Chicago metropolitan area facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Chicagoland / Chicago Metropolitan Area Chicago–Naperville–Elgin, IL–IN–WI MSA
Metropolitan region combined statistical area
From top, left to right: Chicago skyline from Lakefront Trail at Northerly Island during sunrise, aerial view Evanston, view of Gold Coast, Downtown Naperville, view of Downtown Aurora
Country	United States
State(s)	Illinois  Indiana  Wisconsin
Core city	Chicago
Satellite cities	- Aurora  - Joliet  - Naperville  - Elgin  - Waukegan  - Kankakee  - Kenosha  - Gary  - Hammond  - Michigan City
Area
• Metro	10,856 sq mi (28,120 km2)
Highest elevation	673 ft (205 m)
Lowest elevation	579 ft (176 m)
Population  (2020 census)
• Metropolitan region combined statistical area	9,618,502 (MSA) 9,986,960 (CSA)
• Density	1,318/sq mi (509/km2)
	Ranked 3rd in the US
Demonym(s)	Chicagolander
Time zone	UTC−6 (CST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−5 (CDT)
Area codes	219, 224/847, 262, 312/872, 331/630, 574, 464/708, 773/872 and 779/815

The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a major urban area in the Midwestern United States that is one of the forty largest in the world. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km²), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago (3rd most populous city in the United States), and its suburbs, spanning, by the US Census definition, 16 counties in northeast Illinois, southeast Wisconsin, and northwest Indiana. The MSA had a 2020 population of 9.7 million people and the CSA was estimated at nearly 10 million people. The Chicago area is the third-largest metropolitan area and the third-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States, as well as the fourth-largest metropolitan area in North America, and the largest metropolitan area within the Great Lakes megalopolis.

The Combined Statistical Area's population decreased before the 2010 census, but has now started to increase according to the 2020 Census towards the 10 million people mark. The metropolitan area has seen an increase of Latin American residents, and the Asian American population also increased according to the 2020 Census. The metropolitan area represents about 3 percent of the United States population.

The Chicago metropolitan area has one of the world's largest and most diversified economies. It is a key factor of the Illinois economy with more than six million full and part-time employees, and generating an annual gross regional product (GRP) of $689 billion in 2018. The region is home to more than 400 major corporate headquarters, including 31 in the Fortune 500 such as McDonald's, Boeing, United, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. For six consecutive years, Chicagoland was ranked the nation's top metropolitan area for corporate relocation.

The Chicago area is home to a number of the nation's leading research universities including the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Chicago, DePaul University, Loyola University and Illinois Institute of Technology. The University of Chicago and Northwestern University are consistently ranked as two of the best universities in the world.

There are many transportation options around the area. The Chicago Transit Authority serves primarily the city proper, and Pace buses, Metra, Amtrak, the South Shore Line and others provide commuter services for the suburbs, with some connections within the city.

Definitions

Metropolitan statistical area

The Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) was originally designated by the United States Census Bureau in 1950. It comprised 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, now defined as the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI Metropolitan Statistical Area, is the third largest MSA by population in the United States. The 2015 census estimate for the MSA was 9,427,676, a decline from 9,729,825 in the 2010 census. This loss of population has been attributed to taxes, political issues, and other factors.

The Chicago MSA is further subdivided by state boundaries 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.

A breakdown of the 2009 estimated populations of the three Metropolitan Divisions of the MSA are as follows:

Combined Statistical Area

The OMB also defines a slightly larger region as a Combined Statistical Area (CSA). The Chicago-Naperville, IL-IN-WI Combined Statistical Area combines 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 CSA has a population of 9,928,312 (2014 estimate).

United Nations' Chicago urban agglomeration

The Chicago urban agglomeration, according to the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects report (2011 revision), lists a population of 9,545,000. The term “urban agglomeration” refers to the population contained within the contours of a contiguous territory inhabited at urban density levels. It usually incorporates the population in a city plus that in the surrounding area.

Chicagoland

Chicagoland by county and state.

A map of Chicagoland in relation to the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.

