
2 Round Lake Beach-McHenry-Grayslake, IL-WI^ † UA 226,848 344.9 2
3 Kenosha, WI † UA 110,942 109.2 1
4 Michigan City-LaPorte, IN-MI^^ † UA 66,199 86.1 3
5 Kankakee-Bradley-Bourbonnais, IL UA 65,073 71.5 >10
6 DeKalb-Sycamore, IL UA 55,805 46.3 >10
7 Woodstock, IL † UC 20,219 21.1 4
8 Morris, IL UC 13,927 19.3 >10
9 Sandwich, IL^^^ UC 12,248 23.9 >10
10 Braidwood-Coal City, IL UC 11,607 19.5 >10
11 Harvard, IL UC 8,575 13.3 >10
12 Lakes of the Four Seasons, IN † UC 8,450 12.5 4
13 Lowell, IN UC 7,914 15.8 >10
14 Wilmington, IL UC 7,107 20.8 >10
15 Manteno, IL UC 7,106 9.4 >10
16 Marengo, IL UC 6,854 8.6 >10
17 Rensselaer, IN UC 6,096 10.9 >10
18 Plano, IL † UC 5,911 6.5 3
19 Genoa, IL UC 5,137 5.5 >10
20 Genoa City, WI-IL^^^^ † UC 5,126 12.5 >10
21 Westville, IN UC 5,077 4.4 >10
22 Hebron, IN UC 4,150 11.7 >10
23 Momence, IL UC 3,711 9.7 >10
24 Peotone, IL † UC 3,358 3.5 9
25 Wonder Lake, IL † UC 2,798 2.0 5
26 Monee, IL † UC 2,787 3.7 3
27 Union Township, IN † UC 2,593 4.9 1
28 Hampshire, IL † UC 2,591 2.0 6

The formerly distinct urban areas of Aurora, Elgin, Joliet, and Waukegan were absorbed into the Chicago UA as of the 2000 census.

† These urban areas and urban clusters are expected to be joined to the Chicago Urban Area by the next census in 2010.

^ The Round Lake Beach-McHenry-Grayslake, IL-WI UA extends into Walworth County, WI, which lies (for the moment) outside the Chicago CSA.

^^ The Michigan City-LaPorte, IN-MI UA extends into Berrien County, MI, which lies (for the moment) outside the Chicago CSA.

^^^ The Sandwich, IL UC extends into LaSalle County, IL, which lies (for the moment) outside the Chicago CSA.

^^^^ The Genoa City, WI-IL UC extends into Walworth County, WI, which lies (for the moment) outside the Chicago CSA.

Transportation

Major airports

Commuter rail

  • Chicago Transit Authority trains, locally referred to as "the L", (after "elevated train") serving Chicago and the near suburbs
  • Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation, also known as Metra:
    • 4 lines serving southern Cook County and Will County
    • 3 lines serving western Cook County, DuPage County, and Kane County
    • 1 line serving northwestern Cook County and McHenry County
    • 3 lines serving northern Cook County and Lake County, with 1 line extending up to Kenosha, Wisconsin
  • South Shore Line shares the Metra electric lines and connects Chicago to Gary, Michigan City, ending at South Bend, Indiana.

Major highways

Major corridors

In addition to the Chicago Loop, the metro area is home to a few important subregional corridors of commercial activities. Among them are:

Area codes

Main article: List of Illinois area codes

From 1947 until 1988, the Illinois portion of the Chicago metro area was served by a single area code, 312, which abutted the 815 area code. In 1988 the 708 area code was introduced and the 312 area code became exclusive to the city of Chicago.

It became common to call suburbanites "708'ers", in reference to their area code.

The 708 area code was partitioned in 1996 into three area codes, serving different portions of the metro area: 630, 708, and 847.

At the same time that the 708 area code was in trouble, the 312 area code in Chicago was also exhausting its supply of available numbers. As a result, the city of Chicago was divided into two area codes, 312 and 773. Rather than divide the city by a north/south area code, the central business district retained the 312 area code, while the remainder of the city took the new 773 code.

In 2002, the 847 area code was supplemented with the overlay area code 224. In February 2007, the 815 area code (serving outlying portions of the metro area) was supplemented with the overlay area code 779. In October 2007, the overlay area code 331 was implemented to supplement the 630 area with additional numbers.

Plans are in place for overlay codes in the 708, 773, and 312 regions as those area codes become exhausted in the future.

  • 312 Chicago - City (The Loop and central neighborhoods, e.g. the Near North Side)
  • 773 Chicago - City (Everywhere else within the city limits, excluding central area)
  • 847/224 (North and Northwest Suburbs)
  • 630/331 (Outer Western Suburbs)
  • 708 (South and Near West Suburbs)
  • 815/779 (Far Northwest/Southwest Suburbs; Joliet)
  • 219 (Northwest Indiana)
  • 574 (North-central Indiana)
  • 262 (Southeast Wisconsin surrounding Milwaukee County)

Proposed overlay area codes

  • 464 overlay for 708 (no effective date)
  • 872 overlay for 312 & 773 (no effective date)

See also

References

  1. ^ Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning
  2. ^ Chicago Area Transportation Study - Regional Information
  3. ^ a b c U.S. Census Bureau - 2006 population estimates for combined statistical areas and their components
  4. ^ Chicago Tribune Classifieds map of Chicagoland
  5. ^ enjoyillinois.com
  6. ^ Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
  7. ^ The Encyclopedia of Chicago, ISBN0-226-31015-9, Credit to McCormick given by Jack W. Fuller
  8. ^ Further reading: The Colonel's Century, Time, June 9, 1947
  9. ^ Chicagoland
  10. ^ Cronon (1992); Keating (2005); Keating (2004)
  11. ^ Daily Herald | Kendall County is fastest growing in the nation
  12. ^ Fortune 500 2008: States - Illinois
  13. ^ TOP METROS OF 2007 - Site Selection magazine, March 2008
  14. ^ Brat, Ilan, "Tale of a Warehouse", Wall Street Journal, Nov. 8, 2006, page A1.

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