Chicago Is A Livable City, But Is That Enough?

"Chicago has always rolled with the punches. In 1916, poet Carl Sandburg celebrated the city as ''hog butcher for the world, tool maker, stacker of wheat, player with railroads.'' Even then, Chicago was evolving into a distribution and manufacturing hub for the vast Midwest. Later, it emerged as a global financial center, whose futures exchanges were envied and emulated the world over. As brain surpassed brawn in the national and local economies, the place Sandburg extolled for ever ''building, breaking, rebuilding'' moved from being the City of Big Shoulders to the City of Big Ideas."