I don't know if you can answer this but "Brunswick" sounds pretty similar to the German city name "Braunschweig" which is also all over the place. Do you have any idea if these German cities were founded by German immigrants? It could also be Dutch, but it surely isn't an English or Irish town name @@UrbanJerseyGuy
@@toniderdon that is exactly the origin of the name. Was named New Brunswick in 1714, and the area had a particularly large number of German immigrants.
I always thought it was weird that there's a trillion little individual towns that make up what otherwise looks like a single city, so it's interesting to know why.
If I recall correctly, there was an effort in the 80s to merge all of Hudson County into one municipality. That shows another limitation: counties. For example, if we were to imagine a "greater Newark," it would obviously include Elizabeth and Harrison, both of which are outside of Essex County. I think about this type of thing all the time and how NJ could have great rapid transit tying it all together, but as it currently stands it's just a mess of small municipalities thought of as just appendages to NYC and our transit reflects that erroneous view.
Unsure about the effort in the 80's for Hudson County, at least I didn't run into it in my research. I'll poke around a bit since I will be talking more about attempted mergers in my next video on the subject. As for the county barrier, it is an issue though a City-County merger in Hudson and Essex county would solve many of the issues. Dealing with 2 cities rather than a few dozen is quite a bit easier for transit planning and land use planning.
If I come across it again, I'll pass it along. It was probably the effort of just a handful of people. I'm sure you're familiar with "Multiple Municipal Madness" bu Alan Karcher@@UrbanJerseyGuy
NJ do be wacky. On mining you'd be surprised how much mining we did here till they started making trains out west and it was no longer profitable with the competition.
The memorial at 1:31 is very symbolic. It's called Dauntless Efforts by Matt Johnson. When 9/11 happened, construction workers at the Harborside Financial Center development sites rushed to the WTC to donate their time and skill for the recovery effort. So this memorial depicts a silhouette of an iron worker looking at the wreckage of the WTC to honor the workers that went there. The steel used in the base of this sculpture is from the actual wreckage itself. Not a borough but a really weird side effect of boroughitis is the Township of South Hackensack....with three noncontiguous sections. Basically there used to be a township called Lodi Township that was originally formed in 1826, but sections of Lodi Township were set off to form boroughs and the remainder of Lodi Township became South Hackensack in 1935 after a referendum passed 309 to 15, as in the last unattractive portion that others didn't want.
Super great video. Having grown up along the shore in Monmouth County and now living in Hudson County, I always wondered why we had so many small towns/cities. Thanks!
I always saw the Faulkner Act as a positive thing because (as was hinted at in the video) it brought modern city features like the right of initiative and referendum to more than half of NJ residents (TLDR: if you live in a Faulkner Act Municipality, if 10% of residents sign a petition - a ballot question goes to the voters). As someone who volunteers for local causes in NJ - this generally makes Faulkner governments more responsive, and always gives you the opportunity to start a petition. It's a good point though that the law's features have reduced the leverage NJ had to push for more consolidation.
Had it in my description. Bit of a mental lapse on my part as I knew it happened but was reading an older paper on the history of NJ municipalities which still had it as a town. Working hard on the next one as we speak, stay tuned.
I grew up in Sussex County, where there are only three boroughs. It gave my surveying company headaches. Now living in Woodland Park, this is absolute insanity
My proposal is a big city with 3 boroughs (like NYC has 5 boroughs). Residents will choose the name of the big city and name of their borough using ranked choice voting. Borough 1 consists of everything east of the Hackensack River from Bayonne to Englewood. Possible names include Bayonne, Jersey City, Hoboken, West New York, Hudson, Bergen. Population 900k. Borough 2 consists of Newark, Elizabeth, the Oranges, south to the Rahway River, west to the first Watchung Mountain. Possible names include Newark, Elizabeth, Orange, Union (I prefer Elizabeth because it's pretty and was named after the proprietor's wife 400 years ago). Population 890k. Borough 3 consists of the rectangle from Harrison to Hackensack to Paterson to Montclair. Possible names include Passaic, Paterson, Clifton, Montclair, Meadowlands, Hackensack (I prefer Passaic for the river that runs through the whole length of the borough and has the falls). Population 830k. Existing county lines get in the way of doing this so the county boundaries need to get moved. The city will share a transportation authority with New York City. Every NJ Transit, Path, and HBLR train station within the borders of this city will become a subway station and get train service no less than every 10 minutes. It absorbs all or part of 74 existing municipalities. If I ever get enough free time I will finish writing this fantasy proposal and publish it with maps to r/newjersey.
