Blog # 17: Divided Cities

The most interesting of the materials we were provided were the maps of wages and nationality. The nationality maps clearly revealed that some groups were more clustered than others. The Italians especially covered large portions of the map, as well as the Russians, and some other groups like the Polish covered small sections.

It seems likely that there would be many public gathering places, but they probably weren't official places, because it also seems that the neighborhoods of people with the same nationality were also some of the lowest wage earners. Perhaps the people with the strongest bonds were those who could not support themselves, so they relied on each other, which is why they had such large clusters living in the same area.

Also, one interesting fact that I noticed was that the small spots of english speaking people either seemed to be the highest wage earners, or brothels. This doesn't make as much sense to me. Perhaps brothels were some of the highest earning jobs for women, or english speaking prostitutes were in high demand. Either way, english speaking people definitely gathered in their neighborhoods, but not in such large groups as other nationalities.

As far as nationalities distinguishing themselves from one another, I would guess that neighborhoods of people who earn the same wages probably have the same or similar jobs, so that could be one distinguishing feature. Also, they obviously have their heritage to celebrate their differences, everything from language to holidays and religion. These can be huge dividers in groups of people. It sems likely that there was no shortage of ways to tell apart the different neighborhoods. The only thing they probably shared was their underpriviledged living situations.