Chicago is a dump.

DrAllen, assuming you're telling the truth, your post is really bizarre. You admit in the first paragraph that all those Chicago neighborhoods are nice and then bash the far south and west sides. I have NEVER defended those areas and admit that they are rundown and ghetto. They are Chicago's version of the South Bronx or bedford-stuyvesant.

I hate to bust your bubble, but tribeca is overrated. It's a lot dirtier than gold coast or lincoln park, and is full of former warehouses and factories that were converted into apartments. What a joke. Tribeca will never as appealing as Chicago's premiere neighborhoods.

First of all, you should be the last person on earth to throw the "bizarre" word around seeing you practically live on anything New York just to bash and post as at least 10 different users.

Secondly, I said they were decent, not wonderful and I hardly saw any impressive condos.

You would think Chicago would be nothing but high rise condos, but that's completely false.

"Tribeca will never as appealing as Chicago's premiere neighborhoods."

The price and demand of Tribeca don't support your argument. Sorry.

Chicago made a certain amount of sense back when it was Hog Butcher to the World. Now it should just be plowed under.

DrAllen, everybody knows that NYC real estate is overpriced, which is why it's coming down so hard.

You didn't see any impressive condos in Chicago? LOL! I guess you prefer the ugly midtown manhattan condos to the gorgeous highrise condos on michigan avenue.

I love the asthetic of Tribeca. Rufus, that is your problem. You have no taste. If it doesn't come in a glass box you can't see any beauty in it. Fine, so New York is not for you. It never has been. Live in Chicago, vacation in Cancun, and dream of Dubai. Some of those old warehouses have more architectural beauty in one column than Trump could envision in a lifetime.

You just realized this guy has no taste? He thinks buildings with TRUMP written across them are the nicest anywhere. That's how much taste he has.

we all (but Rufus) know this, but thanks!

you are feeding the troll, btw

On a thread with Chicago in the title it doesn't hurt to vent against the troll, just for fun. It's not affecting the integrity of any rational discussion, and anyone who has been visiting for more than two days will know that Rufus will show his tasteless self on this thread.

Sizzlack, of course I know that Rufus has no taste. I just enjoy it so when he brings up something like those "ugly" ole buildings in Tribeca. Rufus is a sissy who probably wears his pants too tight.

DrAllen - did you manage to take in one of those famous Chicago street fairs while you were there? Rufus says they are one of the BEST parts of Chicago. I know it was 20 below zero, but Chicagoans love their street fairs!

Coem on Rufus, tell us again how great a Chicago street fair is again....

who cares...this website is for manhattan, etc.

Rufus, Tribeca will always be a prestigious international address and Chicago will always be in the Midwest. But of course, you and a handful of others are void of any taste that's why those crappy glass condos in Chicago are all failed, cheap and sit empty.

Please list every "gorgeous" residential building in Chicago, and I can top them all.

chicago will always be better than new york, you all just have to accept that.

DrAllen, can you name NYC condos that are better than Chicago's park hyatt, elysian, water tower, lincoln park 2520, aqua?

kittensonwheelz, i agree entirely with your assertion.

i was just fucking with you, chicago is a hell hole and it sucks so much. fuck chicago.

kittensonwheelz
chicago is a hell hole and it sucks so much. fuck chicago.

rufus
kittensonwheelz, i agree entirely with your assertion.

Amazing.

You know the old expression: "If you can make it in Chicago, you can make it anywhere...." Wait. Sorry. That wasn't Chicago, was it? Wonder why people feel that way about NY and not Chicago? I guess if you judge a city by its glass condos (a pretty stupid way to judge anything, let alone a whole city), then this thread and all of rufus' (and his alter egos') posts are fascinating to you I suppose. For anyone who is really a NYer and who "gets" NY, this is all retarded. "Ooo. Look at the new condo tower!" is such a stupid freakin' hick thing to even talk about I can hardly stand it.

Owned.

rufus=JohnAnthony=quantum=DivineComedy

any others that are known?

DrAllen, I answered your question by naming exclusive Chicago condos that are better than what NYC has to offer. Your silence is quite telling.

Tribeca is a dirty shithole. It's near Chinatown, lot of low-level retail, and garbage bags on street corners.

