Chicago: a hill of an idea?

Can hills be looked at neturally....a thing of beauty or a perhaps the exact opposite? I ask this because I know so many people consider a hilly landscape to be an important part of a city's charm. And while I agree that a place like San Francisco does incredible things with its hills that causes incredible beauty, there are also places I wouldn't want to see them. Like here. In Chicago. How about you: If our enivornment had been hilly (rather than flat), but with the same grid-system, would the city have been better or worse? As I said, from my perspective, much worse: the walkability, the way that the lakefront is comfortably attached to downtown and the neighorhoods, the ability of the el to run through the city, the flatness that keeps neighborhoods interconnected, the beauty of construction on optimum pieces of land, the way the skyline dominates the horizon......all these things make me look at Chicago flatness as much as a source of beauty and character as the hillls are in San Francisco.>