St. Louis is in a similar situation as this. The city seceded from the county in the 1800s and so now we have dozens of different municipalities that make up the metro area - 91 tota municipalities in the county, including Champ Missouri, a landfill with a population of 10 founded by a track and field star.
This also happens in Pennsylvania. Im the Northeast rust belt region of the state regional goals cant be met because of municipal fragmentation through boroughs, CDPs, townships all managing to be their own little fiefdoms. Consolidation is simply more efficient. Theres no reason to have 38 municipalities within a densly populated 30 mile radius.
I find it insane that new jersey with a population of 9 million has more local government areas (or the equivalent) than WA, with a population of two million. WA has 137, and those don't feel big at all
If Hudson County was one city it would literally be a city of 700,000+ residents while only being 62 square miles. That’s smaller than Boston while having a higher population.
One note: major cities usually annexed their smaller neighbors to grow. In the early censuses, many of the largest US cities were towns outside of New York and Philadelphia. Over the 1800s, these towns were annexed until the city occupied the entire county. Then New York took it a step further annexed Brooklyn, itself one of the largest cities in the country. This pattern failed to emerge in New Jersey because there was not a single core city strong enough to lure or coerce its neighbors into repeated rounds of annexation. It was better to be a small town across the river from New York or Philadelphia than to be a neighborhood in Newark or Camden.
Newark, Jersey City, and Paterson were plenty enough urban cores to be considered the center of their region in the 1800's up until roughly the 1960's. The laws which made consolidation difficult but fragmentation easy were the issue in NJ not the size of the urban cores. To add, JC/Paterson/Newark were no less a city than NYC at time of consolidation. The region included suburban streetcar development and a small amount of farmland between just like Manhattan/Bronx/Brooklyn/Queens/Richmond
@@UrbanJerseyGuyEach of these cities was just reaching 100k in population at the same time New York was flying from 1.5M to 3.5M-partially by annexation. They were already satellites in New York’s orbit by the mid-1800s. Yes, the ease of fragmentation is part of this story, but the bigger picture is that while areas around other major cities found it more opportune to be consumed by the core city, the areas in New Jersey found it more opportune to not only fragment but remain fragmented. It’s fundamentally rare for two major cities to coexist side by side; one city almost always clears its orbit.
Shows clown decoration while saying "All free white men over the age of 21 with adequate wealth would be able to vote". In my mind that wasn't an accident.
All of the Brunswicks should merge, because its an affront from god to have North Brunswick be located to the South of New Brunswick.
Great video 🤙
Democratic Front for the Unification of New Brunswick
Inshallah we will have the Great Raritan city.
I don't know if you can answer this but "Brunswick" sounds pretty similar to the German city name "Braunschweig" which is also all over the place. Do you have any idea if these German cities were founded by German immigrants? It could also be Dutch, but it surely isn't an English or Irish town name @@UrbanJerseyGuy
@@toniderdon that is exactly the origin of the name. Was named New Brunswick in 1714, and the area had a particularly large number of German immigrants.
I always thought it was weird that there's a trillion little individual towns that make up what otherwise looks like a single city, so it's interesting to know why.
If I recall correctly, there was an effort in the 80s to merge all of Hudson County into one municipality. That shows another limitation: counties. For example, if we were to imagine a "greater Newark," it would obviously include Elizabeth and Harrison, both of which are outside of Essex County. I think about this type of thing all the time and how NJ could have great rapid transit tying it all together, but as it currently stands it's just a mess of small municipalities thought of as just appendages to NYC and our transit reflects that erroneous view.
