There's a city, right here in the good ol’ U.S of A that is creating more homes per capita than San
Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland combined, adding miles of protected bike lanes,
permanently pedestrianizing its downtown, and is expanding its metro rail network
right now. That’s enough clues, you all know what it is so shout it out with me,
Jersey City New Jersey! Wait, wha?...
I bet you weren’t expecting that result unless you have been fully Jersey Pilled.
You see there is a bunch of New Jersey erasure in the media so very few people
could even name a city in the state other than Newark because of the airport.
One of the biggest reasons that you’ll never see Jersey City on any top lists is because of the
intense fragmentation of municipalities in New Jersey. The history on this is pretty interesting
and could be worth a future video, mention in the comments below if you would like to see that. Now
New Jersey's second largest city was hit with the same issues as many American cities in the middle
of the 20th century. Manufacturing businesses like Emerson Radio, Colgate soaps and toothpaste, and
Dixon Ticonderoga pencils shuttering manufacturing in the city. Containerization of freight made many
of the city's freight rail terminals obsolete. Lastly passenger rail service was killed off
by the post war movement to commuting from the suburbs among many other factors.
I say this because Jersey City was and is facing the same uphill slog
as most deindustrialized cities were in the US so it is no excuse for them.
Let's look at where Jersey City is crushing it more than any other city. Housing, and not just
any housing but transit oriented and walkable housing. Buildings like Journal Squared, one
of the largest transit oriented towers is one of the most notable examples. With over 1,800 rental
residences and almost an acre of retail space. Here’s the first and smallest of the three towers
that will be built right next to the Journal Square PATH, a direct train connection to New York
City. The tallest of the towers will hit the list of 100 tallest buildings in the United States.
And this is not in a place without history or development, Journal Squared will be directly
adjacent to the Newkirk House, the oldest building in the county dating back to 1690.
From large building developments to neighborhood developments are two new urbanism communities
being developed. New Urbanism is a planning and development approach based on walkable streets,
with housing and shopping in close proximity, and accessible public spaces.
The first of these developments, Canal Crossing which is on the site of a former industrial plant
which is undergoing remediation currently. It will have about 7,000 homes. The notable thing
about this project proposal is that they are not doing what many other cities are allowing,
which is something like a cult-de-sac in the middle of their city.
They are reconnecting the grid. Additionally the project is said to be at the forefront
of storm water mitigation which will be important in the years to come.
The second project named Bayfront seems to be making more progress. As you can see here they are
already grading the site and putting in expanded sewer main service for the new development.
The renders on this one are quite exciting showing a proper pedestrian oriented streetscape
along the water. I am a bit of a sucker for anything that involves water access
and nesting grounds for seabirds. The project when finished will have 8,000 residential units
and about 23 acres of commercial and retail space. It will be a little dense walkable
town in its own right but even more notably it will be connected to the rest of Jersey City
via an extension of the Hudson Bergen Light Rail. A brand new transit oriented development built
around a new station making it one of the first of its kind in New Jersey. And on top of that 35%
of all units will be affordable housing, rented at below market rate.
But it's not just the big flashy projects, there are hundreds of buildings currently proposed or
in the process of being built with an average of one fourth of a parking spot per home. This is
getting close to the ideal of a walkable city. The city has been inching towards zero parking
spaces for a few decades now. From the proto new urbanist Developments like early 1990’s
Port Liberte which even with its connections to transit had close to 2 parking spots per home
to proposed buildings like this one on Pavonia Ave with 376 housing units and zero parking spots,
notably in a neighborhood with a car friendly city council representative.
How does this compare to places known for building new housing like Austin, Miami, or Dallas.
Where there have been articles like this one from the New York Times stating how everyone is
moving because of housing availability from new constructions. Jersey City compares well in the
last decade keeping pace with Miami and Dallas for homes built per capita and a little behind Austin
which is commendable considering its geographic advantage Austin has, being about 12 times larger
and having undeveloped greenfield land to build on. And with all this building Jersey
City is still approving buildings with mostly sub one parking spots per unit, roughly around
the same amount as NYC in this graph, while the majority of new construction in Austin,
Miami, and Dallas average 1-2 parking spots per unit. I’d like to shout out @3_under_scores_ on
twitter for their work on informing people, like myself, on how development in Jersey City has
changed through the years and if you want some car free hopium check out Jersey Digs dot com
Now let's talk about that transit. Of the regional rail still left in
Jersey City there is the PATH train which connects Newark the state's largest city,
to Jersey City the state's second largest city, and New York City of the nation's largest city.