Whaaaa. The street is dirty in Tribeca. Whaaaa, I can't eat off the dirty street. I wish I were in Chicago so I could eat of the pavement and look at glass condos.

How much more stupid can this get? Want a city with sparkling streets? Go to Singapore. Want a city at the pulse of the world? Deal with the f-cking dirt and shut up. Jeesh. It isn't like people all over the globe dream of seeing freakin' Chicago one day. Give me a break. This is such a pathetic discussion of a hick's version of what is "classy." Get a clue ruffy. Or better yet: do more than visit NYC to see Madame Tusaud's Wax Museum and take a World Yacht cruise.

How sad is this guy's life and city that he has to post on irrelevant boards all day...

Sorry, Rufus/DivineComedy/Quantumn/JohnAnthony, you know I have this thing called a life and which requires me to attend to more important things than registering under 50 screen names, living on New York RE boards to like a loser and fight over glass condos.

But to answer your question. Yes, I can:

15 Cental Park West
One Madison Park
Time Warner Center
One Beacon Court
Beekman Tower
56 Leonard
100 11th Avenue (you know condo in Chelsea with the car elevator?) Do they have anything like that in hicky ass Chicago? Uhhh, nope. Too upscale for the windy city and its farm-like inhabitants.

This is fun!!! Keep going, because I have several other buildings in the back of my mind and I want to for once, dispel this strange notion that Chicago has better residential buildings than New York City...which is false.

Face it, NYC is a prestigious international address and Chicago is surrounded by cows!

Chicago sucks so much, it's cold and depressing. There is nothing good about it except it's proximity to Canada which is actually a negative.

Actually, the car elevator building is 200 11th Avenue which is better than anything in Chicago.

100 Eleventh Avenue is the Jean Nouvel masterpiece made out of the tiny panes of shimmering glass that's also in Chelsea.

So let me update my list,

15 Central Park West
One Madison Park
Time Warner Center
One Beacon Court
Beekman Tower
56 Leonard
100 11th Avenue
200 11th Avenue

Rufus is an abomination.

I have many friends and family in Chicago and have never once heard any of them dare and claim or that Chicago was in any way superior to NYC. They feel above other cities but shut up at the mere mention of NYC.

Even if living in NY isn't your cup of tea, most people know that it's The Best in the country period.

DrAllen, you crack me up. I guess you didn't even realize that beekman tower and 56 Leonard have been cancelled, due to the city's financial woes.

Also, 100 and 200 eleventh avenue are in one of the worst locations imaginable. You want to live near the west side highway and housing projects? LOL!

> Also, 100 and 200 eleventh avenue are in one of the worst locations imaginable.

And still better than any location... in Chicago.

So, that argument isn't going to work for you. If a good building HAS to be in a good location, then all of Chicago's buildings have 0 chance of being better.

If you read curbed, you would know that those condos are having a tough time selling due to the horrible locations. People don't want to pay that kind of money to live near projects, strip clubs, drug rehab centers, and a freaking highway.

Water tower and park hyatt condos are on michigan avenue, one of the most luxurious and attractive streets in America. NYC has nothing like it.

omg shut the fuck up rufus!

"f you read curbed, you would know that those condos are having a tough time selling due to the horrible locations."

Yes, I read a LOT about how they can't sell ANY condos in Chicago. Something like an 85% decline.

Wow, Chicago is fucked.

You also have to love how Hyatt and Peninsula represent the pinnacle of Chicago, and here, they're just lousy chains.

I bet dominos makes their "best restaurants" list...

Fifth ave ????

Fifth Ave is no Michigan Ave.... thats why they use it as a brand, like "scotch tape".

whoops...

psit888, fifth avenue is overrated. It's narrow, dirty, and not as aesthetically appealing as michigan avenue. Out of town visitors actually prefer michigan to fifth.

Those retail stores on Fifth must be stupid. putting their stores on the world's most expensive shopping street

psit888, absolutely. Haven't they heard? Rufus prefers Chicago.

omg, rufus is such an idiot it's scary.

