Comparison List: NYC and Chicago

Similarities:
-Booming Metropolises
-Creation of Public Transportation
-Inadequate housing for poor
- Large wealth discrepancy
- Large immigrant populations
- Some social institutions to help poor
- Lots of Factories
-Crowded
-Both experienced "Renaissances,"  the Harlem Renaissance was also present in Chicago literature, though clearly not in Harlem, but in Chicago neighborhoods. 
Differences
- New York is much larger than Chicago
- New York is much older than Chicago, which is just starting to really spring up with the spread of trains.
- New York was much more crowded, particularly prevalent in the tenements.  Jane Adams, on the other hand, addresses poor housing in Chicago mainly as cheaply and poorly built- out of wood rather than the brick popular in New York, usually as temporary housing (which over lasted its "temporary" status)
-While we didn't study places like Hull House in New York, there may have been some first, but based off our studies I would say that Chicago had several settlements, whereas in New York places like the YMCA were where the poor turned for housing and services (to a lesser extent than somewhere like Hull House, perhaps)
- Time.  Problems have had time to grow and manifest themselves in New York more than in Chicago, yet in all likelihood, so have positive communities such as the Gay Community.  While we did not study Gay Chicago, it is probably fair to assume that New York, with a longer history, had more time to develop an extensive Gay Community than the later- formed Chicago
- New York was seen by Gay men as a refuge and an anonymous place, but was deemed by many an "immoral" city, overrun with wild opportunities.  Chicago, on the other hand, while offering it's own attractions, was attractive not only for its feeling of urbanity, but also because it seemed to invoke the "future,"  as described in Perfect Cities.