The New Jersey-NYC relationship

[Docere]

Is there a sense that the NJ part of the NYC metro area is less culturally "New York" than suburbs in NYS? How does being a different state impact the relationship to the city or one's local identity? Obviously NJ residents have a different governor and senator, different license plates and so on. NJ also has many urban centers, Maplewood or Short Hills for example may be considered "Newark suburbs."

[Crawford]

NJ is actually the largest suburban population center in the NY metro, and by a lot. In a sense, the non-core NY MSA is best typified by Jersey. NJ also has a much higher share of state population in the NY Metro than NYS. There are cultural differences, but not really moreso than say Rockland vs. LI, and definitely not moreso than NY vs. CT.

Though Westchester and Fairfield seem to be slowly merging culturally. The old GOP-Dem, WASP-Jew/Italian stereotypes are fast-fading. CT built form is still much more neo-colonial and Westchester much more neo-Tudor, but the residents are more alike these days.

[Docere]

Sorting out the NYC MSA (+Fairfield) by county ring/typology.

NYC 8,804,190

Inner-ring suburbs:

Bergen 955,732
Nassau 1,395,774
Westchester 1,004,457
total 2,351,506

Urban NJ:

Essex 863,728
Hudson 724,854
Passaic 524,118
Union 575,345
total 2,688,045

Outer-ring suburbs:

Fairfield 957,419
Hunterdon 128,947
Middlesex 863,162
Monmouth 643,615
Morris 509,285
Ocean 673,229
Pike 58,535
Putnam 97,668
Rockland 338,329
Somerset 345,361
Suffolk 1,525,920
Sussex 144,221
total 6,285,691

Total population: 21,097,889
NYC: 8,804,190
Outside NYC: 12,293,699
NJ: 6,951,597

% In New Jersey

Outside NYC 56%
Inner-ring suburban 40%
Outer-ring suburban 53%

[Docere]

New Jersey composition:

Inner ring suburb 955,732
Urban NJ 2,688,045
Outer ring suburb 3,307,820

[xzmattzx]

New Jersey has its own sports team, the Devils (and had the Nets), so it has its own identity. Long Island has its own sports team as well in the Islanders, so they have their own identity.

North Jersey is almost like a metro within a metro, like an MSA in a CSA. Jersey City and Hoboken are places to commute into Manhattan by train from, among other places, and it's a little like a place for people who want to live in the city but want cheaper rent. People from those two places relax in New York City as well, so they really see Manhattan as their back yard but on the other side of a river. Farther out, there's more of that insular identity with a connection to the state as much as to NYC. You get a lesser extent of that with South Jersey and Philadelphia; the suburbs in New Jersey, like Cherry Hill and Voorhees and so on, function together and don't have much in common with the ones west of Philadelphia like Conshohocken or King of Prussia.

But suburbs everywhere tend to have slightly less of a connection with the main city and a little of their own connection with nearby suburban communities, based on location and similar characteristics. That's why we give these areas names to lump them together, because we pick up on the sub-area. So you get North Jersey or Long Island or Southwest Connecticut or the Hudson Valley for New York City, or the North Shore and South Shore for Boston, or the Inland Empire for Los Angeles, or the East Valley and West Valley for Phoenix, the East Bay for San Francisco/Oakland, and so on. On that note, it's kind of interesting how some metro areas subdivide suburbs and lump them together with names, and others don't (or they are just not as famous).

[mrnyc]

^ it is interesting how everybody shorthands it. for cleveland you get eastside or westside, but meaning either the city and/or suburbs depending on what you’re talking about. otherwise, there is also greater cleveland, the metro or ne ohio depending again on what the topic is, but people throw all those terms around a lot.

of course to ny’ers its all just jersey or ohio.

[Steely Dan]

Other than the anomaly of DC and its "federal district", NYC probably has the highest percentage of suburbia in another state(s) out of all major US metro areas.

Here are the US cities that anchor major MSAs that have municipal borders literally on a state boundary and have a substantial amount of inner ring suburbia located adjacent in a different state.


River border cities:

NYC
Philly
Cincy
Louisville
St. Louis
KC
Portland


Land border cities:

DC
Chicago



Memphis is directly on the Mississippi and thus on the border with Arkansas, but other than west Memphis, there doesn't seem to be much over there, curiously. Maybe it's all too floody?

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Other than the anomaly of DC and its "federal district", NYC probably has the highest percentage of suburbia in another state(s) out of all major US metro areas.

