Chicago's Struggle To Become A Metropolis

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october 15th, 2007







Chicago’s struggle to become a metropolis

by Eva Flavia Martínez Orbegozo


Chicago’s growth and success as a city is the result of simultaneous public and private endeavors. Both social and individual interests have developed the city and created the structure in which Chicago rests. Public and private companieshave worked for their own good, but at the same time, they have created means to facilitate the success of the other part.

In its origins, Chicago was a muddy, inhospitable swamp. Other cities, like Milwaukee or Saint Louis, appeared as more likely to turn into big, influential cities and become capital of the Midwest. Milwaukee had a much larger population around the 1850’s and a betternatural harbor on Lake Michigan, and Saint Louis was regarded as the entrance to the west due to its location on the banks of the Mississippi River. On the contrary, Chicago’s best asset, its proximity to the Lake, was compromised by a sand barrier.

Nonetheless, Chicago underwent an amazing growth in population and importance during the second half of the nineteenth century opposing the slightchances it had. This way it soon turned into one of the big American cities in the twentieth century. Chicago was founded as a city in 1830 and at that time its population was 350 people. However, by 1848 it had gone up to 20,000 inhabitants and by the turn of the century, to one million. At that point it became the second largest city in the US after New York, reason why Chicago was known as “TheSecond City”.

Nowadays, the population corresponding to the city is one of 2.9 million, and all the metropolitan area reaches up to 9.5 million. It cannot be doubted that Chicago has become a major city in the US and in the world, and it is looked upon as an icon in so diverse topics such as architecture or business development. It is a centre for conventions and movie locations, with a strong musicculture, and as a tourist spot, it welcomes around 44 million people a year. The world today cannot deny Chicago’s success as a metropolis.

The reasons that explain its raising from a muddy region next to Lake Michigan to the city it is today are of different nature and imply different people and various interests. The intervention of both public and private energy can be seen all through itshistory and this is possibly the key to its success.

The most important reason underlying Chicago’s rapid growth is transportation. First through water, then through railways and finally by plane, Chicago turned itself into one of the major hubs of transportation in the US. Before the settlers arrived into the Midwest lands, the Indians had already used river systems as interior trade routesand in the middle years of the nineteenth century, it became clear that the opening of a water canal linking Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River would magnify the trading activity through Chicago.

Actually, the first settler in the region, Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable, a Haitian who arrived in the prairies around 1770, founded the area’s first trading post. Therefore, it is not surprisingthat Chicago’s development was made through commerce. Its relation to the Lake and its potential as the gate to the west needed to be smartly exploited and that is what was achieved with the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. This water infrastructure opened in 1848 and would run for 155 Km. to link the Great Lakes with the Illinois River, then to the Mississippi River and this wayto the Gulf of Mexico. The Canal turned Chicago into the largest inland port in the country; moreover, it was the impulse the emerging city needed to achieve national relevance.

The Canal was used for transportation until 1933. During these years and following water transportation, the railroad system arrived in Chicago. This way, the city became a large hub of transportation for both goods...