MotorCityJim
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Ian, and Mr. Simpson:
You're both right...
"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. At various times the depiction has Gotham on the shores of "Lake Gotham". The majority of appearances, however, place Gotham on the eastern coast of the United States.
Historically, "Gotham" is a nickname for New York, first used by Washington Irving in the early 19th century.[15] For most of the publication history of Batman in comics, Gotham has been assumed to be a New York City analogue;[15] Frank Miller has said that "Metropolis is New York in the daytime; Gotham City is New York at night."[16] 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. Or, you know, Boston."[15] The late 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.[17]
However, longtime Batman artist Neal Adams considers Gotham to be based on Chicago (whose nickname is "New Gotham"), pointing to its history of corruption and organized crime, and adding, "One of the things about Chicago is Chicago has alleys (which are virtually nonexistent in New York). Back alleys, that's where Batman fights all the bad guys."[15] 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.[15] 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, while in Batman Begins, Alfred Pennyworth states that Bruce Wayne's great-grandfather used the caverns underneath Wayne Manner to smuggle slaves to the north.[18] Nolan has stated publicly that Chicago is the basis of his portrayal of Gotham, and the majority of both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were filmed there.[19]"
(quoted, from Wikipedia 
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-Ian