Here are the US cities that anchor major MSAs that have municipal borders literally on a state boundary and have a substantial amount of inner ring suburbia located adjacent in a different state.


River border cities:

NYC
Philly
Cincy
Louisville
St. Louis
KC
Portland


Land border cities:

DC
Chicago



Memphis is directly on the Mississippi and thus on the border with Arkansas, but other than west Memphis, there doesn't seem to be much over there, curiously. Maybe it's all too floody?

I wouldn’t consider anything in Portland or Chicago to be inner ring, but point taken about substantial amounts of suburbia.

[iheartthed]

Northern New Jersey is the suburban whale of NY metro. The order of attention goes New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester, Fairfield County, and then the other lower Hudson Valley counties in New York.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Memphis is directly on the Mississippi and thus on the border with Arkansas, but other than west Memphis, there doesn't seem to be much over there, curiously. Maybe it's all too floody?

The suburban areas on the Mississippi side are growing pretty rapidly.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The suburban areas on the Mississippi side are growing pretty rapidly.

I think those MS suburbs are Memphis white flight burbs? South Memphis had very early white flight, and very dramatic racial change. Elvis' old neighborhood has been nearly 100% black for decades.

Memphis favored quarter is along a single arterial, headed east (I think Poplar?). It might be one of the most anomalous favored quarters in the U.S.; a wealthy almost all-white corridor from downtown out past suburban Germantown, in the blackest U.S. MSA.

I remember traveling through West Memphis, and it was one of the most depressing American towns I've seen. I could see flooding issues, as the town is set back far from the river. There are also few river crossings, so it might not make sense to live there. There's essentially no sprawl on that side of the river. Just a depressed old town.

[eschaton]

The thing about living in metro NYC is although you probably know someone who commutes to NYC, it's unlikely that there's any one place where it's the majority of workers. The NYC metro, for as large as the Midtown/Financial District job concentration is, is also a massively multipolar area.

There are of course dozens of smaller legacy cities which were well-established before World War II - places like Newark, Patterson, New Brunswick, etc. Each of these developed their own postwar suburbia, which in many cases blended together. But it goes beyond this as well. New Jersey, along with Connecticut, New Hampshire (for Boston) and Delaware (for Philly) set themselves up in the postwar era as a sort of proto-Sunbelt, putting together state and local tax incentives to poach jobs away from the major cities of the Northeast and into suburban office parks. Indeed, every town, township, or borough wanted to have its fair share of these, because they paid taxes and couldn't vote in local elections, thus forestalling the need to raise property taxes. So you ended up with massively decentralized suburb-to-suburb commutes - arguably worse than in a lot of the Sun Belt, where county-wide zoning tends to force this commercial development into a smaller number of larger office or industrial parks. It's horrible for commuting, but it does help and blend out the cultural differences, because it's fairly common someone might have to commute all the way from Connecticut to Bergen County or whatever depending upon where they can find work.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I wouldn’t consider anything in Portland or Chicago to be inner ring, but point taken about substantial amounts of suburbia.

Huh?

The 4 major pre-war municipalities of NWI just across city limits from Chicago (Hammond, Whiting, East Chicago & Gary) had a combined population of 285,438 in 1950.

Lake County, IN was actually the most populous collar county in Chicagoland by far back in 1950, way ahead of Dupage, Lake (IL), Will, and Kane. And it's the only collar county that directly abuts Chicago city limits (not counting the ORD annexation bubble in the '60').

That was of course back in the day before automation destroyed employment numbers at the giant steel mills down there.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by eschaton

The thing about living in metro NYC is although you probably know someone who commutes to NYC, it's unlikely that there's any one place where it's the majority of workers. The NYC metro, for as large as the Midtown/Financial District job concentration is, is also a massively multipolar area.

There are of course dozens of smaller legacy cities which were well-established before World War II - places like Newark, Patterson, New Brunswick, etc. Each of these developed their own postwar suburbia, which in many cases blended together. But it goes beyond this as well. New Jersey, along with Connecticut, New Hampshire (for Boston) and Delaware (for Philly) set themselves up in the postwar era as a sort of proto-Sunbelt, putting together state and local tax incentives to poach jobs away from the major cities of the Northeast and into suburban office parks. Indeed, every town, township, or borough wanted to have its fair share of these, because they paid taxes and couldn't vote in local elections, thus forestalling the need to raise property taxes. So you ended up with massively decentralized suburb-to-suburb commutes - arguably worse than in a lot of the Sun Belt, where county-wide zoning tends to force this commercial development into a smaller number of larger office or industrial parks. It's horrible for commuting, but it does help and blend out the cultural differences, because it's fairly common someone might have to commute all the way from Connecticut to Bergen County or whatever depending upon where they can find work.

yeah the commuting stories are epic. i had people commuting from danbury, bridgeport and the freakin poconos.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think those MS suburbs are Memphis white flight burbs? South Memphis had very early white flight, and very dramatic racial change. Elvis' old neighborhood has been nearly 100% black for decades.