Beekman Tower has NOT been canceled, it's rising and rising.....FAST.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=404222

56 Leonard has NOT been canceled either.

And, if you paid attention to Chicago and stopped obsessing over NYC you would know that POS Water View tower in Chicago is canceled

You know nothing.

200 11th Avenue....almost sold out
100 11th Avenue....sold out
Beekamn Tower.......rising
One Beacon Court....
15 CPW.........
Time Warner.......
One Madison Avenue....nearly sold out

Yea, Rufus....

Start naming, or are those 5 crappy Chicago condos the only ones you can think of because I have so much more to name in NYC.

pwned.

That 200 11th car elevator building is the one the Dolce&Gabbana man bought and paid over list price for it..cause was in a bidding war. I don't think Chicago has ever heard of such a thing.

I don't think anyone of that caliber lives in Chicago. Oprah doesn't even live in Chicago. Sad.

The penthouse, that is...

rufus
Also, 100 and 200 eleventh avenue are in one of the worst locations imaginable. You want to live near the west side highway and housing projects? LOL!
___

Isn't this in the same realm of what weve been asking you along? Who would want to live in the middle of the United States and in the heart of the dairy land surrounded by farms and cows? Not many by statistical evidence of Chicago's alarming population loss.

Oprah has two apartments in Chicago. None in NYC.

DrAllen, you're making it too easy. Here are some more amazing Chicago condos.

One Magnificient Mile condos
55 East Erie
Palmolive Building
hancock center condos
millennium centre
one museum park

You could list 100 condos,It'd still Chicago, second city

No, she's only in Chicago when she's filming. She is either in Florida or Santa Barbara.

And, you are making it all to easy.

HL23
176 Perry Street
99 Park Place Avenue
Metal Shutter Houses
One Jackson Square
40 Bond Street
The Rushmore
W Residences NY
400 W 12th Street

Keep going.....

*30 Park Place Avenue/99 Church Street

LOL! 40 Bond is an ugly green monstrosity.

Rushmore is alright, but it looks no different than the trump buildings in that area. And the neighborhood is awful. HL23 is also in a terrible location, that stretch of west 23rd is a wasteland.

Meanwhile, all the Chicago condos I mentioned are in nice areas.

wow, Rufus is being condOWNED.

Don't give up, come on Rufus. You're staring to look pathetic. That Beekman (drool), HL 23, Shutter House and the 11th Avenue ones put anything in Rufusssss Chicago list to shame in terms of luxury, beauty and style.

But this is fun, I've never seen most of these buildings and I'm googling as I go and so far NY is winning by a very long shot. They're knock-outs. And another observation, Rufus most of the buildings you listed in Chicago are old. I thought you hate old and I thought everything going up was beautiful and glass? The NY buildings so far are all brand new and cutting edge modern. No more filthy old Chicago buildings, only new modern ones like the NY ones! Or did you run out? How ironic.

"the location is awful"

where the hell do you guys live if these locations are awful????????? I googled the Rushmore it's on 67th and Riverside, which I remember that address is way up upper west side manhattan by the water.

That location was so nice. The park there is beautiful and serene. Awful as in what? Boring? It seemed boring compared to the rest of Manhattan ..but awful!!?? WTF?

lany3, I was mainly referring to 100 and 200 eleventh avenue and HL23. Look it up. Their locations are awful.

40 Bond, ugly?

You mean, the same building futured in Time Magazine for it's architectural beauty?
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1727737_1727673_1727046,00.html

You mean that same billionaire/celebrity inhabited "ugly green" building crafted by Pritzker Prize architects? BTW, that's is the most prestigious award in architecture but I don't know if a simple boy from Chicago would know what that means. I don't even want to waste brain cells discussing anything to do with design with a midwestern hick, so let's get back to comparing condos.

Oh and I see you've given up, but I sure as hell haven't. And someone made a point, so far every single one of these condos I've listed are brand new you've already given up and are reverting to those tired old ass buildings like that monstrosity 55 East Erie while I haven't even started on the older buildings like The Plaza.

