The Southern Coastlands: On the Subtropical Margin

Neighborhoods and Communities

It's hard to imagine, but Chicago started out in the 1830s as simple village of settlers along Lake Michigan. It was a popular passageway for travelers and merchants crossing between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. After the introduction of major railroads to the city and the increasing traffic of ships through the city's waterways, the small port was becoming recognized as a central key link between the eastern and western coasts of the country.

Cartographers have distinguished over 200 neighborhoods and 77 community areas in Chicago. Chicago was built on a grid system that makes it one of the easiest big cities to navigate. Every half-mile, (equal to four city blocks) there is a major street. The starting point for the grid is at the intersection of State and Madison in the downtown Loop.  

Natural Disasters

One reason that helps make Chicago the place where web-based data is stored is the region’s lack of natural disasters. Chicago has become one of the nation’s top sites for an unrecognized but critical element of Internet and computing: data centers. Data centers are temperature-controlled, fortress-secured buildings that store the web servers, network services and storage equipment that companies need to transmit, store and back up data. The data centers also include additional locations that belong to companies such as Microsoft, Google, Level3, AT&T and other major high-tech and info-tech companies.

A Geophysics Professor at Purdue University stated that the closest area of earthquake activity is the Wabash Valley fault zone in southern Indiana and southern Illinois near Vincennes, Indiana. That is about 240 miles from Chicago. The area is not recognized as a quake-prone zone.

References

http://www.explorechicago.org/city/en/neighborhoods.html

http://www.chicagoneighborhoods.cc/

Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada

Authors: Stephen S. Birdsall, Eugene J. Palka, Jon C. Malinowski, and Margo L. Price

http://www.suntimes.com/technology/guy/4373615-452/keeper-of--web-based-data.html