Unsure about the effort in the 80's for Hudson County, at least I didn't run into it in my research. I'll poke around a bit since I will be talking more about attempted mergers in my next video on the subject. As for the county barrier, it is an issue though a City-County merger in Hudson and Essex county would solve many of the issues. Dealing with 2 cities rather than a few dozen is quite a bit easier for transit planning and land use planning.
If I come across it again, I'll pass it along. It was probably the effort of just a handful of people. I'm sure you're familiar with "Multiple Municipal Madness" bu Alan Karcher@@UrbanJerseyGuy
Great video! Thanks for teaching me about why NJ is such a strange state😅. And also that there was any amount of mining there.
NJ do be wacky. On mining you'd be surprised how much mining we did here till they started making trains out west and it was no longer profitable with the competition.
the existence of teterboro is positively comedic, it is literally just a strip of highway with businesses and a small airport for private jets
bro i literally did not even realize this until now lmao, i always thought it just apart of hasbrouck heights or something
The same goes with Teterboro’s west coast counterpart, City of Industry, CA
The memorial at 1:31 is very symbolic. It's called Dauntless Efforts by Matt Johnson. When 9/11 happened, construction workers at the Harborside Financial Center development sites rushed to the WTC to donate their time and skill for the recovery effort. So this memorial depicts a silhouette of an iron worker looking at the wreckage of the WTC to honor the workers that went there. The steel used in the base of this sculpture is from the actual wreckage itself.
Not a borough but a really weird side effect of boroughitis is the Township of South Hackensack....with three noncontiguous sections. Basically there used to be a township called Lodi Township that was originally formed in 1826, but sections of Lodi Township were set off to form boroughs and the remainder of Lodi Township became South Hackensack in 1935 after a referendum passed 309 to 15, as in the last unattractive portion that others didn't want.
Great video! I love your work!
Super great video. Having grown up along the shore in Monmouth County and now living in Hudson County, I always wondered why we had so many small towns/cities. Thanks!
I always saw the Faulkner Act as a positive thing because (as was hinted at in the video) it brought modern city features like the right of initiative and referendum to more than half of NJ residents (TLDR: if you live in a Faulkner Act Municipality, if 10% of residents sign a petition - a ballot question goes to the voters). As someone who volunteers for local causes in NJ - this generally makes Faulkner governments more responsive, and always gives you the opportunity to start a petition. It's a good point though that the law's features have reduced the leverage NJ had to push for more consolidation.
Great comment, thanks for adding extra color to the passing of the Faulkner Act.
A note about Pine Valley. It has actually recently been absorbed into their neighboring Pine Hill.
Great video and looking forward to the next one!
Had it in my description. Bit of a mental lapse on my part as I knew it happened but was reading an older paper on the history of NJ municipalities which still had it as a town. Working hard on the next one as we speak, stay tuned.
I grew up in Sussex County, where there are only three boroughs.
It gave my surveying company headaches.
Now living in Woodland Park, this is absolute insanity
My proposal is a big city with 3 boroughs (like NYC has 5 boroughs). Residents will choose the name of the big city and name of their borough using ranked choice voting. Borough 1 consists of everything east of the Hackensack River from Bayonne to Englewood. Possible names include Bayonne, Jersey City, Hoboken, West New York, Hudson, Bergen. Population 900k. Borough 2 consists of Newark, Elizabeth, the Oranges, south to the Rahway River, west to the first Watchung Mountain. Possible names include Newark, Elizabeth, Orange, Union (I prefer Elizabeth because it's pretty and was named after the proprietor's wife 400 years ago). Population 890k. Borough 3 consists of the rectangle from Harrison to Hackensack to Paterson to Montclair. Possible names include Passaic, Paterson, Clifton, Montclair, Meadowlands, Hackensack (I prefer Passaic for the river that runs through the whole length of the borough and has the falls). Population 830k. Existing county lines get in the way of doing this so the county boundaries need to get moved. The city will share a transportation authority with New York City. Every NJ Transit, Path, and HBLR train station within the borders of this city will become a subway station and get train service no less than every 10 minutes. It absorbs all or part of 74 existing municipalities. If I ever get enough free time I will finish writing this fantasy proposal and publish it with maps to r/newjersey.