In any case, let me continue with more of our beautiful new luxury condos:

166 Perry Street
40 Mercer Street
50 Gramercy Park North
176 Perry Street
The Centurion
15 Union Square West
325 Fifth Avenue
One York
400 Fifth Avenue
Riverplace? (those tall 700ft twin glass towers just erected on the west side)
535 West End Avenue (amazing $10m-25m 4-8,000+ sq ft family residences under construction that are 90% sold out)

Chicago can't touch New York when it comes to luxury and luxury housing, so give it the hell up. Being in the shadows of NY is actually an honor so just freaking deal with it.

Rufus, I have many more new ones to fill you in on so catch up! I'm not near done.

That gay Ricky Martin lives @ 40 Bond.

I would do him. mmmmmmmm.....

omg hot damn that 166 Perry building is HOT. Looks like some futuristic sci-fi shheeet

http://www.dezeen.com/2007/06/27/166-perry-street-by-asymptote/

DrAllen, 40 Bond's penthouse unit is a mess. The rooftop was supposed to be redone, but it turned out to be a debacle. Curbed did a story on this, but of course, you wouldn't know anything about that.

325 Fifth avenue is near herald square and koreatown. TERRIBLE location. That area is reminiscent of a third-world city.

One York is a decent building. But it's near canal street, one of the most filthy streets I've ever been to. As soon as you step out of your condo, you're greeted by people selling counterfeit luxury goods.

Nice try though.

BTW, 400 Fifth Avenue has been cancelled, due to lack of interest.

Aw, Ruffy. Chicago is being raped by the hideous Trump abomination destroying the town's skyline. And to make matters worse it'll likely now be immersed in litigation for years and go belly up to boot. Sorry that isn't working out for you over there in the MINUS 17 DEGREES(!) you suffered Saturday. It was 40 degrees warmer here.

rufus, but the sad reality is that most would pay 5X more than they would to live at One York and step out into Chinatown than live in Chicago's "upscale" Gold Coast.

Hell, a condo actually sold in freaking East Harlem this past week, in the middle of a recession and the sales price was higher than anything that has sold in the history of Chicago's Gold Coast; $15 million. East Harlem! Chicago's record is 8-9 million LMAO.

Step into reality. Chicago is a cesspool. A cultural cesspool. Intellectual waste land, if you will. Kick, scream, make new screen names and troll this forum for the rest of your pointless life but New York will always be New York, Chicago will always be a nondescript town in the midwest.

Now, let me get back to the condo thingy;

Rem Koolhaas's stunning 23 East 22nd Street
The Platinum -247 West 46th Street
Twenty9th Park Madison
10 West End Avenue
305 East 85th Street
200 West End Avenue
The Lucida
The Laurel
Ariel-2628 Broadway
The Legacy- 157 East 84th Street
300 East Seventy Nine
45 Park Avenue
Alexander Plaza - 315 East 46th Street
Chelsea Stratus
The Brompton
Avery Riverside
Riverhouse
450 East 83rd Street
555 West 59th Street
Trump SoHo

I'm not done, but you obviously are. Shall I keep going or are you going to shut up about the more condos in Chicago nonsense?

400 Fifth Avenue has been canceled?? Where do you get your BS news from? First Beekman is supposedly canceled and now 400 5th is canceled? LOL!!! Please stay in the midwest.

http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7105&page=11

Read, boy. I pass 400 5th daily and it's going up and they will be very luxurious units hotel/condo units with stunning views might I add.

Do you give up now?

lolololol

Nyc rapes Chicago when it comes to condos! who would have thunk, huh, rufus? This is entertaining.

DrAllen, not a single condo you listed is better than Chicago's top condos.

29th park madison has been condemned by even most new yorkers as an ugly building.

Platinum is near times square, one of the worst areas you can be in.

I can go on and on. But all these buildings you mentioned are severely flawed and simply can't compete with Chicago's best.

839 6th Avenue hotels/condos
TEN Arquitectos 70 West 45th Street building
Shangri-La Hotel/condos 610 Lexington Ave
785 Eighth Avenue
105 Norfolk St
101 Warren Street
Richard Meier's One Prospect Park
Yves - 127 Seventh Avenue
505 w 37th street
110 Central Park North
57 Reade Street

Oh, you're so boring Rufus. Wake me up when Chicago builds more modern condos.

DrAllen, 839 sixth, shangri-la, 785 eighth, have all been cancelled.

