Is Jersey City a Suburb? Joel Kotkin Thinks So

Those familiar with Kotkin know that he is a frequent critic of cities and defender of suburbia, so it is not unreasonable to harbor the suspicion that he might be slanting his analysis to lowball the degree to which many of the country’s (and New Jersey’s) urban areas are reviving their fortunes. In fact, this is exactly what he’s doing.

Consider some North Jersey cities that are NOT on the list [of central cities]: Paterson (New Jersey’s third-largest city), Elizabeth (fourth-largest), Clifton, Passaic, Orange, East Orange, Bayonne, Perth Amboy, Plainfield, Hackensack, Linden and Rahway. Not to mention Union City, West New York and Hoboken, three of the most densely populated municipalities in the entire United States (all three exceed 30,000 people per square mile). Not to mention a whole host of smaller but still “urban” places such as Asbury Park, Keansburg, Neptune, Long Branch, Garfield … Oh, and Jersey City, the 2nd-largest city in the state.

It’s easy to say that “America is becoming more suburban” when you define “suburb” so loosely that it includes just about everything. The problem with Kotkin’s analysis is in his very expansive definition of “suburb.” Using Kotkin’s definition, it’s not surprising that most of the country’s (and New Jersey’s) population growth is in suburbs, because most of the population lives in his definition of suburbs. But this oversimplified (and non-Census- or OMB-endorsed) taxonomy fails to capture the full range of places that are participating in the urban revival and hence understates its extent. Which, one suspects, was the point.