This is too logical for NJ
God yes we need this so badly
Absolutely great video. This is so bizarre to see, like if the Twin Cities suburbs, neighborhoods and core cities didn't go thru with annexation.
St. Louis is in a similar situation as this. The city seceded from the county in the 1800s and so now we have dozens of different municipalities that make up the metro area - 91 tota municipalities in the county, including Champ Missouri, a landfill with a population of 10 founded by a track and field star.
This also happens in Pennsylvania. Im the Northeast rust belt region of the state regional goals cant be met because of municipal fragmentation through boroughs, CDPs, townships all managing to be their own little fiefdoms. Consolidation is simply more efficient. Theres no reason to have 38 municipalities within a densly populated 30 mile radius.
Newark, Jersey City, there you go
the vulture ending is great
They got a lot of personality, once saw a garbage man bribe one off the trash cans with a bagel.
a stroll down Van Reypen
I find it insane that new jersey with a population of 9 million has more local government areas (or the equivalent) than WA, with a population of two million. WA has 137, and those don't feel big at all
As a Hudson County resident (North Bergen), united Hud Co will be real one day.
If Hudson County was one city it would literally be a city of 700,000+ residents while only being 62 square miles. That’s smaller than Boston while having a higher population.
One note: major cities usually annexed their smaller neighbors to grow. In the early censuses, many of the largest US cities were towns outside of New York and Philadelphia. Over the 1800s, these towns were annexed until the city occupied the entire county. Then New York took it a step further annexed Brooklyn, itself one of the largest cities in the country. This pattern failed to emerge in New Jersey because there was not a single core city strong enough to lure or coerce its neighbors into repeated rounds of annexation. It was better to be a small town across the river from New York or Philadelphia than to be a neighborhood in Newark or Camden.
Newark, Jersey City, and Paterson were plenty enough urban cores to be considered the center of their region in the 1800's up until roughly the 1960's. The laws which made consolidation difficult but fragmentation easy were the issue in NJ not the size of the urban cores. To add, JC/Paterson/Newark were no less a city than NYC at time of consolidation. The region included suburban streetcar development and a small amount of farmland between just like Manhattan/Bronx/Brooklyn/Queens/Richmond
@@UrbanJerseyGuyEach of these cities was just reaching 100k in population at the same time New York was flying from 1.5M to 3.5M-partially by annexation. They were already satellites in New York’s orbit by the mid-1800s. Yes, the ease of fragmentation is part of this story, but the bigger picture is that while areas around other major cities found it more opportune to be consumed by the core city, the areas in New Jersey found it more opportune to not only fragment but remain fragmented. It’s fundamentally rare for two major cities to coexist side by side; one city almost always clears its orbit.
Chicago, Pittsburgh, Houston, Austin, Denver? All major cities toward the center of the country with over a million people in their MSA's
There are plenty of cities with issues of municipal fragmentation.
Is Chicago a thing or is it too small
Its a thing, also could do with some consolidation
Nork?
nork
Come back
I'm here
You haven’t made a video in a year when are we going to hear about loop lines?
Please consider making a video about crime prevention by design!
How to piss off someone from KCMO 101
Basically the same results as metropolitan North Jersey. Though I don't know enough of the history to say if it was the same reason.
Shows clown decoration while saying "All free white men over the age of 21 with adequate wealth would be able to vote". In my mind that wasn't an accident.
Its called the "Evil Clown of Middletown" if you want to read more about it
When you live in Oklahoma City and you see a question mark over where you live asking why there is no major city there :/
Videos not about Oklahoma.
Uh, dallas is literally right there
Videos not about Texas