None compare to Chicago? LMAO, Beekman Tower alone dwarfs all of those shitty Chicago buildings you have shown me.

Rufus, you've given up and have been out-done. Own up to it. What could you possibly know about design anyway, you're just a simple boy from the midwest therefore I refuse to waste any more of my brain cells with this pointless conversation.

You are now on ignore.

Beekman tower is an 80/20 rental building. It's a joke compared to Chicago's top condos.

839 sixth, nope.

shangri-la, nope.
http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5616

785 eighth, is already fucking finished you dope.
http://flickr.com/photos/adcristal/3148306325/

839 sixth- GOING UP., I walk by it all the time
http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12969&page=8

How could anyone possible be this stupid?

I LMFAO'd at the 785 eight avenue "canceled" building that has already been completed.

The reason why we should never ever take a thing Rufus says seriously has been vindicated.

hahahahaa

Ruffy, no comment re: Trump's abomination Chicago let ruin the skyline and the bank calling the loan? Come...you just want to keep making lists? RESPOND! Admit it: Trump has destroyed your skyline forever with that tacky horror.

All the Chicago condos I listed are in great clean locations while the vast majority of DrAllen's condos are in terrible areas. There's a reason why people who bought at 100 and 200 eleventh are worried that their condos will go down in value.

I'd take a 'terrible location' that is actually in NYC any day over a place in a 'great clean location' that is 1,000 miles away from where I want to live.

Plus in Chicago you live with people who LIKE Chicago. Enough to scare me away. Rufus is afraid, and needs the sterile anonymity of an artificial community to feel safe and secure. Delusional.

If you showed a wealthy person 100 eleventh avenue and the elysian condo in Chicago, the vast majority of them will pick the elysian.

Once again you assume 'wealthy people' pick the building they want to live in first and the city second. No one is that stupid.

The location is more than just the building, dumbass. It's the surrounding environment, overall ambience, how gentrified it is, presence of nice restaurants, stores, etc.

100 elventh is in a dump. That's why buyers are concerned about their property value holding up.

Here's the difference between NYC and Chicago that you morons don't get. In NYC, even in "nice" areas, people live near projects, homeless shelters, welfare offices, and drug clinics. In the nice parts of Chicago, you don't see such things. If you don't believe me, just walk around in the gold coast, streeterville, or lincoln park.

rufus
1 minute ago
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The location is more than just the building, dumbass. It's the surrounding environment, overall ambience, how gentrified it is, presence of nice restaurants, stores, etc.

And this is exactly why people are willing to ignore the "amazing architecture of Chicago" to live here instead. Oops!

And that's what make NYC so great. People with money have no problem living near projects,homeless shelter ,welfare office. Being poor is not a crime. Keep your narrow minded shithead in Chicago

It's called gentrification, psit888. Chicago is light years ahead of NYC in this area.

Wealthy people don't want to live near projects and drug clinics. But because there are very few truly nice areas, rich people are forced to live in such conditions.

Because Rufus is the spokesman for 'wealthy people' everywhere.

You asked why people would live in small apartments with high rents, and all sorts of other statements yet you clearly know the answer because you just said it before:
"The location is more than just the building, dumbass. It's the surrounding environment, overall ambience, how gentrified it is, presence of nice restaurants, stores, etc."

More than just the building. i.e. people don't care what kind of apartment buildings Chicago has, because at the end of the day it is still shitty Chicago. People are clearly willing to live in 'such conditions' here because the city is more important to them.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-segregation-26-dec26,0,976255.story

Are you confusing segregated and gentrified? Great Midwest mentality.

If NYC really is that wealthy, why hasn't it cleaned up like Chicago has? Why is most of Manhattan so rundown and grimy?

I thought you had moved onto promoting Texas, rufus? what happened are you back to Chicago now? You're all over the place. But no matter what city you take on, NY is your #1 enemy. In your pseudonym JohnAnthony, you were talking about how Houston is overtaking Chicago in population. I'm sure your rufus side of you would not like that statement. Off your medication?

I love how you just use terms that you think in your head, i.e., rundown and grimy; the vast majority; like there's some method or survey to determine such statements.

