Understand
Once a humming center of industry, Jersey City housed the booming factories of Colgate and Dixon-Ticonderoga. Once a railroad hub, the rail lines of the country's great railroads, including the famed Pennsylvania Railroad, criss-crossed the city, bringing new immigrants into the American hinterland. Today, Jersey City is neither of these things. Decades of government mismanagement and disappointments had a profound effect on this once booming town. A fear of urban areas caused significant "white flight" to the suburbs in the middle of the 20th century; once affluent areas became centers of poverty and crime. Jersey City was a mirror of what was happening in New York City itself, although perhaps to a more significant and depressing degree.
During the 1970s, immigrants began moving to Jersey City in droves, attracted by cheap real estate and a chance at experiencing the storied American dream. Today, these immigrants have helped to shape the city into a melting pot of the world's cultures and ethnicities. Nowhere in the state is there a city as diverse and as interesting as Jersey City in this respect.
Later, the growing popularity of New York City in the 1990s had a significant impact on Jersey City, too. Old railyards along the waterfront became the sites of gleaming new office towers and high-rise condominiums. Brownstones further inland were fixed up by people moving back into the city. Jersey City's renaissance quickly began.
The city has gone through significant transformations over the course of its lifetime. And it's not over yet. High-rises continue to sprout up along the waterfront like weeds, attracting Manhattanites priced out of the real estate market there, while offering quick commutes to jobs in Downtown Manhattan and Midtown. Office towers continue to fill up with new tenants, including the backoffice functions of many New York City-based companies, earning it the moniker "Wall Street West." In fact, Jersey City has more Class "A" office space than downtown Pittsburgh or Atlanta. New stores catering to Jersey City's new gentry continue to pop up almost weekly. It's a city in transition, and it's both exciting and frightening at the same time.