Arguably the most important connection between New York and New Jersey. The other regional
connector sits right on Jersey City's border, the Lackawanna Train Station bringing in suburban
commuters to the ferries, PATH train, and new business districts in Jersey City and Hoboken.
Now all of that has existed for a century or more but it was only 20 years ago
that Jersey City had no metro services, just the regional connectors mentioned.
The Hudson Bergen Light Rail was a major boon for the area and allows for much of the Hudson
County peninsula to get to regional connections and Jersey Cities main downtown shopping and
business neighborhood. And it’s still being expanded to this day, continuing the line to
the Bayfront development project mentioned before, a handful of proposed infill stops,
and some moonshot projects which New Jersey Transit is known for proposing,
like an extension off to Staten Island or a northern Hudson County branch.
And while we are talking about transit, one of the more novel things about Jersey City
is the breweries and distilleries it has that are accessible by transit. Corgi Distiller on
the HBLR, Departed Souls on the PATH and this is possible because some of the transit stops
were former industrial areas, a bonus for serving more than just residential areas.
I believe that any major city that doesn’t already have an extensive heavy or light metro system
should be building one and really shows which cities care about their continued development.
As of filming this video there is a project in the works to convert the main blocks of
the downtown into a permanent pedestrian plaza. Here you can see the old temporary plaza with the
new bollards, the whole road being lined with restaurants and local shops. The new plaza has
a unique paver style, and in my opinion is quite attractive. And with no curb people are encouraged
to walk back and forth between shops creating more business and allowing outdoor events and dining.
Beyond the pedestrian plaza there has been a large expansion of the protected bike lanes
that are nice enough where you will see many non bike couriers riding. While not comprehensive
they are extensive enough in the downtown area to get around to the places needed.
No major city is complete without a keystone park. That for Jersey City is Liberty State Park, an
enormous riverside park along the Hudson with the best views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island
and New York city. Also containing the beautiful Central RailRoad of New Jersey train terminal.
It's thanks to environmental activists who saw the once in a lifetime opportunity to save a prime
piece of waterfront and keep it in the commons for all to use and cherish deep into the future.
Liberty State Park Is close to a square mile of parkland,
just a little smaller than Central Park in Manhattan. I believe that any world
class city is well served by having a large park for people to escape away, to be in nature.
Jersey City has also been successful in attracting new businesses like Goldman Sachs who built the
ginormous 30 Hudson Street building which opened in 2004. The shuttering of PSE&G’s Hudson Gen coal
power plant in 2017, which was way overdue, opened up a 241 acre site for redevelopment
for industrial usages. Keeping diversity in the economic development of the city.
But before getting out of here we need to talk about where Jersey City still needs to improve.
The Scars of the past still exist in many places, where there are large swaths of
surface parking lots near transit centers. These are a result of the car oriented park and ride
transit planning of the 90’s and is getting fixed, slowly. Protected bike lanes are being added at a
much slower pace than in past years and made almost no progress in 2021, which some say
is a result of the city council elections, appeasing the car friendly ward presidents.
And the bike network has some pretty major gap between protected paths. There is also the scar
which is Liberty National Golf Club, which is a private golf course which is constantly looking
to take over swaths of Liberty State Park to expand the golf course. And golf courses are
one of the worst land uses for the middle of a city being a large private club. Lastly there
is no easy way to get from Jersey City to Newark on foot or bike even though they are only 2 miles
apart and there are plenty of bridges which could have included walking and cycling paths.
There is also a mighty need for even more transit which is easy to see if you stand near the Hoboken
Path train station and look at all the building specific transit buses that are arriving.
Well I hope I sold you on the idea of Jersey City and the continued success of its urbanist
ambitions. It doesn’t really get the respect it deserves and I hope this helps to change that.
I’d like to give a shoutout to Alan Fisher, the armchair urbanist, for recommending I
make this video. And if you liked this video please subscribe and check out my other video
linked here. I also have a co-fee page where you can contribute to me making this content.
Goodbye, for now.