[marothisu]

Originally Posted by rivernorthlurker

Potential of Chicago nationally is flying way under the radar IMO.

This is true for as long as I've been alive. Chicago always flies under the radar. Even for tech, which pales in comparison to the Bay Area , NYC, and LA...it has produced more "unicorn" companies this year than anywhere outside of nyc and the Bay Area (even more than LA and Boston) but not a ton of press.

Anyway, a lot of cities are going thru a lot of development right now but these megadevelopments are usually the ones that make more national news. I'm sure once The 78, Lincoln Yards, and this start construction maybe it'll get more press nationally.

I think living in Chicago pretty much always means that outsiders or the national media will apply a 30+ year old stereotype to you or at times overlook you.

Originally Posted by BuildThemTaller

Eh, that's always been the view of people from Chicago. Truth is that a lot of cities are undergoing a big transformation right now. Look at Austin, Nashville, even Philly and their 30th Street Station redevelopment. Chicago's profile is going to lag behind what's happening because that's sort of how it works.

Even here in Long Island City in NYC where we currently live, there's like 3-4 sizable high rises going up on our block and then right across the river there's like 4 more that are pretty large - all on the river. This barely even makes the news nationally for the record but it's all together basically the size of the planned development of the new high rises on Goose Island in Chicago.

The first thing that needs to happen for Chicago is to stop losing net population. Once the city population starts to grow again, that's when the national perception - those that haven't been paying attention to what's really happening, at least - will take notice. If the 2030 Census shows population gain for Chicago, for example, expect a bunch of articles with the headline 'Is Chicago the next cool city?' By then, they'll have been behind the curve for more than a decade.

Well yes - that also has to do with media as well and the Census getting their story right. No matter what happened, there was always shit. Most of the years between 2010 and 2019, Chicago didn't actually lose population. It gained population, but a little bit. The media still either spun it to say Chicago was losing population or that it was too stagnant. There is really no winning here. And as we all know, or should know by now, the Census estimates were off by literally 14X for the state. There is no telling what the reality is until sometime later when the data is released but there's even a possibility that Chicago officially didn't even lose population at all between 2010 and 2020. It should be a warning to literally everyone to take the Census estimates every year with a grain of salt and the media shouldn't be paying as much attention to it IMO.

All of these things help of course because it's marketing - so I'm not denying that, but there's a lot of weirdness with how media chooses to do this.