Walking through Chicago
expectations versus reality
This week has been a whirlwind of street names, sidewalks, and smells as my Discover class explored the city of Chicago. We have been up and down, going from the northern neighborhood of Rogers Park to the southernmost of Beverly. Everywhere we wandered, my expectations were shattered. These past five days have shown me that to properly know a city you can’t form an opinion based on someone else’s encounter — you have to explore for yourself.
Friendliness
I always expected Chicago to full of people bustling from one place to another, only focused on themselves. Others told me that people in large cities are rude and selfish. This past week I learned that this is not true whatsoever. A busy city has busy people, but that doesn’t mean everyone has tunnel vision. As our large group trekked around Humboldt Park, residents would look at us or stop to listen to what our professor had to say. Both in Rogers Park and the surrounding area of the 95th/Dan Ryan train stop, locals passing by would say hello. A man in Beverly asked us what we were doing and was interested when we told him we were on a walking tour of the neighborhood. I only came across friendly faces as we walked around. A big city does not equate to a mean city, as many will believe.
Real Estate
I grew up in a suburb filled with identical houses — ninety five percent of the houses had the front door on the left and the garage on the right. I have become accustomed to neighborhoods and towns having one style of architecture throughout, and so coming to Chicago I expected the same. This was not the case. No longer were there rows upon rows of houses, all looking the exact same. Neighborhoods here burst with personality, each house’s style fighting with the one next to it for attention. Chicago has older sectors as well as new, but everything clashes together when it comes to the homes here. There will be a house made up almost entirely of windows next to a mansion that could pass as an ornate castle. The varied architecture gives an quality to the city that I have never seen before. I expected a uniform landscape and instead was gifted with a city of individuality.
Crime
Whenever I heard about Chicago in the past, one of the first thoughts that popped into my mind was crime. My criminology teacher always emphasized how there were gangs in the city and how it was the murder capital of the world. Whenever the news talked about Chicago on TV, my mother would turn up the volume to try and make a point. This week helped me to realize that Chicago isn’t as full of crime as people make it out to be. There is a lot of stigma about how crime is concentrated in the South Side, so relatives who knew I was going to DePaul constantly told me to stay away from there. This week when our class walked around southern Chicago, I saw that it was not a bad neighborhood, but instead a place where citizens were deprived of resources that would help them stay out of criminal activity. The sense of community there was strong, with random strangers saying hello to each other and younger folks helping older citizens sit down on the bus. News stories are only magnifying the bad things that happen in Chicago and the media tends to target the South Side. By exploring the city for myself, I discovered that crime isn’t concentrated anywhere, but is actually in pockets everywhere in Chicago. There may be a higher crime rate here than other places, but there is also crime all over the city, just as any other metropolis.
Cleanliness
Having relatives in Denmark meant that my whole life I spent weeks there ever summer. Danes are very environmentally conscientious people, so everything from their energy resources to their streets are clean. I grew up being told by my Danish family members that major cities in the US were very polluted, and so coming to Chicago I expected it to be like parts of Los Angeles or New York. I was bracing myself for a miasma of trash and piss to hang in the air wherever I went, and I also believed that there would be garbage everywhere with a few rats scurrying here and there. This ended up not being my experience as my class explored the city this week. There were occasional patches where a stench would hit you, but overall the air felt fresh. Because of Chicago’s grid system with alleyways for garbage cans, litter isn’t an issue like in New York or LA. All the eye sores are hidden in the alleys. The city is very clean compared to other big cities, and has a myriad of flowers in most neighborhoods. When we walked through Asia on Argyle, there were flowers in the street with the storm drain in the middle to naturally water it. Chicago is a well thought out place that is lovely to be in.
Friendliness, real estate, crime, and cleanliness are only a few aspects of Chicago where my expectations were broken this week. Exploring the city and forming my own opinion on it was eye-opening. These past five days of walking make me feel like I know the city much better. In the future when people ask for my opinion on something about Chicago, I’ll hold my tongue and allow them to see it for themselves.
