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Fun fact: Statue of Liberty is in New Jersey waters

Come back

Big NYC fanatic so it's only natural that I knew about Jersey City due to its proximity. Aside from Hoboken, Jersey City and other areas of NJ right outside NYC really get looked over for their great urban fabrics as well as a few having good urbanist futures. Cool vid.

Outsiders say Hotlanta not locals. That’s one of the easiest ways to distinguish the two. Lol

What's with all the graffiti on the walls in the opening scene?

Noone calls it hotlanta unless you're over 60 😄

No one from Atlanta Calls it Hotlanta!!! EVER!!!

The parking issue is a disaster. That no parking is planned is nuts.

The L not being directly connected to Union and Ogilvie is a missed opportunity imo.

Sounds like you’re saying NJ Transit, LIIR, and Metro north should just unite👀👀😂😂😂 and I am with ir

Global Vision zero is meant to be about car safety as well but here in uk they brung out smart motorways and they are dangerous there Killing people all the time and the government don’t care , so again it’s not about saftey or good health it’s about control that’s it , they don’t want poor or middle class to have cars and freedom only the rich .

jersey city should be an example of how not to renew your city

L: Blue from O’Hare-Forest Park, Red from Howard-95th/Dan Ryan (later 130th), Orange from the Loop-Midway (clockwise), Brown from the Loop-Kimball (counterclockwise), Green from Harlem/Lake-Ashland/63 & Cottage Grove through the Lake/Wabash section of the Loop, Purple from Linden-Howard (with some 🚇 during the weekday rush going to the Loop clockwise), Pink from the Loop-54th/Cermak, & Yellow from Howard-Dempster-Skokie

Former 🚉: Wells Street, Dearborn, Grand Central, Great Central, & Central

I'm so tired of you government agents pretending like you care for people your Nanny state is doing nothing but increasing the frustration of drivers all over causing traffic jams for Miles likely increasing the chance of a pedestrian getting hit

The two larger stations you featured (Union and Oglivy, the former Northwestern station) were purposely not connected years ago by Chicago business tycoons who wanted people to have to stop, get off trains to shop, eat and often stay at hotels rather than continuing on in either direction. Chicago is the rail hub of US and helped fuel growth. The L also is a subway line near Union Station too, near downtown can connect to other lines as well as electric trains and last interurban in US (South Shore trains to Indiana)

One item missing- the water taxi just outside Olgivie. Great, quick way to get to Michigan Ave via the Chicago River

So what if they are? It's still in New Jersey, which is a cold and overtaxed hellhole.

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.

The rail transit and housing is impressive, but I must ask, has all this displaced people? Who was there before and are they still a part of these neighborhoods? What has happened to housing costs for long time Jersey City residents?

I moved to Jersey City in February for a new job from Washington State. When my contract ended I could have moved back to Seattle, but I didn't want to! I then quickly found another job right here in town in my field even closer to my apartment. I'm really enjoying life here and have no desire to leave. It is truly a gem and one of the best cities in the country.

I made a semi-popular post on /r/imaginarymaps (yes, that accursed site!) about what if Boroughitis never happened and there was infact a New-Jersey City, as you said, on par with Philadelphia, with three NYC-style boroughs of Newark, Hudson, and Elizabeth (names and boundaries pending). Perhaps if that were the case, NJC would have enough of a unified identity and influence to do something to counter the New York dominated narrative of New Jersey as a cesspool or whatever. You'll find it if you just google it, I'm not sure how direct links in comments would fair.

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.

Nork?

Chicago, Pittsburgh, Houston, Austin, Denver? All major cities toward the center of the country with over a million people in their MSA's

Is Chicago a thing or is it too small

Probably impossible to undo now I bet. Once little dictators get their fiefdom's they are very very hard to give up... Same happened here in Edmonton where we rightly tried to swallow up parasite bedroom communities that get MOST of their services off the big city but act like white flight enclaves when they feel like it... We've got 1 million in the city proper as of 2023 but there's still another 500K or so in the bedroom cities and towns that exist in 4 regional counties (Parkland, Leduc, Strathcona, Sturgeon) and they continually torpedo good ideas like a unified regional transit system...

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

Newark, Jersey City, there you go

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!

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!

The major city between the two (NYC, LA) is considered St. Louis, MO. The great arch was once considered "the gateway to the west." Also, Chicago, IL where you have the start of the old route 66 which ends somewhere around Santa Monica, CA. Chicago, IL is nearby St. Louis but I do believe is a larger city. Welp, the more you know hey.

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.

a stroll down Van Reypen

Great video! I love your work!

How to piss off someone from KCMO 101

When you live in Oklahoma City and you see a question mark over where you live asking why there is no major city there :/

Uh, dallas is literally right there

the vulture ending is great

Yeah, but they tore down the Tube Bar. Them fuckin' bums.

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.

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.

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.

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 🤙

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.

the existence of teterboro is positively comedic, it is literally just a strip of highway with businesses and a small airport for private jets

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.

Great video! Thanks for teaching me about why NJ is such a strange state😅. And also that there was any amount of mining there.