Brief City
Profile
Chicago is a major U.S. city in the state of Illinois. The city is the largest in the Midwest, and with an inner city population of nearly three million people, Chicago is the third-most populous city in the United States. The Chicago Metropolitan area, informally known as Chicagoland, has a population of over 9.4 million in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana making it the third largest in the United States.
Chicago is located along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan and is a major center of transportation, industry, politics, culture, finance, medicine and higher education. Chicago is informally called the "Second City," the "Windy City," "Chi-town," and the "City of the Big Shoulders" (from Carl Sandburg's poem Chicago).
Today, Chicago is the financial, business, and cultural capital of the Midwest, and is recognized worldwide as an Alpha Global City. Chicago was founded in 1833 as a town to link the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River System. It soon became a transportation hub of the Northwest Territory, with major connections by steamboats, canals and (by 1855), railroads. By 1890, it was one of the ten most influential world cities. |