Chicago the city covers about 228 square miles (around 591 square kilometers) and has nearly 2.75 million residents, while the broader Chicagoland metro area spreads over roughly 10,000+ square miles with close to 10 million people.

City size at a glance

  • Land area: about 228 square miles (591 square kilometers).
  • Rough dimensions: roughly 25 miles north–south and 15 miles east–west at its furthest extents.
  • Population: about 2.7–3.0 million people in the city proper, making it the third-largest city in the U.S.

Chicagoland metro footprint

  • Metro area (Chicagoland): roughly 10,000–10,800 square miles spanning parts of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.
  • Metro population: about 9.6–10 million people, depending on which surrounding counties are counted.
  • Includes: the city of Chicago plus many suburbs, satellite cities, and exurban communities often grouped under “Chicagoland.”

How that feels on the ground

  • Crossing the city by car from north to south can easily take an hour or more, depending on traffic, because the urban area is continuous across much of the metro.
  • The dense downtown core (the Loop and nearby neighborhoods) is relatively compact, but the grid of residential neighborhoods and industrial areas stretches far inland from Lake Michigan.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.