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Chicago the name of a city in Illinois and the metropolitan area that contains it. The City is the largest in the Midwest and the third-most populous city in the United States, with approximately 2.9 million people. The Chicago Metropolitan area, sometimes informally called Chi-town or Chicagoland, has a population of 9.4 million in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana making it the third largest in the United States.Chicago is located along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan and is a center of transportation, industry, politics, culture, finance, medicine and higher education. Chicago is informally called the Second City, the Windy City, the City of Big Shoulders and "Chi-town."
Today, Chicago is the financial, cultural, transportation, and business capital of the Midwest. Chicago was founded 1833 as a town to link the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River system. It soon became a transportation hub of the Old Northwest, with major connections by steamboats, canals and,railroads. By 1890 it was one of the ten most influential world cities.
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