Recently I've had multiple reasons to visit Chicago from the Quad Cities, a distance of only a few hours (which could be even easier to access if we ever got the train between them). And because I've been there more frequently, I've had a chance to do things I might not do if I had only a few hours or even a few days in the "big city," like, for instance, going to grocery stores and looking at prices, wandering the streets and checking out the big ads for real estate, and similar street-level random activities. And this has me thinking: are the differences in cost of living between the Quad Cities and Chicago really differences in cost of living--the cost of everyday activities and interactions--or just the cost of housing--the entry point to living there at all?
Now, I don't mean (at all!) to suggest that cost of housing is insignificant. Much of the developed world is experiencing a simultaneous and ongoing housing "crisis" (which, much like the so-called "crisis of the humanities" in academia, has long since become so engrained that "crisis" loses all meaning and we should just call it a longterm shortage). Housing expenses are an ever-increasing percentage of family budgets, and the cost and difficulty of obtaining housing is a major factor in where people can and choose to live.
However.
I suggest that there is a meaningful difference between it costing more to do day-to-day activities and it costing more to have housing. Firstly, a place with high cost of living and low cost of housing would be somewhere that is easy to move into and out of, but hard to stay in, while a place with lower cost of living but high cost of housing has a major barrier to entry but it easier to stay in once you get there--which can cause significant lock-in for those who might have obtained their housing earlier and are now sitting on an appreciating asset and a significant degree of lock-out for those not so situated. Secondly, there is the question of whether salaries responding to inflation (a change in the cost of living) will or will not reflect changes in housing costs: does reducing inflation but still having skyrocketing housing costs (independent of other costs) potentially penalize those who wish to move to or need to rent in expensive areas? Conversely, does adjusting for runaway inflation if housing costs are not keeping up with that inflation potentially allow for better mobility between urban areas?
I think it is helpful to break down the cost of living somewhere along three axes, on which I want to briefly and summarily compare the QCA to Chicago: the cost of buying things, the cost of getting around, and the cost of having somewhere to live. Or, if you prefer, commerce, transportation, and housing.
1. The Cost of Buying Things (Commerce)
Here we see, I would suggest, some differentiation but not a lot of differentiation between the QCA and Chicago. It costs, say, 8 dollars for a latte in Chicago, and 6 in the QCA: not a tiny difference, especially if you're drinking a lot of coffee. A night out in Chicago might be a similar 25% more than in the Quad Cities, and of course the top line is a lot higher: there are the kinds of Michelin-star restaurants and their ilk in Chicago that could blow the top off any costs to go out that the QCA would ever provide.
But the bottom end is actually much more similar than it might appear. Walk into an ALDI in Chicago and the prices are identical in most cases to the same store in Rock Island or Davenport. Go to a McDonald's and (while substantially higher than they were pre-pandemic) the prices are again more or less the same. You can spend a lot more in Chicago than you can in the QCA if you want. But you can also spend a little more, or even basically nothing more. The range is substantially wider in Chicago, but the baseline cost of buying many things in Chicago is not actually higher than the QCA: it's just that there are more expensive options available.
2. The Cost of Getting Around (Transportation)
Of course, getting to buy those things is quite different in the two metro areas. The cost of car ownership is likely higher in Chicago--insurance is certainly higher, gas is similar to the Illinois side of the QCA but without the option of going to lower-cost Iowa for it, and parking tickets are both more expensive and more frequent--and the frustration of driving in the city is legendary.
However, Chicago has two major amenities that the QCA larger does not have: walkable streets and serious public transportation.
The link above suggests it costs about $2000 a year to get car insurance in the Quad Cities, a full thousand or even more less than Chicago. However, a Chicago CTA unlimited pass is $75 a month; 12 of those is $900 a year. If you can replace a car with public transportation, in other words, you save just about as much as the Chicago extra cost of car insurance is, meaning going from 2 cars to 1 makes the cost a wash (of course, ignoring the additional costs associated with a car). And data suggests that this is indeed the case: households in the QCA have about 2 cars, and those in Chicago average 1 car.
And that's assuming you use the CTA often enough to need a monthly pass: if you can walk, bike, or otherwise avoid using either a car or transit, you can of course save more.
3. The Cost of Having Somewhere to Live (Housing)
Now, here we firmly diverge.
Zillow has the average rent in Davenport as about a thousand a month cheaper than in Chicago. That's per month--the transportation costs, notably, were about the same difference per year. As noted above, housing is a huge percentage of the household budget here. The same source has average Chicago values for homes about $140,000 higher than Davenport. I use Davenport here because most data that's easily available disagreggates the QCA; Davenport is much less expensive than Bettendorf (which is around as high as Chicago, for house prices actually, though not rent) but a bit more than Moline or Rock Island, and thus felt like a reasonable medium point for the area.
This is why I suggest that the cost of living differential between these cities is fundamentally one of housing price. If you were gifted a home or won a small lottery to buy one in Chicago, you could keep your income similar to what it is in the Quad Cities and do OK (though note that with current mortgage rates, you'd really need to buy it, not just finance it, for that to hold true). You might shop at a bargain grocery store or drink fewer lattes (that standard canard of lecturing to millennials and Gen Z), but it would be doable.
What would not be doable on a QCA salary in Chicago would be the housing costs from renting or a mortgage (especially at 7+%).
None of this means it is cheap to live in Chicago. But it does suggest that the root of the difference is fundamentally housing stock: if we reduced the price of housing in Chicago, it would look a lot more like the QCA in terms of affordability--and I think generally* that would be a good thing.
If you're wondering why this has the "15 minute city" tag it's because this is, to me, the key to the 15 minute city concept: a city that is easy to get around and has a lot of different options for what you buy and where (and therefore price levels) can be very livable--as long as we also have places to live within 15 minutes of all that stuff.
* Offer does not apply if you already own a house in Chicago and this would lower the value of your asset.
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