let's also include
- world class museums
- working public transportation (buses, medium and heavy rail)
- architecture and a skyline known around the world (especially from a boat about 1 mile offshore looking west one hour after sunset)
- city laid out in a grid so the street address numbering system is easy to understand
- former home to the original starting airport for MS Flight Simulator (Meigs Field)
- golfing capital of the USA measured in number of courses per capita
"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from."
-- E.L. Doctorow
