by Alexis Perrotta, Senior Policy Analyst, RPA
This is the second in a series of articles on the changing relationship between city and suburb in the Tri-State Region.
The one feature that really gives a place that city feeling or that suburban vibe is the number of people living and working in a block, street or district - - in short, density. Streetscapes and retail outlets may appear the same in the city and some suburbs, and you might be able to find the same overpriced chai in both Cherry Hill and Manhattan. But it's the density - the crowds of people, the closeness of housing, the congestion on roads and rails - that really differentiates the city from the suburb. Like crime and, to some extent, racial and ethnic diversity, this is one characteristic that has historically stamped a place as more like a city or more like a suburb.
This region has a tremendous diversity of places in terms of density. On one hand it has Manhattan, one of the most densely populated places in the world with more than 66,000 people per square mile. The other boroughs of New York City, along with Hudson, Essex and Union counties in New Jersey, have a population density of about 15,000 people per square mile, just a little less dense than San Francisco. The inner suburban counties - places such as Nassau, Rockland and Bergen - have a population density of only 2,000 people per square mile, and the outer suburbs have fewer than 600 people per square mile.
With an overall population density of only 2,000 people per square mile, it is remarkable how many places in the inner suburbs reach the 10,000 people per square mile mark, and how many places are getting there. Drawing the line at 10,000 is somewhat arbitrary, but it can be informative to identify some places in the region that have become considerably denser over the last ten years, and that are now dense enough to be compared with the region's cities. Fort Lee, for example, has 12,000 people per square mile; Hempstead in Nassau and Mount Vernon in Westchester each has over 15,000.
High density suburbs are particularly prevalent in this region, and they are becoming more prevalent. California and Illinois, for example, have 9% and 3% of their population living in high density suburbs, respectively, not counting LA, San Francisco and Chicago; in this region, 24% of the population live in high density suburbs, not counting New York. In fact, most of the dense-ification in this region has been in the suburbs. Of the 25-odd places in the region that added more than 1,000 people per square mile during the 1990s and/or moved into the ranks of places with more than 10,000 people per square mile, 20 of them are in the inner suburbs, including places such as New Brunswick, Hackensack, Lodi, Fort Lee, Valley Stream, Port Chester, and Hempstead.
Some of these places always felt like cities. New Brunswick, for example, is a good example of a regional center that has seen a rebirth of population and employment in the last ten years. In other places, however, the change in density is visible. Lodi, New Jersey has increased its housing production by a factor of four over the last seven years. In Port Chester village, New York, multi-family housing used to account for about half the production; in the last several years, it's accounting for nearly 90% of all housing production.
The form of the added density can be just as important to the feel of a place as the density itself. Some places are adding high rise multi-unit buildings, often filled with luxury apartments - small copies of city buildings but often without the pedestrian-filled streets around them. Other places are adding contextual multi-family housing, such as older large houses split into two duplexes, or townhouses. Both make the suburbs feel like the city in different ways, but density, regardless of its design, remains the defining characteristic of an urban environment.
As noted in the first article of this series, the suburbs and the cities are starting to have more in common, however the merging is not a linear event. Suburbs may be starting to feel like cities, while other factors are making cities seem more suburban: less crime and more homeowning families, for example. There are also other indicators that rise and fall in different ways. People are getting accustomed to living and working in new ways in this region. And it is clear that once again this region is unique in its blending and breaking of the traditional suburban/urban divide. It is up to policy makers and developers to be creative, and encourage communities to take what has been considered the best characteristics of the city and the best of the suburbs to help make something new.
This is the second in a series of articles on the changing relationship between city and suburb in the Tri-State Region.
The one feature that really gives a place that city feeling or that suburban vibe is the number of people living and working in a block, street or district - - in short, density. Streetscapes and retail outlets may appear the same in the city and some suburbs, and you might be able to find the same overpriced chai in both Cherry Hill and Manhattan. But it's the density - the crowds of people, the closeness of housing, the congestion on roads and rails - that really differentiates the city from the suburb. Like crime and, to some extent, racial and ethnic diversity, this is one characteristic that has historically stamped a place as more like a city or more like a suburb.
This region has a tremendous diversity of places in terms of density. On one hand it has Manhattan, one of the most densely populated places in the world with more than 66,000 people per square mile. The other boroughs of New York City, along with Hudson, Essex and Union counties in New Jersey, have a population density of about 15,000 people per square mile, just a little less dense than San Francisco. The inner suburban counties - places such as Nassau, Rockland and Bergen - have a population density of only 2,000 people per square mile, and the outer suburbs have fewer than 600 people per square mile.
With an overall population density of only 2,000 people per square mile, it is remarkable how many places in the inner suburbs reach the 10,000 people per square mile mark, and how many places are getting there. Drawing the line at 10,000 is somewhat arbitrary, but it can be informative to identify some places in the region that have become considerably denser over the last ten years, and that are now dense enough to be compared with the region's cities. Fort Lee, for example, has 12,000 people per square mile; Hempstead in Nassau and Mount Vernon in Westchester each has over 15,000.
High density suburbs are particularly prevalent in this region, and they are becoming more prevalent. California and Illinois, for example, have 9% and 3% of their population living in high density suburbs, respectively, not counting LA, San Francisco and Chicago; in this region, 24% of the population live in high density suburbs, not counting New York. In fact, most of the dense-ification in this region has been in the suburbs. Of the 25-odd places in the region that added more than 1,000 people per square mile during the 1990s and/or moved into the ranks of places with more than 10,000 people per square mile, 20 of them are in the inner suburbs, including places such as New Brunswick, Hackensack, Lodi, Fort Lee, Valley Stream, Port Chester, and Hempstead.
Some of these places always felt like cities. New Brunswick, for example, is a good example of a regional center that has seen a rebirth of population and employment in the last ten years. In other places, however, the change in density is visible. Lodi, New Jersey has increased its housing production by a factor of four over the last seven years. In Port Chester village, New York, multi-family housing used to account for about half the production; in the last several years, it's accounting for nearly 90% of all housing production.
The form of the added density can be just as important to the feel of a place as the density itself. Some places are adding high rise multi-unit buildings, often filled with luxury apartments - small copies of city buildings but often without the pedestrian-filled streets around them. Other places are adding contextual multi-family housing, such as older large houses split into two duplexes, or townhouses. Both make the suburbs feel like the city in different ways, but density, regardless of its design, remains the defining characteristic of an urban environment.
As noted in the first article of this series, the suburbs and the cities are starting to have more in common, however the merging is not a linear event. Suburbs may be starting to feel like cities, while other factors are making cities seem more suburban: less crime and more homeowning families, for example. There are also other indicators that rise and fall in different ways. People are getting accustomed to living and working in new ways in this region. And it is clear that once again this region is unique in its blending and breaking of the traditional suburban/urban divide. It is up to policy makers and developers to be creative, and encourage communities to take what has been considered the best characteristics of the city and the best of the suburbs to help make something new.
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