Among the fields in which its influence has been seen are physics where Chicago Pile-1 served as the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, and architecture where it has contributed Chicago school architecture. Since the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, it has been regarded as one of the ten most influential cities in the world. Incorporated as a city in 1837 after being founded in 1833 at the site of a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, it soon became a major transportation hub in North America and quickly became the business and financial capital of the American Midwest. Chicago has been classified as an alpha world city for its worldwide economic and cultural influence. Adjacent to Lake Michigan, it is the largest city located on the Great Lakes and among the world's twenty-five largest urban areas by population.

The Chicago metropolitan area (commonly referred to as Chicagoland) has a population of over 9.7 million people in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, making it also the third largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Location in the Chicago metro area and IllinoisĬoordinates: 41★2′55″N 87☃7′40″W / 41.88194, -87.62778Ĭhicago (IPA: /ʃɪˈkɑːgoʊ/) is the largest city in the state of Illinois, the largest in the Midwest, and, with a population of nearly 3 million people located almost entirely in Cook County (a portion of the city's O'Hare International Airport overlaps into DuPage County), is the third-most populous city in the United States. Motto: Urbs in Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), Make No Small Plans, I Will Now that you have filled my life with loveĭreams that once seemed hopeless come with ease

Chicago i am alive again