The suburbs are not just places where people live. The Chicago suburbs have a lot of office space:

While higher-end properties are outperforming less expensive options among the suburbs’ 99 million square feet of office space, they still saw a decline in the year’s second quarter, ending a yearlong run of gains, according to data collected by the Chicago-based firm.

The Pentagon has 6,500,000 square feet of space so the suburban office space is over 15 times that of the Pentagon. The Willis Tower in Chicago has roughly 4,000,000 square feet of space so the suburbs have roughly 25 times more space. A football field is 57,600 square feet is the office space covers over 1,718 football fields. If the average new American home is about 2,500 square feet, this office space is nearly 40,000 new average homes.

Note: another website suggests the Chicago suburbs have 162 million square feet of office space, putting the Chicago suburbs behind the Washington D.C. suburbs, the Dallas-Forth Worth suburbs, the Bay Area suburbs, and the New Jersey suburbs.

Whichever number is correct, it is hard to put this much space in perspective. The suburbs may be primarily about single-family homes but they have plenty of space for business.