Looking at the various sources of information on the ethnic and income level groupings of people in Chicago, I found myself very surprised at the high level of integration in the city.

I had always had an image of cities during this time period having very distinct ethnic areas. One neighborhood for the Italians. Another for the Greeks. Another for African-Americans and so on and so fourth.
This was not exactly the case in Chicago. While there do appear to be some patterns of groups living together, it looks for the most part like people of many different types of ethnicities and income levels lived in relatively close proximity to one another.

I still think that there would have been sort of an odd combination of cultural segregation and mixing. My impression of this time has led me to think that most of these groups did tend to stick together, but did encounter other groups very often. This created an interesting clash of cultures that had to learn how to coexist.

I think looking at this data has provided me with some interesting insight into the development of early American cites.