I have lists of names and cities and am trying to compile a list of the number of users in each city.

I want to have a list that looks like:

```
citylist = (['New York', 53], ['San Francisco', 23], ['Los Angeles', 54])

```

etc.

First problem I have is that when I read a new line from the file I need to check whether that city already exists. If it doesn't then I need to add it and give it the number 1. So I have tried:

```
if city not in citylist:
  citylist.append([city, 1])

```

Problem with that is that even if the city is already in the list the search doesn't work as I guess it is typing to match the city to the entire element not just the first item of the element. Can someone tell me how to get round that please?

The seocnd part is lets assume that city is found somewhere in citylist, how can I then increment the number next to the city name by 1?

Thanks for any guidance.