Memphis favored quarter is along a single arterial, headed east (I think Poplar?). It might be one of the most anomalous favored quarters in the U.S.; a wealthy almost all-white corridor from downtown out past suburban Germantown, in the blackest U.S. MSA.

I remember traveling through West Memphis, and it was one of the most depressing American towns I've seen. I could see flooding issues, as the town is set back far from the river. There are also few river crossings, so it might not make sense to live there. There's essentially no sprawl on that side of the river. Just a depressed old town.

I think the early white flight areas were in Tennessee and have been mostly been consolidated into the city of Memphis. The Mississippi sprawl is post-1990 growth. DeSoto County in MS went from a population of 68k in 1990 to 185k in 2020, despite Memphis being a fairly stagnant metro.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Huh?

The 4 major pre-war municipalities of NWI just across city limits from Chicago (Hammond, Whiting, East Chicago & Gary) had a combined population of 285,438 in 1950.

Lake County, IN was actually the most populous collar county in Chicagoland by far back in 1950, way ahead of Dupage, Lake (IL), Will, and Kane. And it's the only collar county that directly abuts Chicago city limits (not counting the ORD annexation bubble in the '60').

That was of course back in the day before automation destroyed employment numbers at the giant steel mills down there.

Satellite cities (among which Gary and Hammond are definitely, and Vancouver in the Portland example) are not inner core suburbia, IMHO.

They are legacy satellites city cores surrounded by outer ring suburbia. I think this is particularly true of Vancouver, WA, where most of the inner core suburbia is within the city limits of Portland proper.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

Satellite cities (among which Gary and Hammond are definitely, and Vancouver in the Portland example) are not inner core suburbia, IMHO.

Eh, would Gary have developed if there were no Chicago? Not sure about that.

I'm not sure how you can disentangle satellite cities with older suburbia. Especially in the Eastern U.S. (and most definitely in the NE corridor), metro areas are basically a mess of older towns enveloped by sprawl. Paterson, NJ's founding had zero to do with NYC, but it's clearly now an inner urban enclave in the NYC region.

NYC, Philly and Boston especially, are less conventional metro areas than a blob of old industrial towns with postwar sprawl filling in the gaps. A somewhat newer metro, like Detroit, basically gets newer and sprawlier the further from the core, and it's even more true in the Sunbelt, but those older metros are much more patchwork than the typical growth rings, where something 10 miles out from Atlanta will be very different from 20 and 30 miles out.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Docere

Is there a sense that the NJ part of the NYC metro area is less culturally "New York" than suburbs in NYS?

There is not a blanket answer to this. It all depends on where you're talking about.

But, no -- quite the opposite in many cases. To break it down as simply as possible, many NJ "suburbs" are closer to and more integrated with Manhattan than Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties are.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Memphis is directly on the Mississippi and thus on the border with Arkansas, but other than west Memphis, there doesn't seem to be much over there, curiously. Maybe it's all too floody?

I think because it's too Arkansasy.

Originally Posted by mrnyc

yeah the commuting stories are epic. i had people commuting from danbury, bridgeport and the freakin poconos.

When I first heard about it, it was hard for me to comprehend that there is a subset of NYers who willingly commute daily via bus from the Poconos to Manhattan.

Like... catching the bus between 4-5 AM so they can get to work on time, and then not getting back home until 7-8 PM. This is often the trade-off to live in a shitty, vinyl house in a crappy part of PA.

Talk about a living hell of one's own choosing.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by pj3000

When I first heard about it, it was hard for me to comprehend that there is a subset of NYers who willingly commute daily via bus from the Poconos to Manhattan.

Like... catching the bus between 4-5 AM so they can get to work on time, and then not getting back home until 7-8 PM. This is often the trade-off to live in a shitty, vinyl house in a crappy part of PA.

Talk about a living hell of one's own choosing.

A friend of mine did this for a couple of years to save money by living with his parents.

[Docere]

Is there a North Jersey accent?