Chicagoland is an informal name for the Chicago metropolitan area. The term Chicagoland has no official definition, and the region is often considered to include areas beyond the corresponding MSA, as well as portions of the greater CSA.

Colonel Robert R. McCormick, editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, usually gets credit for placing the term in common use. McCormick's conception of Chicagoland stretched all the way to nearby parts of four states (Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa). The first usage was in the Tribune's July 27, 1926 front page headline, "Chicagoland's Shrines: A Tour of Discoveries", for an article by reporter James O'Donnell Bennett. He stated that Chicagoland comprised everything in a 200-mile (320 km) 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.

Today, the Chicago Tribune's usage includes the city of Chicago, the rest of Cook County, eight nearby Illinois counties (Lake, McHenry, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Grundy, Will, and Kankakee), and the two Indiana counties of Lake and Porter. Illinois Department of Tourism literature uses Chicagoland for suburbs in Cook, Lake, DuPage, Kane, and Will counties, treating the city separately. The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce defines it as all of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties.

Differing viewpoints exist, of course. For example, many residents who live in some of the more distant satellite counties nonetheless refer to themselves as being "from Chicago" or "Chicagoans". Until recently, DeKalb County was not considered part of the region proper, but as the highly developed area has continued to expand, it is now commonly defined as the "far suburbs" of the city.

In addition, company marketing programs such as Construction Data Company's "Chicago and Vicinity" region and the Chicago Automobile Trade Association's "Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana" advertising campaign are directed at the MSA itself, as well as LaSalle, Winnebago (Rockford), Boone, and Ogle counties in Illinois, in addition to Jasper, Newton, and La Porte counties in Indiana and Kenosha, Racine, and Walworth counties in Wisconsin, and even as far northeast as Berrien County, Michigan. The region is part of the Great Lakes Megalopolis, containing an estimated 54 million people.

Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning

Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) is an Illinois state agency responsible for transportation infrastructure, land use, and long term economic development planning for the areas under its jurisdiction within Illinois. The planning area has a population of over 8 million, which includes the following locations in Illinois:

The Chicago skyline

Geography and environment

The city of Chicago lies in the Chicago Plain, a flat and broad area characterized by little topographical relief. The few low hills are sand ridges. North of the Chicago Plain, steep bluffs and ravines run alongside Lake Michigan.

Along the southern shore of the Chicago Plain, sand dunes run alongside the lake. The tallest dunes reach up to near 200 feet (61 m) 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, separating the Mississippi River watershed from that of the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River, runs through the Chicago area.

A 2012 survey of the urban trees and forests in the seven county Illinois section of the Chicago area found that 21% of the land is covered by the tree and shrub canopy, made up of about 157,142,000 trees. The five most common tree species are buckthorn, green ash, boxelder, black cherry, and American elm. These resources perform important functions in carbon storage, water recycling, and energy saving.

Demographics

Airborne view of the dense southern part of Chicago, running alongside Lake Michigan. Downtown Chicago is at the far left by the lake in the photo.

As of the 2010 Census, the metropolitan area had a population of 9,729,825. The population density was 1,318 per square mile. The racial makeup was 52.8% Non-Latino White, 22.1% were Latino, 16.7% were Non-Latino African Americans, and 6.4% were Asian. Other ethnic groups such as Native Americans and Pacific Islanders made up 2.0% of the population.

The suburbs, surrounded by easily annexed flat ground, have been expanding at a tremendous rate since the early 1960s. Aurora, Elgin, Joliet, and Naperville are noteworthy for being four of the few boomburbs outside the Sun Belt, West Coast and Mountain States regions, and exurban Kendall County ranked as the fastest-growing county (among counties with a population greater than 10,000) in the United States between the years 2000 and 2007.

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 Midwestern United States.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, poverty rates of the largest counties from least poverty to most are as follows: McHenry 3.70%, Dupage 5.9%, Will 6.7%, Lake 6.9%, Kane 7.4%, Cook 14.5%.

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

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

Counties highlighted in gray were not included in the MSA for that census. The CSA totals in blue are the totals of all the counties listed above, regardless of whether they were included in the Chicago Combined Statistical Area at the time.

