CHICAGO: America's most centralized city?

Is Chicago arguably America's most centralized city? Please understand that if the answer is either "yes" or "no", there are no awards or penulties either way. Having that title gives us no leg up (or down) compared to other cities. It is just a neutral question about organization. Giving some comparisons: • of course New York City is centered around Manhattan. But Manhattan is a borough, not a CBD, a downtown, a city center. And Manhattan itself is anything but centralized with its linear shape, its two business concentrations (downtown and midtown) and its ability to spread power thoughout the lower two portions of the island. • San Francisco has a robust downtown, but so much of what makes the city tick actually happens outside the downtown core. Places like GG Pk, the Marina, the GG Bridge, Haight Ashbury, the Castro, etc., are well removed from the downtown core. • highly urbanized Boston revolves around separates core areas downtown and in the Pru Center area in backbay. • LA speaks for itself in how many "centers" it maintains away from downtown, many of which were healthy places when its downtown (long since on a tremendous upswing) was in decline. Downtown LA is hardly the locus for the San Fernando Valley • Governmental DC spreads its attractions out in an area that includes far more than downtown Washington. In Chicago, however, the Loop and other power centers like Michigan Avenue's Mag Mile are joined into one solid core. A city built on the concept of concentric rings, everything in Chicago is pulled towards the center. The periphery hardly suffers; in fact it thrieves on the concept of the power of the downtown core. All the wonderful things that make areas like Lincoln Park, LakeView, Wicker Park, Hyde Park, etc., the fabulous and complete urban environments that they are comes from their proximity to the city's core; they are beneficaries of the core's greatness as are suburbs like Evanston and Oak Park which offer close access to it. So how about it, guys, does any other city come close to Chicago in "centralization" .....with the repeated caveat that being on top here is neither a plus or a minus, just an "is"....and that cities mentioned above (SF, Bos, NY, DC, LA) and others are doing things just as well as we are even if they are not as centralized.>