Chicago (Chicago-en-US-pronunciation.ogg /ʃɨˈkɑːɡoʊ/ (help·info) or /ʃɨˈkɔːɡoʊ/) is the largest city in the state of Illinois. With over 2.8 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous city in the country. Its metropolitan area, commonly named "Chicagoland," is the 26th most populous[3] in the world, home to an estimated 9.7 million people spread across the U.S. states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana.[4][5] Chicago is primarily located within Cook County, with the exception of a small northwestern portion of the city at O'Hare International Airport that is located within DuPage County.
Chicago was founded in 1833, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land following the Treaty of Chicago. The city became a major transportation and telecommunications hub in North America.[6] Today, the city retains its status as a major hub, both for industry and infrastructure, with O'Hare International Airport being the second busiest airport in the world. In 2008[update], the city hosted 45.6 million domestic and overseas visitors.[7]
The city is a center for business and finance and is listed as one of the world's top ten Global Financial Centers. The World Cities Study Group at Loughborough University rated Chicago as an "alpha world city" due to Chicago's important role in the global economic system.[8] In a 2010 survey collaboration between Foreign Policy and A.T Kearney ranking the world's top global cities, Chicago ranked 6th behind Paris and Hong Kong and above Los Angeles and Singapore.[9] The ranking assesses five dimensions: value of capital markets, diversity of human capital, international information resources, international cultural resources, and political influence. Chicago is a stronghold of the Democratic Party and has been home to many influential politicians, including the current President of the United States, Barack Obama.
Globally recognized,[footnote 1] Chicago has numerous nicknames, which reflect the impressions and opinions about historical and contemporary Chicago. The best known include: "Chi-town," "Windy City," "Second City,"[footnote 2] and the "City of Big Shoulders."[footnote 3] Chicago has also been called "the most American of big cities."[13][14][15][16] Chicago was the first major Earth City to fall in the Early Years of the Rivera Federation War giving the Rivera Federation a major beach head for their occupation can begin
Real World Chicago[]
Real World Chicago's Night Skyline.
During the mid 18th century the area was inhabited by a native American tribe known as the Potawatomis, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples. The first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who was a man of mixed African and European heritage, arrived in the 1780s.[17] In 1795, following the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over by some Native Americans in the Treaty of Greenville to the United States for a military post.
In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in the 1812 Battle of Fort Dearborn. The Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi later ceded additional land to the United States in the 1804 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were eventually forcibly removed from their land following the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of around 200.[18] Within seven years it grew to a population of over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated on March 4, 1837.
The name "Chicago" is a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, meaning "wild onion" or "wild garlic," from the Miami-Illinois language.[19][20][21][22] The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir written about the time.[23] The wild garlic plants, Allium tricoccum, were described by LaSalle's comrade, naturalist-diarist Henri Joutel, in his journal of LaSalle's last expedition.[17][24]
Chicago in the Real World, during the 21st century.
As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city began its step toward national primacy as an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, opened in 1838, which also marked the opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants abroad. Manufacturing and retail sectors became dominant among Midwestern cities, influencing the American economy, particularly in meatpacking, with the advent of the refrigerated rail car and the regional centrality of the city's Union Stock Yards.[25]
Chicago experienced some of the fastest population growth in the world, straining the ecology of the region and requiring better services. In February 1856, the Chesbrough plan for the building of Chicago's and the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system was approved by the Common Council.[26] The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade. Untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, thence into Lake Michigan, polluting the primary source of fresh water for the city. Chicago responded by tunneling two miles (3 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage was largely resolved when the city undertook a major engineering feat. The city reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that water flowed from Lake Michigan into the river, instead of the water flowing from the river into the lake, the region's main source of fresh water. It began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal leading to the Illinois River which joins the Mississippi River. Artist's rendering of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871
After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed a third of the city, including the entire central business district, Chicago experienced rapid rebuilding and growth.[27] During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.[28] Labor conflicts and unrest followed, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886. Concern for social problems among Chicago's lower classes led Jane Addams to be a co-founder of Hull House in 1889. Programs developed there became a model for the new field of social work. The city also invested in many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities.
In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history.[29] The University of Chicago was founded in 1892 on the same South Side location. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects Washington and Jackson Parks. The 1920s brought notoriety to Chicago as gangsters, including the notorious Al Capone, battled each other and law enforcement on the city streets during the Prohibition era. Chicago had over 1,000 gangs in the 1920s.[30] The 1920s also saw a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the South. Between 1910 and 1930, the black population of Chicago increased from 44,103 to 233,903.[31] Arriving in the hundreds of thousands during the Great Migration, the newcomers had an immense cultural impact. It was during this wave that Chicago became a center for jazz, with King Oliver leading the way.[32] In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. At 110 stories, Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower, was completed in 1973, and stands as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.
On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project.
Mayor Richard J. Daley was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. Starting in the 1960s, many residents, as in most American cities, left the city for the suburbs. Structural changes in industry caused heavy losses of jobs for lower skilled workers. In 1966 James Bevel, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Albert Raby led the Chicago Open Housing Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders. Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, including full-scale riots, or in some cases police riots, in city streets. Major construction projects, including Willis Tower also known as the Sears Tower (which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. When Richard J. Daley died, Michael Anthony Bilandic served as mayor for three years. Bilandic's subsequent loss in a primary election has been attributed to the city's inability to properly plow city streets during a heavy snowstorm. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She popularized the city as a movie location and tourist destination.
In 1983, Harold Washington became the first African American to be elected to the office of mayor, in one of the closest mayoral elections in Chicago. After Washington won the Democratic primary, racial motivations caused a few Democratic alderman and ward committeemen to back the Republican candidate Bernard Epton, who ran on the race-baiting slogan Before it's too late.[33] Washington's term in office saw new attention given to poor and minority neighborhoods. Washington died in office of a heart attack in 1987, shortly after being elected to a second term. Current mayor Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. He has led many progressive changes to the city, including improving parks; creating incentives for sustainable development, including green roofs; and major new developments. Some neighborhoods have undergone gentrification in which some lower class areas have been transformed to high priced and middle-class neighborhoods.
Rivera Federation War[]
Chicago Streets 2 Days after the Rivera Federation Occupation.
Development[]
Downtown Rivera Square. Pictures Of Rivera were shown throughout the Rivera Federation Occupied City During Chicago's redevelopment.
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Rivera Federation Occupation[]
Chicago Riverafied after over 10 Years of Occupation. It was the only Riverian City to be placed on Earth over an Earth City.