Welcome to rufus (JohnAnthony, quantum, DivineComedy) world.

rufus
11 minutes ago
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If NYC really is that wealthy, why hasn't it cleaned up like Chicago has?

By 'cleaned up like Chicago has', you mean having a murder rate 3 times as high as NYC?

Compare the nice areas of Chicago to the nice parts of NYC. People who are familiar with both admit that Chicago is cleaner and looks nicer.

What good is nice if you are 3x more likely to be shot and killed walking around Chicago?

Sizzlack, the violence in Chicago is mostly limited to the far south and west sides. The nice parts of Chicago are entirely safe.

rufus/JohnAnthony/quantum/DivineComedy, where do you come up with these statements:

1. If you showed a wealthy person 100 eleventh avenue and the elysian condo in Chicago, the vast majority of them will pick the elysian

2. People who are familiar with both admit that Chicago is cleaner and looks nicer.

Did you conduct some top secret research project that revealed that?

The overwhelming majority of rich people would rather live in a crappy neighborhood in a so-so building than in the best neighborhood in the best building in Chicago.

Rufus, you still haven't responded to that link I posted with the homeless guy drunk and showing his naked behind in Lincoln Park.

and he deliberately neglected to address the stabbing of 2 people this month in his beloved Lincoln Park,

http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1363886,w-lincoln-park-irish-eyes-tavern-stabbing-010608.article

Try to sell your city to people in Milwaukee, not here

Why does he post here when 100% of a fairly diverse community of posters disagree with him? Rufus, why do you post here? Why can't everyone just end every post with that question.

I'd love to know why my post got deleted... Kinda pathetic that my SINGLE post got deleted but Streeteasy continues to let rufus and his aliases flood/troll the boards with completely irrelevant posts about Chicago. Do you have a response to that Streeteasy or should expect deafening silence? Get your priorities straight.

I am beginning to think SE is keeping rufus around to ensure high traffic here...

so, rufus IS streeteasy?

(I might believe curbed more)

The silence is truly deafening on this thread... Streeteasy, are you too scared to answer my question? I would like to reiterate that they deleted my post, my SINGLE post but let rufus continue to troll and spam these boards about irrelevant topics. I'm not dropping this, I will continue to solicit an answer from Streeteasy until I get one. They'll probably delete my account and block my IP address before they answer me. Go ahead, let your site be overtaken by a fucking moron. Oops did I just curse? Better delete this one too...

oldbuyers, why'd you have to go and post true facts about the high rate of violent crime in the very areas that Cracker Boy claims are "entirely safe"?

Now he won't post anything else on this [particular] thread.

kittensonwheelz, did your post appear and then disappear? Or did you have to login after composing the post? Because in that case the additional step of resubmitting your post is necessary to get it to "stick"?

On the other hand, if it was really nasty, please let me know the gist of it. As Alice Roosevelt was credited with saying, "If you don't have something nice to say about a person, come sit here next to me." Or something.

Chicago Manuals
‘The Third Coast,’ by Thomas Dyja, and More
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/books/review/the-third-coast-by-thomas-dyja-and-more.html?pagewanted=3
By RACHEL SHTEIR

Published: April 18, 2013

“Poor Chicago,” a friend of mine recently said. Given the number of urban apocalypses here, I couldn’t tell which problem she was referring to. Was it the Cubs never winning? The abominable weather? Meter parking costing more than anywhere else in America — up to $6.50 an hour — with the money flowing to a private company, thanks to the ex-mayor Richard M. Daley’s shortsighted 2008 deal? Or was it the fact that in 2012, of the largest American cities, Chicago had the second-highest murder rate and the ­second-highest combined sales tax, as well as the ninth-highest metro foreclosure rate in the country? That it’s the third-most racially segregated city and is located in the state with the most underfunded public-employee pension debt? Was my friend talking about how a real estate investor bought The Chicago Tribune and drove it into bankruptcy? Or how 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who performed at the festivities for Barack Obama’s inauguration, was shot dead near the president’s Kenwood home?

Actually, “poor” seems kind. And yet even as the catastrophes pile up, Chicago never ceases to boast about itself. The Magnificent Mile! Fabulous architecture! The MacArthur Foundation! According to The Tribune, Chicago is “America’s hottest theater city”; the mayor’s office touts new taxi ordinances as “huge improvements.” The mayor likes brags that could be read as indictments too, announcing the success of sting operations busting a variety of thugs and grifters.

