Gotham City - Geography

Geography

Gotham City's geography, like other fictional cities' geographies in the DC Universe, has varied over the decades, because of changing writers, editors, and storylines. The majority of appearances place Gotham on the Northeastern coast of the United States, where New York City is located. Also, Manhattan is an island in the Northeastern United States, which corresponds to maps depicting Gotham City. However, the 1990 Atlas of the DC Universe states that Gotham is located in New Jersey, across the Delaware Bay from Metropolis, which would place it on the southern coast of New Jersey. Like Gotham, Metropolis' location has also varied over the years. The distance between Gotham and Metropolis has varied greatly over the years, with depictions of the two ranging from being hundreds of miles apart to Gotham and Metropolis being shown as twin cities on opposite sides of Delaware Bay, with Gotham City in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware.

Historically, "Gotham" has been a nickname for New York City originating on November 11, 1807 by Washington Irving in his Salmagundi Papers. Frank Miller has said that "Metropolis is New York in the daytime; Gotham City is New York at night." DC Comics publisher and former president Paul Levitz says that Gotham is "New York from 14th Street down, the older buildings, more brick-and-mortar as opposed to steel-and-glass." New York Times journalist William Safire described Gotham City as "New York below 14th Street, from SoHo to Greenwich Village, the Bowery, Little Italy, Chinatown, and the sinister areas around the base of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges."

Film adaptations have varied: Tim Burton's Gotham was based primarily on New York, while the films directed by Christopher Nolan have shown a Gotham more closely based on Chicago. In Nolan's films Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, the license plates of the cars registered in Gotham strongly resemble those of Illinois but display "Gotham" as the state. Additionally, during a car chase in Batman Begins one of the cops reports that Batman is travelling west on I-78. Nolan has stated that Chicago is the basis of his portrayal of Gotham, and the majority of both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were filmed there.

In the television series Young Justice, during the episode entitled "Schooled", an onscreen map indicates that Gotham City is located in Southwest Connecticut.