Huge difference can be seen in just 25 miles of distance in Chicagoland.

[traveller]

Most of Chicago proper is a mix of various ethnicities, including Hispanic, black/African descent, and even Asian. From observations of the media, children in most inner city neighborhoods like to play outside. You might see them playing tag, playing in a neighbor's sprinkler on a hot day, or on swing sets and what not. But parents are scared for those kids because those neighborhoods are extremely high crime, hence Chicago's nickname "Chiraq."

Travel 25 miles west into DuPage County, and the outdoor scene changes drastically. Cities like Naperville, Downers Grove, Glen Ellyn, Batavia, West Chicago, Oak Brook, and Lombard have extremely low crime rates. Shootings, kidnappings, and robberies are extremely rare to almost unheard of in those cities. Most residential properties don't even have a fence. But take a bicycle ride through any one of those towns on a typical Saturday afternoon in mid summer, and it's like riding through a blank post card. The yards may be well kept, and you may even feel perfectly safe riding through there at 3 in the morning, and yet you see no children outdoors at all, even in broad daylight. Nobody playing tag, no swing sets, no kids running through sprinklers on hot days, the entire outdoors is like dead and completely inert. Like riding through a ghost town. There may be very little crime, but people in DuPage County stay indoors like the neighborhood is a thousand times more dangerous than Berlin at the height of World War II. They have a zero tolerance policy towards anyone not part of their closed, compact cliques. The same even appears worse out in the country areas, including in Sycamore and DeKalb.

[jamesbond]

Travel 25 miles west into DuPage County, and the outdoor scene changes drastically. Cities like Naperville, Downers Grove, Glen Ellyn, Batavia, West Chicago, Oak Brook, and Lombard have extremely low crime rates. Shootings, kidnappings, and robberies are extremely rare to almost unheard of in those cities. Most residential properties don't even have a fence.

But take a bicycle ride through any one of those towns on a typical Saturday afternoon in mid summer, and it's like riding through a blank post card. The yards may be well kept, and you may even feel perfectly safe riding through there at 3 in the morning, and yet you see no children outdoors at all, even in broad daylight. Nobody playing tag, no swing sets, no kids running through sprinklers on hot days, the entire outdoors is like dead and completely inert. Like riding through a ghost town.

There may be very little crime, but people in DuPage County stay indoors like the neighborhood is a thousand times more dangerous than Berlin at the height of World War II. They have a zero tolerance policy towards anyone not part of their closed, compact cliques. The same even appears worse out in the country areas, including in Sycamore and DeKalb.

Living in the area you described my whole life, I agree. The people in DuPage county don't like meeting new people or even meeting their neighbors. You don't see people outside, even when the weather is nice. Welcome to the lonely suburbs!

[traveller]

Travel 25 miles west into DuPage County, and the outdoor scene changes drastically. Cities like Naperville, Downers Grove, Glen Ellyn, Batavia, West Chicago, Oak Brook, and Lombard have extremely low crime rates. Shootings, kidnappings, and robberies are extremely rare to almost unheard of in those cities. Most residential properties don't even have a fence.

But take a bicycle ride through any one of those towns on a typical Saturday afternoon in mid summer, and it's like riding through a blank post card. The yards may be well kept, and you may even feel perfectly safe riding through there at 3 in the morning, and yet you see no children outdoors at all, even in broad daylight. Nobody playing tag, no swing sets, no kids running through sprinklers on hot days, the entire outdoors is like dead and completely inert. Like riding through a ghost town.

There may be very little crime, but people in DuPage County stay indoors like the neighborhood is a thousand times more dangerous than Berlin at the height of World War II. They have a zero tolerance policy towards anyone not part of their closed, compact cliques. The same even appears worse out in the country areas, including in Sycamore and DeKalb.

Living in the area you described my whole life, I agree. The people in DuPage county don't like meeting new people or even meeting their neighbors. You don't see people outside, even when the weather is nice. Welcome to the lonely suburbs!

I hear you on that. They make like it's a felony to be outdoors except for going to and from work and/or school. As if there is even a permanent 24-hour curfew all 365 days a year enforced by Homeland Security and the FBI.