why not the southern suburbs?

[M TYPE X]

I would consider Orland Park/Tinley Park to be "southwest suburbs."

[shorewood5]

Your absolutely correct about the traffic, and thats a huge factor if your not from here or used to it. Look on a map, guess the travel time and now double it. We are not southern California but it is a factor for comuting. There is nothing wrong with the southwestern suburbs like Joliet, Orland Park, Mokena, Tinley Park. Get towards the Indiana border in places like Harvey, Chicago Heights, Lansing, and even Matteson and well now you are getting into problems. They are not the inner city. You still cannot compare those places to Naperville for example. That being said, the exact same house in Shorewood would cost $100,000 more in Naperville and the taxes would be over $5000/yr. Many people cant handle that and neither could I. Be wary of the too good to be true deals because location is everything as they say. That being said, these posts are generallizing and grouping very large areas into one. Each of the areas has small neighborhoods or sections that are a great place to live and some that are terrible. To generalize, the suburbs closest to the city are worse than farther out, the suburbs to the north and west are nicer than the south. That doesnt necessarily make Melrose Park a better place to live than Mokena, but it does make Plainfield a better place to live than Robbins.

[cdc3217]

Originally Posted by shorewood5

To generalize, the suburbs closest to the city are worse than farther out, the suburbs to the north and west are nicer than the south. That doesnt necessarily make Melrose Park a better place to live than Mokena, but it does make Plainfield a better place to live than Robbins.

Generalizing inner ring = bad is not really fair. As previously mentioned...Oak Lawn (and Evergreen Park) are both inner ring 'burbs on the SSW side that are really booming.

Inner ring is much more city-ish (or maybe just Chicago-ish), and they appeal to a lot of ex-city dwellers who like density, public transit, walkability, short commutes, etc.

C'mon...Plainfield vs Robbins? I think Plainfield vs OL would be a truer take on the differences.

[trollalalala]

I have been in living in Orland Park for several years. Here are my observations. The traffic congestion is bad, it takes nearly 20 minutes to get out of town to the nearest expressways, but major road reconstruction is under way to relieve that. There are two Metra stations, no express yet, so it's one hour to downtown Chicago. It is culturally pretty bland - like most American suburbs, "if you've seen one you've seen 'em all", a huge mall, endless strip malls and franchise restaurants, nothing terribly unique. You can still get a bit more house for your money than north and west suburbs. Village government is energetic, building and spending. There's a new library, new police administration building and a long-awaited downtown area (The Triangle) under construction, anchored by the Metra station, which will include residential, business and more dining ops. There's a very nice recreational area, "Centennial Park" with year 'round outdoor activities including an outdoor theater in the making. My feeling is that the south suburbs are still tainted by their proximity to the south side of Chicago and the white flight which resulted from the decimation of those neighborhoods due to decades of racial strife, crime and local economic mismanagement. Orland Park is integrated, and also has a growing Arab population drawn by its new multi-million dollar mosque. There are sub-divisions of McMansions and sprawling faux 'estates' going up on the west and south ends of the village but my neighborhood is primarily blue collar and middle class 'affordable' townhomes and condos. It is a pretty comfortable place to live all things considered but if you have friends living north or northwest it's a long trip. Thank you to city-data.com which makes these stats available.