By: Mattie Buneta
Hating on the great state of New Jersey, once every New Yorker’s favourite hobby, has become a national hobby. But New Yorkers, always ahead of national trends and eager to subvert cultural norms have begun to do the unthinkable, moving to the Garden State.
Perhaps that’s because New York has, since the rise of Jace Jacobs inspired acitvists, seeked to retain communities and cultures, leaving back the New York once known for erasing its history faster than it could be created. Focuses on retaining the culture of communities has resulted in many parts of the island not getting new affordable housing, and difficulties in building new high-rises. This is a legacy that has been taken on by New Jersey in its quest to fill-in the regional housing gap with “Hudson County overall [permitting] well over double the rate of housing that New York City does (51 units/10ks residents vs. 22 units/10k residents)”. This creation of housing may play some role in the fact that rents in Jersey City are both lower than other similarly gentrifying areas within the city proper, but that they are also increasing at a slower rate, making it more and more financially attainable.
And perhaps the rise of hybrid workers is also changing the finances of commuting. The perennial claim against New Jersey was that, while rent was cheaper the cost of commuting five days a week for work made the costs similar, if not the same. This math begins to tilt more and more towards New Jersey’s favor with lengthier commutes and commuting costs meaning less and less when individuals have to do it less often. This change to remote work can be seen with “Many of [Manhattan’s] offices are half empty, and its population is shrinking”. These offices are likely to remain closed should the trend of companies creating Satellite offices in Jersey City continue, such as those in the finance community, which have increasingly bought office spaces in Jersey since the 90’s.
And perhaps this commuting is getting less lengthy and more integrated, decreasing the physical boundaries within the spaces of New Jersey and causing the city to become increasingly compressed into the geography of New York City. Increased public transit options such as the rise of PATH trains weakens and blurs the boundaries between the two cities.
(Map of Routes on the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail)
This is particularly effective given its multiple locations within subway stations, which creates an effect wherein the transit becomes an effective extension of the existing transit infrastructure, rather than a separate entity unto itself. Outside of this the rise of social media has made it so that New Yorkers, only willing to travel to the Newark airport, are able to be exposed to Jersey City’s cultural amenities without having to commit to travel there, with the digital spaces of the two cities becoming increasingly interlinked. And perhaps New Jersey’s new cultural amenities (beginning to be tailored to the needs of the nouveau riche and replacing local communities) are working towards decreasing the stigma of the ‘bridge-and-tunnel crowd’ so well known for its inability to fit in with the New York elite. It houses artists priced out of Manhattan, and is beginning to weaponize them into getting a ‘cool’ factor leading Timeout NY to name it ‘one of the hippest places in the world’. Its new beer gardens and niche cocktail bars both serve this rise of newcomers, and encourages more to follow in their wake.
No matter the reason, Jersey City is becoming more Manhattan by the day, for better or worse.
Sources:
https://www.timeout.com/jersey-city/things-to-do/jersey-city-is-having-a-moment-and-you-should-go-there-asap
https://www.businessinsider.com/people-moving-from-nyc-too-expensive-to-jersey-city-2023-9
https://catalyst.independent.org/2022/10/12/jersey-city-new-york-borough/
https://www.ft.com/content/4796472e-59e7-48cd-a101-d2a8aac73132
Hi Matty,
As a New Jersey resident myself, I really enjoyed reading this blog post. I had no idea that there were this many people from New York City coming to New Jersey, which was surprising to me because you often hear of people moving into NYC but not you don’t really hear of people moving out of it. However, after reading this blog post, it actually makes a lot of sense to me. The biggest complaint I hear about NYC is that the rent is insanely high, so it is only natural that some people would move to New Jersey where that problem isn’t nearly as bad. This also ties into our class’ discussion about the Urban Doom Loop, since, as you mentioned in your blog post, office spaces in major cities have been closing; and, as we talked about as a class, this causes the city’s budget to decrease, so they spend less on maintaining essential services, and the city becomes less appealing, so more people move out. So, it makes sense that as the Urban Doom Loop strikes NYC, the people moving out would come to the neighboring state of New Jersey. I also like your discussion of public transit; as someone who has taken the PATH before to get into NYC from Newark, I can attest that it is much more convenient than getting to New York by car, and so it makes sense that as there are more of these public transit options, the commute from NYC to New Jersey becomes easier and more people move here as a result. Overall, this was a really interesting blog post to read, and I am curious as to whether this trend will continue or if there will be something that decreases this uptick in New Yorkers moving to New Jersey.
Hey Matty,
Being another chronic defender of the Garden State I was really intrigued by your post and it led me down a rabbit hole of reading on this new move that was really interesting. However, I think an interesting area of avenue to explore with New York migrants to Jersey City is less why they’re moving to New Jersey, but why they’re moving to urban New Jersey. For a long time, the Garden State has been buried under the growing suburbs of New York City, which while not exclusively, are inhabited by a lot of people moving out of the city for a ‘better environment to raise kids’. I think what is interesting in this case is that for a variety of possible factors, new emigrants aren’t choosing sprawling developments but another dense urban environment (even if less comparatively dense than Manhattan’s concrete jungle).
I think you make a compelling argument that transit could be a part of this, but NJ Transit was also designed to function like the PATH, getting commuters and visitors in and out of the city (Although NJ Transit’s reputation is, sadly, not as strong as it may have once been). I do think that part of this change may be more demographic and based on consumer preferences. Rising housing prices are pushing out younger professionals, but since most young people are marrying and having kids later, the need for a large house in a ‘good’ school district with a large yard isn’t as strong, and people may be staying closer to urban amenities both in Jersey City and a quick ride into NYC. Plus, in a more climate conscious time, I do think young people are more wary of the idea of long commutes in cars and big lawns, which also come with an idea of people living in the suburbs being more conservative. I think all of this combines to create the gentrification rather than sprawl patterns we are now seeing with Jersey City, but I’d be curious on your thoughts about this switch as a New Jersey resident. At the very least, hopefully this development will help to change Jersey’s reputation from depressing suburbia to the home of lively, dynamic cities.