[bleriot]

That’s just another reason why Chicago’s population is lower today than 25 years ago, and Illinois has lost population for five years straight. Corruption and bad policies are rampant, so why start a business or stay there if you can leave?

[notfromhere]

Chicago's population has been relatively stable over the last 25 years.

Reason its lost population since the 1950s is white flight and deindustrialization, but it's recovered better than any other industrial rust belt city.

The white collar business sector of the economy here is booming, so chicago is a complicated city with a complicated history

[reaperducer]

Chicago's population has been relatively stable over the last 25 years

Wikipedia disagrees with you:

1980 3,005,072 −10.7%

1990 2,783,911 −7.4%

2000 2,896,016 4.0%

2010 2,695,598

The white collar business sector of the economy here is booming

Which is great for The Loop, and adjacent areas. But there are 50 neighborhoods in Chicago, and most are seeing population decline.

[bunderbunder]

Chicago's population decline is also a complicated thing. The population might be going down, but demand for housing is high, and rents and home prices are increasing rapidly.

My sense is that what's really going on is that working class families are being pushed out to the suburbs by affluent but childless people.

In my neighborhood, they're building new high-end condo and apartment buildings left and right, but at the same time over 90% of kids in our school qualify as low income, and enrollment is decreasing rapidly. The playground across the street used to be full of kids all summer, but that's changing. The families on my block have steadily been moving out, because people are getting priced out.

When a family of 5 moves out in response to a rent hike, and is replaced by a couple 20somethings with financial sector jobs, that's a net population change of -3. But it's not because people are falling over themselves to get out of the city.

[kevinh]

1980 and 1990 were both more than 25 years ago. Wikipedia puts the 2017 estimate at 2,716,450, which is roughly the same as the 1990 numbers.

[brianwawok]

Well show the entire metro area.

People moving to the burbs lower the city pop but raise the burb.

That said, I personally moved from Chicago to Indiana. Some stuff better, some stuff worse.

[tomcam]

Where in Indiana? What are the pros & cons?

[brianwawok]

South Bend for me!

Pros: * Lower cost of living (think 3 bedroom house for 100k)

* Low tax rate (Chicago tax adds up)

* I can literally drive in my car to any chain store within 7 minutes. Chicago I could get to most stuff, but it was 30, 45, 60 minute drives.

* Can commute anywhere within about 20 minutes, Chicago it's not hard to get 60-90 minute commutes

* Decent state level programs to help startups (I found some decent programs from the state of Indiana to help!)

Cons: * Sometimes harder to find niche something. I.e. if you want to play board game X wit ha weekly meetup, I bet you can find 3 in Chicago. Here no one may play that thing. Or if you want to eat Vegan X... odds are it doesn't exist (but Chicago has 2+)

* Local community is still not ready to support startups. For example - The city claims to be tech friendly - but their programs are either for factories or farms. Not a factory or farm? City can't really help.

* Walkability sucks for most of the area. There are a few pockets, but not that many

* Smaller pool of applications for career motivated developer / other niche fields. I am sure I can get 1000 resumes for forklift driver, but I might only get 20 for Java developer.

[reaperducer]

why start a business or stay there if you can leave?

A lot of people will roll their eyes at this notion, insisting that companies don't leave cities because of corruption, but it happens.

I worked for a company that left Chicago for Seattle around 2009 for two reasons: Taxes, and the fear of growing large enough to be shaken down by the local pols.