Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
I'm pretty sure Chicago metro has well-below-average crime rates overall. So it's unlikely that crime is a major factor in Chicago's (relative) stagnation.
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I realize I'm late to the party with this comment, but I still wanted to add my 2¢.
While crime certainly hurts the perception of the city, Illinois is losing population across the entire state at this point. Chicago's suburbs used to be the only way the MSA was growing, and now many of them are declining like the rest of the state. Most are not high crime areas either with the same perception that the city suffers from.
Illinois' continued population loss is also part of the reason why St. Louis' MSA is completely stagnant this decade vs the 00s. In the 00s you still had the city losing population and St. Louis County starting to lose population / stagnate, but the core Metro East counties in Illinois were also growing, albeit modestly in comparison to the exploding St. Charles County, MO.
The last decade though? All of the Metro East counties lost population with the exception of one, Monroe, that gained approximately 2k people. This is a more rural outlying county that's dominated by two towns with approximately 10k each in the Metro East that, oddly enough due to St. Louis' weird geography, is actually in decent proximity to the city and south St. Louis County. Everyone else lost population, especially the core counties of St. Clair and Madison that lost just under a combined 20k people.
Is this the whole reason growth slowed? No, of course not, but it certainly didn't help. Especially as metro St. Louis' center of population gravity is continuing to move west and the growth patterns in the cities that are still growing in the Metro East are going further east.
My only take away is that the financial instability, taxes, etc, that came out of the budget impasse and the following administration have worried too many people. Illinois needs to get its house in order, otherwise I don't know if anywhere will grow in the near future outside of limited examples like Champaign.
Also, I'm not looking for an argument on Illinois' politics. I'm just pointing out that there's something going on statewide that needs a statewide solution. Part of it is also PR related, because you can still come out ahead tax wise in Illinois vs Missouri depending on your bracket due to MO's graduated income tax level, personal property tax, etc. People don't really realize that though, so that's another story.