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
