What?????
Chicago is a GREAT American City! Good food, good people, good culture. Great neighborhoods, many great schools (lots of bad schools, too), and many great church communities. Great colleges and sports teams (even if not always successful from a W/L standpoint). Chicago is a great place to have fun with your ethnicity. No matter where you (or your ancestors) are from, there seems to be a community for you in Chicago. They have a thriving Luxembourgian community, for Christ's sake!
Winter weather can suck, big time, but on the whole Chicago is a Great City, well laid out with good mass transit and much more "friendly" than eastern metropolises like NYC and Philly.
The corrupt city & county governments just add to the entertainment value of the city.
So what if the gang bangers are taking target practice on each other? Those events might as well be taking place on Mars for most of the City's residents.