Chicago has always been a futuristic city on the cutting edge. Today, it is at the epicenter of quantum research; nuclear energy (the nation's leading producer); logistics (hub of the entire United States); culture (the capital of Black America); and the battle against rising coastlines and urban flooding.
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True to its innovative spirit, the Chicago area is home to several cutting-edge industries, like the emerging field of quantum technology.
Fermilab is America’s premier particle physics research facility, Argonne National Laboratory, connected by a fiber-optic cable to the University of Chicago. Scientists there are trying to apply atomic principles to improve communications and computing.
Four of the ten quantum labs in the United States are located in Illinois, which receives roughly four of every 10 dollars the federal government invests.
Illinois also produces far more nuclear power than anywhere else in America. 75% of Chicago’s electricity needs are now met by the state’s 11 reactors.
Chicago was where the dawn of the Nuclear Age happened, as America’s Manhattan Project raced the Germans during World War 2.
It did just that on December 2, 1942, when Enrico Fermi’s team achieved the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in a facility hidden underground on campus.
Waves of European immigrants during the 1800s made the city’s population 98.1% white in 1900. But over the next 60 years, in a period known as The Great Migration, six million African Americans left the South to settle in Chicago and other cities in the North.
By the 1990s, Chicago's South Side and its adjoining suburbs had become the largest African American majority region in the country, fostering all sorts of talent, from academics, activists, and rappers, to global icons like Michael Jordan (arguably the most successful American pro athlete), Oprah Winfrey (the richest African American of the 20th century), and the Obamas.
Create projects. 70 rail improvement projects are in various stages of completion, with more than two dozen already finished. Renovating Union Station.
With 8 lines, the amount of metal required to build the L turbo-charged Chicago’s steelmaking industry. During World War 2, it nimbly shifted to producing bombs, jeeps, tanks, and planes, and was a vital contributor to the Allied cause, producing more tons of the super-strong metal than the entire United Kingdom every year from 1939 to 1945, and all of Germany from 1943 to 1945.
The city has transformed itself into the Transportation, Distribution, and Logistics leader of the world’s largest consumer economy. Vast warehouses are clustered all along the canal and river, around its many large railyards, and to the west of O’Hare-the world’s second-busiest airport in terms of aircraft movements per day.
Since the 1970’s it has been adding massive tunnels, cavernous holding chambers, and gigantic lagoons like this one-a repurposed old mine. When this latest round of extreme engineering capacity to store 20 billion gallons
Lower Wacker Drive to flood and key buildings like Willis Tower to lose power.
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