South side Chicago does not look like Flint. The streets are tree-lined, the worst buildings are boarded up, the houses are solid and most of them are brick bungalows. Many tens of thousands of people live there. The worst neighborhoods, like Englewood, are still kept up, and they're bracketed by middle-class neighborhoods like Chatham --- you might not feel comfortable in Chatham, especially if you're from lily-white Startuplandia, but it's a real neighborhood.

South side Chicago is bad in a lot of ways --- it's a direct result of decades of overt racial segregation, and crime is absolutely out of control --- but it isn't Flint.

A better analog would be Gary, Indiana (for people who don't know Chicagoland, Gary is a southeast suburb of Chicago).