current Trends
Chicago had the third largest gross metropolitan product of US$571 billion for the year 2012 in the United States, after the New York City and Los Angeles metropolitan areas (Commerce 2013). In the report released by Site Selection magazine in cooperation with IBM Global Business Services in 2013, Chicago was ranked in the top ten list of ‘The World’s Most Competitive Cities’. Of the top one hundred global cities, Chicago ranked in the top eight or better across the categories, and fourth in financial services. Of the fifteen North American cities, Chicago was second in four categories of International Headquarters, Shared Service Center, Financial Services and Life Science Research & Development wherein it ranked third in software development. The overall high rankings reflect the diversity of the Chicago’s economy which acts as a key strength of the city (IBM Global Business Services n.d.). Chicago's diversified economy is based on manufacturing, printing and publishing, finance and insurance, and food processing as primary sectors. A substantial industrial base and a major inland port contribute to the city's position as a national transportation and distribution center. The city is home to the Federal Reserve Bank, the Chicago Board of Trade, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (City Data n.d.). On the other hand, the key issues which City of Chicago has to address are Lowering Crime, Education Improvements, Unemployment Rates and Pensions (Taylor 2013).
DECLINE OF CRIME IN 1990s
Like all other industrial cities, Chicago also experienced crime like homicide, drug trafficking, emergence of crack cocaine and violent crime in its neighborhood. The city had the highest crime rate at one point of the time in the country. Crime, and especially violent crime, rose in the late-1960s and then again in the 1980s and 1990s, reaching its apex in 1991. Since 1991, Chicago has been experiencing an exceptional and steady decline in crime (Papachristos 2013). The causes for the rise of these social issues would have been loss of jobs, decentralization of job opportunities and no means of living. Steven D. Levitt in his article explains four factors that dropped the crime rate in the metropolitan cities in 1990s were increase in the number of police, the rising prison population, the receding crack epidemic and the legalization of abortion (Levitt 2004).
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