subject: The Sixth Borough Of Nyc - Jersey City [print this page] Jersey City, New Jersey, has sometimes been described as "the sixth borough" due to the fact of its role as a bedroom community for New York City workers who cannot afford or don't wish to pay New York City rents. Once a mighty regional hub of its very own; Jersey City started to become an attractive housing option for outsiders in the course of the 1990s.
Abandoned downtown parts and industrial districts were transformed into residential places catering to artists, who were followed by "scenesters" that liked living in "hot spots," for example well-off upper middle-class professionals who appreciate the cultural scene.
However, unlike the gentrified hot spots in New York City proper, after which Jersey City's revitalization hopes had been modeled, everything is still very much a work in progress. The East Village, for example, spent the 1980s becoming cool and trendy and then gentrified, as did Williamsburg in Brooklyn throughout the 1990s, but Jersey City has not taken off in exactly the same way, with similar numbers.
Though rents have increased, particularly in the Newport and Exchange Place locations dubbed "Wall Street West," there is no sense of a self-sustaining community that has come into its very own the way the East Village or Williamsburg has.
With reference to New York City neighborhoods, Jersey City is much more like Ridgewood, Queens, than Flushing, Queens; more like Coney Island, Brooklyn, than Greenpoint, Brooklyn - areas that have some potential but which are held back due to complications not shared by their a lot more successful cousins in exactly the same borough.
These causes all boil down to the high quality of the inhabitants. To paraphrase an old saying, you can take someone out the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of that someone. And so it can be with any number of neighborhoods and even whole cities, for example Jersey City or its even more troubled neighbor next door, the City of Newark.