The swagger has bugged me since I moved here from New York 13 years ago. So I was interested to learn in “Chicago by Day and Night: The Pleasure Seeker’s Guide to the Paris of America” — a new annotated Northwestern University Press edition of an 1892 guidebook — that it initially surfaced in the era of wild growth after the Great Fire of 1871. In their 1909 plan, Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett predicted that by 1950, Chicago would house 13.5 million people.

Today, Chicago has fallen short of such dreams. The city’s population, for example, is currently at 2.7 million, having dropped since a high of 3.6 million in 1950. But the bloviating roars on, as if hot air could prevent Chicago from turning into Detroit.

Before anyone accuses me of being some latter-day A. J. Liebling, whose 1952 book “Chicago: The Second City” infuriated residents, let me say there are some good things about living here. The beauty of Lake Michigan. A former rail yard has become Millennium Park. Thanks to global warming, the winters have softened.

In 1968, Norman Mailer called Chicago “the great American city,” but he was particularly prone to Chicago’s idea of itself. Today, a big part of Chicago’s problem stems from that mythology; while the mayor embarks on a P.R. campaign for the “global” city, many locals cling to its tough-guy, blue-collar, gangster-worship identity.

“Golden,” by Jeff Coen and John Chase, is a case in point. The authors describe the ex-governor Rod Blagojevich’s crookedness by employing Nelson Algren’s garish phrase about Chicago’s founders — “they all had hustler’s blood” — as if being born here predisposes you to graft.

It’s easy to see why Coen and Chase, both reporters at The Tribune, lean on such clichés. Blago is the fourth of the last seven governors in this state to go to jail. “Golden” takes its title from a notorious moment in an F.B.I. wiretap, made public in 2008 at the time of his arrest, when the ex-governor crowed about selling or trading the president-elect’s Senate seat. “I’ve got this thing and it’s [expletive] golden,” he said.

Relying largely on the public record, Coen and Chase tell Blago’s story, from his poor beginnings on the Northwest side to his trial in a courtroom downtown. They ­recount many details of the ex-governor’s eccentricities, including his Elvis obsession and his helmetlike coif, which he would groom with one of nearly a dozen hairbrushes his staff kept on hand. There are also bizarre moments, like the one in which Blago complains that David Axelrod, then his media consultant, has declined to commit to his gubernatorial race because of an impression that Blago lacks “gravitas.”

Nor do Coen and Chase stint on examples of Blago’s incompetence, arrogance and venality. Policies enacted could fill a thimble: “He was showing up at work maybe two to eight hours a week.”

You can tell this book is written for people who live in Crook County — as Chicago’s Cook County is known — instead of those on the coasts, because of its tone of weary resignation. Coen and Chase reside here, after all. But if Chicago is to thrive, the nation needs a more animated book, schooling it not merely in who Blago is but in what he represents: a dysfunctional system threatening the city’s well-being. The real culprits include Chicago’s anemic economy, the crippling legacy of machine politics, the uncompromising unions and the handful of dynasties running the city.

Neil Steinberg’s memoir, “You Were Never in Chicago,” pitches even more indulgently into platitudes. Chicago, he writes, “is a state of mind.” His book’s title comes from a line on a postcard Liebling received from a disgruntled local. Instead of responding in detail to the New Yorker’s complaints, Steinberg, a columnist at The Chicago Sun-Times, argues that payola is both the city’s distinguishing feature and his own. “Some reporters never accept a free lunch; I never turn one down,” he writes.

The book’s plot builds up to Steinberg’s defense for having pulled strings to get his brother a job at the county treasurer’s office. More interesting are the chapters about ordinary people, like “Driving With Ed McElroy,” a portrait of an old-school publicist whose friendship Steinberg describes as “a Chicago kind,” by which he means favors done and returned. Yet a majority of Steinberg’s boilerplate observations prevent “You Were Never in Chicago” from rising above his silly argument for the unique charm of Chicago’s nepotism. And Steinberg seems to think that Chicago’s grungiest corners should be preserved exactly as they are — the grungier the better. “Nelson Algren would vomit” seeing his old neighborhood transformed into chic Wicker Park, Steinberg complains, in a city filled with empty storefronts and vacant lots.