Principal municipalities

Over 1,000,000 population

• Chicago, Illinois (2,695,598 within the city limits)

Over 200,000 population

• Aurora, Illinois (200,661 within the city limits)

Over 100,000 population

Over 50,000 population

View of Chicago greater metropolitan region and the North branch of the Chicago River from the Willis Tower

Urban areas within the Chicago CSA

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.

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.

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 in the Milwaukee 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 in the Milwaukee CSA.

Transportation

O'Hare Airport

Chicago 'L' in the Loop

Metra surface rail

The Eisenhower Expressway with the Chicago Transit Authority Blue Line train

Major airports

• Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
• Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW)
• Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport (MKE) (located in the adjacent Milwaukee metropolitan area)
• Chicago Rockford International Airport (RFD) (located in the adjacent Rockford metropolitan area)
• Gary/Chicago International Airport (GYY)

Commercial ports

• Port of Chicago
• Port of Indiana-Burns Harbor

Transit systems

Commercial freight

Chicago has been at the center of the United States' railroad network since the 19th century. Almost all Class I railroads serve the area, the most in North America.

Passenger

• Chicago Transit Authority trains, locally referred to as " the 'L' ", (after "elevated train") serving Chicago and the near suburbs
• Pace Suburban Bus operates suburban bus and regional vanpool, paratransit, and ride-matching services in the Chicagoland region.
• Metra run by the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation:
  • 4 lines serving southern Cook County and Will County
  • 3 lines serving western Cook County, DuPage County, and Kane County
  • 2 lines serving northern Cook County and Lake County
  • 1 line serving northern Cook County, Lake County, and Kenosha County
  • 1 line serving northwestern Cook County and McHenry County
• South Shore Line shares the Metra electric lines and connects Chicago to Gary, Michigan City, and ending at South Bend.
• Amtrak operates Union Station which is the major Amtrak passenger rail hub with connections to Metra and the within a few blocks of connections to several 'L' lines. Amtrak also operates a connecting station out of Joliet.

Major highways

Interstates

• Interstate 41 (I-41) runs concurrently with Interstate 94 at the northern terminus of the Tri-State Tollway.
• Interstate 55 (I-55) is the Adlai Stevenson Expy.
• I-355 is the Veterans Memorial Tollway (formerly North-South Tollway).
• I-57 is unofficially the "West Leg" of the Dan Ryan Expy.
• I-65 has no name, whether official or unofficial.
• I-80 is officially called the Borman Expy (cosigned with I-94), Kingery Expy (cosigned with I-94 for 3 miles), Tri-State Tollway (cosigned with I-294 for 4 miles) and is unofficially called the Moline Expy west of I-294.
• I-88 is the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway (formerly East-West Tollway)
• I-90 is locally known as Jane Addams Tollway (formerly Northwest Tollway), John F Kennedy Expy (cosigned with I-94), Dan Ryan Expy (cosigned with I-94), and Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge. The Chicago Skyway is disputed since around 2000 if it actually is I-90. Currently it is signed as "To I-90" in both directions.
• I-190 is the John F. Kennedy Expy spur heading into Chicago-O'Hare Int'l Airport.
• I-290 is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Expy.
• I-94 is Tri-State Tollway in Lake County, Edens Spur, Edens Expy, John F. Kennedy Expy (cosigned with I-90), Dan Ryan Expy (cosigned with I-90), Bishop Ford Frwy (formerly Calumet Expy), Kingery Expy (cosigned with I-80) and Borman Expy (cosigned with I-80).
• I-294 is the Tri-State Tollway.

Other main highways

• US Routes in the Illinois part of the area include: US 6, US 12, US 14, US 20, US 30, US 34, US 41, US 45, and US 52.
• Illinois Route 53, an arterial north–south state highway running through Grundy, Will, DuPage, Cook and Lake counties
• Historic US Route 66's eastern terminus is in Chicago.

