Well yeah there are a lot of parts of Chicago that are great, downtown Chicago is an excellent place to go, especially during the winter, but there are these ghetto's that are just..when you enter them you feel like you just entered another country. It's not just the crime, but the look of the place. People living there don't even care enough to maintain their homes. The grass isn't cut, the homes look like shit, but they make sure they have rims on their cars that is for sure.
It's depressing in a way because you have neighborhoods that 10-15 years ago were decent places to live, but now they are horrid places due to a vast change in population. I don't mean a change as in more people, but rather a change in the racial makeup of the neighborhood. It's an uncomfortable truth. But yes the crime aspect is obviously the worst. I have mentioned before that 6th graders at this one public school(which isn't in a good neighborhood) came up with a facebook-ish page meant just for students to keep in touch over the summer because they didn't know if they'd all live to come back in the fall. Half the time the gang bangers miss who they want to kill and up killing someone innocent. These neighborhoods are honestly no place to raise children.
As for where in Chicago I live, I am very close to Midway Airport, which is on the southside of Chicago. My neighborhood has indeed over the years slowly gotten worse, but not as bad as some others. I would rather not have to move, but I get the feeling eventually I will be forced out of this neighborhood. Which would be unfortunate because it is my childhood home. Years ago when my parents decided they wanted to get an apartment they left the house to my brother and I(the house is paid for).