An insider gets close to give you a picture the visitor can’t see. The picture Steinberg, Coen and Chase paint is how living here bullies writers into repeating the same earnest, desperate story. Reading these books, I wondered if women writers would do better. But that question raised another one: Where are the women writers? In a 2009 Granta issue about Chicago, out of 22 writers, four were women; of those, only one — the septuagenarian Marxist poet Anne Winters — was living here at the time. Hey, Granta: There are cutting-edge women writers in the City of Big Shoulders, like Nami Mun and Eula Biss. Don’t let all the tough-guy sentimentalism fool you.

Ex-Chicagoans — whatever their gender — can bring a fresh eye to the city’s problems. Thomas Dyja’s robust cultural history, “The Third Coast,” weaves together the stories of the American artists, styles and ideas that developed in Chicago before and after World War II — the blues, Mies van der Rohe’s Modernist architecture, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, and “Kukla, Fran and Ollie.” This tragedy, written with greater wit than the insider accounts, contends that by the mid-’50s the American mass market, which flourished here along with big-name brands like McDonald’s and Schwinn, snuffed out Midwestern geniuses with radical roots.

Dyja, who now lives in New York but grew up in Chicago, still keenly feels the city’s wounds. “The real struggle for America’s future — whether it would be directed by its people or its institutions — took place in postwar Chicago.” This book begins with the death of the architect Louis Sullivan, whose ornate buildings defined the 19th-century Windy City, and then skates from Robert Maynard Hutchins’s University of Chicago to Emmett Till, from Chicago’s notorious housing problems to Nelson Algren’s love affair with Simone de Beauvoir.

Some of this is familiar, but Dyja zooms in on the qualities Chicagoans value and does it better than anyone else I’ve read: informality; the desire to be “regular”; the conviction among artists that “the process was as important as the product.” These attributes created hospitable conditions for such distinctive genres as Modernist architecture, storefront theater, improv comedy, poetry slams, oral history (perfected by the city patron saint Studs Terkel) and outsider art, even as they alienated writers and artists interested in more than functionality and social reform. Saul Bellow complained about the lack of cafes. “There were greasy-spoon cafeterias, one-arm joints, taverns. I never yet heard of a writer who brought his manuscripts into a tavern.”

Like other chroniclers of mid-20th-­century Chicago, Dyja partly blames the 1955 election of Richard J. Daley for the city’s decline. But he goes further, harnessing Daley’s support of segregation and the political machine to Chicago’s cultural disintegration: Playboy’s founding in 1953 not only commercialized sex, it exemplified the city’s shift from a rich, idiosyncratic art lab championing the individual to a place where only the affluent mattered, a city “demolishing . . . what was best about itself.” The city’s former strengths betrayed it. “Democratizing the arts and knowledge was a Faustian bargain: it put them into the marketplace where the market would determine their ‘value.’ ”

Still, Dyja stumbles when he condemns the University of Chicago, which he depicts as “a place where attacking and defending ideas was honored more than analyzing them.” Having studied there, I can say that the university’s ethereal, argumentative commitments provide a welcome relief from the crude trade-school mentality at many other institutions of higher learning. At the same time, I have often wondered if geographical isolation — the campus is seven miles away from downtown, connected by a highway that circumvents the poor neighborhoods in between — breeds myopia even more devastating than that in the rest of the city. Did Milton Friedman ever see the burned-out projects as he sped along Lake Shore Drive?

Dyja’s book ends with the demolition of almost 6,000 buildings, many of them by Louis Sullivan, between 1957 and 1960. (Only 21 of Sullivan’s structures remain.) And Dyja, whose book jacket boasts that Studs Terkel once described him as “a real Chicago boy,” falls victim to a bit of wistfulness too: “Chicago never became the city it could have been.”

So Chicago is not Detroit, not yet. But the city is trapped by its location, its past, and what philosophers would have called its facticity — its limitations, given the circumstances. Boosterism has been perfected here because the reality is too painful to look at. Poor Chicago, indeed.