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:

• Illinois Technology and Research Corridor, along the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway (Interstate 88)
• Golden Corridor, along the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway (Interstate 90)
• Lakeshore Corridor, along the Edens Expressway and Tri-State Tollway

Culture

Sports

Listing of the professional sports teams in the Chicago metropolitan area

Major league professional teams:

• Major League Baseball (MLB)
  • Chicago Cubs
  • Chicago White Sox
• National Football League (NFL)
  • Chicago Bears
• National Basketball Association (NBA)
  • Chicago Bulls
• National Hockey League (NHL)
  • Chicago Blackhawks
• Major League Soccer (MLS)
  • Chicago Fire

Other professional teams:

• Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)
  • Chicago Sky
• Minor League Baseball (MiLB)
  • Kane County Cougars
• American Hockey League (AHL)
  • Chicago Wolves
• National Women's Soccer League (NWSL)
  • Chicago Red Stars
• Arena Football (AFL)
  • Chicago Rush (Operations suspended in 2013, no longer part of the AFL)
• National Pro Fastpitch (NPF)
  • Chicago Bandits

The Chicagoland Speedway oval track has hosted NASCAR Cup Series and IndyCar Series races. The Chicago Marathon is one of the World Marathon Majors. The Western Open and BMW Championship are PGA Tour tournaments that have been held primarily at golf courses near Chicago.

Cuisine

• Chicago-style hot dog
• Chicago-style pizza
• Italian beef

Media

The two main newspapers are the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Local television channels broadcasting to the Chicago market include WBBM-TV 2 (CBS), WMAQ-TV 5 (NBC), WLS-TV 7 (ABC), WGN-TV 9 (CW), WTTW 11 (PBS), WCIU 26 (Ind), WFLD 32 (FOX), WCPX-TV 38 (Ion), WSNS-TV 44 (Telemundo) WPWR-TV 50 (MyNetworkTV), and WJYS-TV 62 (The Way). CLTV is a 24/7 local news provider available only to cable subscribers. Radio stations serving the area include: WBEZ, WMBI, WLS-AM, and WSCR.

Economy

Westward view from the Willis Tower in Chicago

The Chicago metropolitan area is home to the corporate headquarters of 57 Fortune 1000 companies, including AbbVie Inc., Allstate, Boeing, Caterpillar Inc., Kraft Heinz, McDonald's, Mondelez International, Motorola, United Airlines, Walgreens, and more. The Chicago area also headquarters a wide variety of global financial institutions including Citadel LLC, Discover Financial Services, Morningstar, Inc., CNA Financial, and more. Chicago is home to the largest futures exchange in the world, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. In March 2008, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange announced its acquisition of NYMEX Holdings Inc, the parent company of the New York Mercantile Exchange and Commodity Exchange. CME'S acquisition of NYMEX was completed in August 2008.

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. This prompted poet Carl Sandburg to describe Chicago as the "Hog Butcher for the World".

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

By the early 2000s, Illinois' 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. It ranked third in 2008, behind the Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown and Dallas–Fort Worth metropolitan areas, and ranked second behind the New York metropolitan area in 2009.

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

Education

Whitney M. Young Magnet High School in Chicago

Elementary and secondary education within the Chicago metropolitan area is provided by dozens of different school districts, of which by far the largest is the Chicago Public Schools with 400,000 students. Numerous private and religious school systems are also found in the region, as well as a growing number of charter schools. Racial inequalities in education in the region remain widespread, often breaking along district boundaries; for instance, educational prospects vary widely for students in the Chicago Public Schools compared to those in some neighboring suburban schools.

Historically, the Chicago metropolitan area has been at the center of a number of national educational movements, from the free-flowing Winnetka Plan to the regimented Taylorism of the Gary Plan. In higher education, University of Chicago founder William Rainey Harper was a leading early advocate of the junior college movement; Joliet Junior College is the nation's oldest continuously-operating junior college today. Later U of C president Robert Maynard Hutchins was central to the Great Books movement, and programs of dialogic education arising from that legacy can be found today at the U of C, at Shimer College, and in the City Colleges of Chicago and Oakton Community College in the Northwest suburbs.

Images for kids

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  Taken from the ISS on June 23, 2022; downtown Chicago is at the center by the lake

See also

In Spanish: Área metropolitana de Chicago para niños