Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Chicago or St Louis?

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Alex, I was buying most of what you were saying until you got to the end. St. Louis has a MUCH higher violent crime rate than Chicago. STL has been in the top 7 in the US in this category for many years running. STL has a much higher poverty level than Chicago in the metro area...and THAT'S where your crime comes from. As for the cities being comparable, yes they're both cities. But comparable? Not too. Chicago is a world class city with all the amenities and some very unique attributes, while STL is a region-class city which attracts relatively few international and coastal tourists.

St. Louis! Better bars, restaurants, museums, easier to get around, lower crime, better weather!

http://www.movingvan.com/tools/CrimeTool.cfm This is a good site to compare the cities and Yes, St. Louis has better stats when it comes to crime.

U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics http://149.101.22.40/dataonline/Search/Crime/Local/RunCrimeTrendsInOneVar.cfm CHICAGO crimes: 1997: 256,413 1998: 249,302 1999: 227,529 http://149.101.22.40/dataonline/Search/Crime/Local/RunCrimeTrendsInOneVar.cfm St. Louis crimes: 1997: 51,214 1998: 51,459 1999: 47,711 Now, I don't know if you voted for Al Gore, but even his lawyers' recounting the above stats would not refute the fact that Chicago, while more populous than STL, has nearly TWICE--T W I C E-- the amount of crime as STL. I ran the totals of Kansas City and STL together, and Chicago STILL came out ahead... Sources: FBI, Uniform Crime Reports as prepared by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data Lastly, I have been in STL for over 30 years and never been robbed. I have been in Chicago maybe 40 times at the most and had 2 robbery attempts just walking to the Marriot Residence Inn once and on MI Ave. another time. If I had a family I wanted to take on vacation, not only would I not VISIT Chicago.. I would even LIVE there or near there... just my opinion.

Well DUH, Alex. Those are crude stats, not ratios. Would you like to assert that Gary IN and E St Louis are LESS dangerous than Chicago because they have fewer murders, etc? You never took statistics 101. The national crime rankings are PER CAPITA. Divide those Chicago numbers by 8.1 (the difference between the populations of the two cities is a factor of 8.1)...and youll find Chicago has a MUCH LOWER crime rate.

We can both manipulate #s, but CHI does not have twice STL's population while having twice the crime. I hope no one in CHI ever has crime, or STL, but it does not change the fact of the #s. E STL is a bad scene, yes, but I hope you realize it's in IL, not STL.. if so, great. Every time I travel on business to CHI, my ultimate goal is to get out of there. It truly is nothing special in my opinion, despite being a great city. I guess my truest answer to the original question would be: "NEITHER."

Hey guys!!! The link a few posts above show the % of crime. Chicago is higher!

".....but CHI does not have twice STL's population while having twice the crime". Correct. CHI had a 2000 census of 2,896,000 STL was 348,000. Chicago is EIGHT times the size of STL. And the crime stats you cited show CHI has 4.7 times more crime. Thus STL has relatively MORE crime than CHI. That was my point.

My choice would easily be St. Louis. There is so much to do and it is a very friendly city.

The truth is both cities are comparable. I think the restaurant edge goes to St. Louis. I once talked Bob Probert and he agreed STL has the best restaurants of any city to which he's travelled. Gretzky was quoted saying that as well, even when he played for LA.. I am not joking that STL has some of the best restaurants in the entire country. CHI does as well, but the athletes, at least the ones I talk to, look forward to STL just because of the food. It has a FREE zoo, which is nice, Art Museum, etc... Chicago= more noise, pollution, more crime.

Compare the number of highly rated restaurants in STL vs CHI in Zagat's. Compare the sheer number of ethnic restaurants in these two cities. Survey magazines like Gourmet. CHI is far superior. Not that STL lacks good restaurants...it has many, esp Italian, where STL clearly has an edge. Also, hockey players are probably not the best gauge to use for judging restaurant quality. If Mike Tyson strongly recommended a certain restaurant, would you take his word for it at face value?