Workers dye the Chicago River green as part of the city's annual St. Patrick's day celebrations in Chicago. REUTERS/John Gress Author Rachel Shteir recently caused an uproar in Chicago after ripping into her adopted city.

Writing in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Shteir accused Chicago of being stiflingly conformist, regularly electing crooks and idiots and generally clinging to outmoded cliches about itself.

"[T]he city is trapped by its location, its past, and what philosophers would have called its facticity — its limitations, given the circumstances," she wrote. "Boosterism has been perfected here because the reality is too painful to look at. Poor Chicago, indeed."

Indeed, Chicago has to confront some harsh truths. It is not the place it once was, even a decade ago, let alone a century.

Yet, its heyday was recent enough that to sense its floundering stings all the more intensely.

We wanted to survey how bad it's gotten, and whether there's any hope for the city that PBS bittersweetly still refers to as "The City Of The Century."