Chesapeake is a diverse city in which a few urban areas are located; it also has many square miles of protected farmland, forests, and wetlands, including a substantial portion of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

Extending from the rural border with North Carolina to the harbor area of Hampton Roads adjacent to the cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, and Virginia Beach, Chesapeake is located on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

The consolidation was approved, and the new name selected by the voters of each community by referendum and authorized by the Virginia General Assembly.

Its residents wanted to make a change to put their jurisdiction on a more equal footing in other aspects with the much larger cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth.

The consolidation that resulted in the city of Chesapeake was part of a wave of changes in the structure of local government in southeastern Virginia which took place between 1952 and 1975.

The Chesapeake region was among the first areas settled in the state's colonial era, when settlement started from the coast.

Fought on December 9, 1775, in the early days of the American Revolutionary War, the battle resulted in the removal of Lord Dunmore and all vestiges of English Government from the Colony and Dominion of Virginia.

Until the late 1980s and early 1990s, much of Chesapeake was either suburban or rural, serving as a bedroom community of the adjacent cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach with residents commuting to these locations.

This explosive growth quickly led to strains on the municipal infrastructure, ranging from intrusion of saltwater into the city's water supply to congested roads and schools.

Chesapeake made national headlines in 2003 when, under a court-ordered change of venue, the community hosted the first trial of alleged Beltway sniper Lee Boyd Malvo for shootings in 2002.

A jury in neighboring Virginia Beach convicted his older partner John Allen Muhammad and sentenced him to death for another of the attacks.

City leaders are faced with conflicts between development of residential, commercial and industrial areas and preservation of virgin forest and wetlands.

Chesapeake consists of six boroughs: South Norfolk, Butts Road, Deep Creek, Pleasant Grove, Western Branch and Washington.

Chesapeake is served by a variety of radio stations on the AM and FM dials, with towers located around the Hampton Roads area.

Chesapeake is served by Cox Communications which provides LNC 5, a local 24-hour cable news television network.

[29] The Chesapeake Public Library offers a variety of educational, career, and literary services to community members.

A core part of the mission of the Chesapeake Public Library is to “support learners at every level to succeed in their education and career paths”.

[30] This mission is accomplished in many ways, including free online classes for children and adults, access to a wide variety of digital educational resources, career help events, and creative/artistic programming.

Within the city limits, Chesapeake Regional Airport is a general aviation facility located just south of Great Bridge.

Chesapeake also has extensive frontage and port facilities on the navigable portions of the Western and Southern Branches of the Elizabeth River.

A new suburban passenger station near Bowers Hill would potentially be included to supplement a terminal in downtown Norfolk.

Included are five movable span (draw) bridges which open an estimated 30,000 times a year for water vessels.

To deal with intermittent high salt content, Chesapeake implemented an advanced reverse osmosis system at its Northwest River water treatment plant in the late 1990s.

Currently, additional freshwater for the South Hampton Roads area is pumped from Lake Gaston, about 80 miles (130 km) west, which straddles the Virginia-North Carolina border along with the Blackwater and Nottaway rivers.