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They may be urban small cities, but they are suburbs of New York City. The thing is they are such immediate fabric of the urban core, but with that population under 250k explains more how they are lumped into "suburb" category. JC has the direct PATH train connection to Manhattan. The criteria to qualify said nothing about regional rail stations.
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Originally Posted by dcb175
Jersey City's population is actually above 250K and will probably pass 300K in the next decade or so. But I do generally agree with the premise that they are technically 'suburbs' of NYC even though they are adjacent and not at all classically suburban. When someone pops into the NYC/NJ forum and asks about the best suburbs with quick train commutes, these areas don't come up (instead, they come up for consideration when someone is generally looking at Brooklyn but will be working on the west side of Manhattan). People who live here talk about "moving to the suburbs" when they leave, implying that they don't consider where they live (Hoboken, in this very specific instance) an actual suburb.
Frankly, there are not a lot of US suburbs (that people would universally recognize as suburbs) that fit this criteria, and for most of the past 100 years or so that was absolutely (and unfortunately) by design. The small handful that would qualify would either be the old streetcar suburbs in the legacy eastern cities and some purpose-built TOD-type developments, likely within the city limits of sunbelt cities. Perhaps a few in the PNW may qualify, but I'm not as familiar there.
Let's not forget that there’s also a municipality type called the "satellite city."
Most of these are urban places of long standing that functioned as centers of commerce, industry and employment themselves. But they are close enough to a larger metropolis to have been overrun by its population growth and territorial expansion.
There are also cities that are independent centers of commerce and employment in their own right that, as both they and the adjacent metropolitan center grew, they began to function as extensions or "outlying neighborhoods" of the core city.
Brooklyn was one such "extension of the core" prior to the consolidation of the five boroughs in 1898. It was a center in its own right, and no one would have considered it a suburb of New York (which consisted only of Manhattan at the time). Cambridge, Mass., has long been one; many consider Somerville, to its north, one as well.
Hoboken — which, as Marv95 pointed out, is actually the "city" terminus of the ex-Lackawanna Railroad's electrified suburban rail network — also falls into this category.
Jersey City joins Newark in the "satellite city" category. It has a recognizable downtown on top of the palisade: Journal Square, which takes its name from the now-defunct daily newspaper that had been published there, the Jersey Journal, whose offices face the square (and whose sign remains lit atop its building). I'd like to suggest that no municipality that had or has a daily newspaper can be considered a suburb of another city, no matter how close; no one would call Kansas City, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, Mo., for instance. (The one exception I'd make to this rule would be Melville, the community on Long Island where Newsday is published.)
There are loads of satellite cities now, thanks to the expansion of large metropolises like New York, LA, Philadelphia, and so on. Paterson, N.J.; Wilmington, Del.; Gary, Ind.; and Anaheim, Calif., for instance, all qualify. So do Quincy and Lynn in Massachusetts, and maybe Malden as well (though I don't think it had a daily paper).
Funny thing: considering that it had a truck assembly plant in its center from 1905 until 1954, maybe even Ardmore, Pa., might fit the category, except that it has many fewer residents than any of the foregoing,
Santa Monica shouldn't have been on the list, it seems like it was selected based on the success of the Expo station there, and not the vague and ubiquitous "walkable" designation.
There needs to be some kind of meaningful separation from the core city, which Santa Monica obviously does not have, and Pasadena obviously does have. Culver City had a better case than SaMo, as would the unmentioned Redondo Beach.
The criteria should be 1) decent transit connection to core city 2)distinct differences to separate itself from the core city.
Given the video's take on Newark, Riverside and San Bernadino in the Inland Empire would be out (and are core cities of their MSA). Some municipalities in San Gabriel Valley including Pasadena would work and Pasadena did get an honorable mention as did Culver City though Culver City is very integrated into LA proper's urban core.
I feel like a critical step on defining a suburb would be rather than built form or some sort of loose “is it actually distinct from the city?”
Is set a criteria for net commuter flows. If a town/city loses greater than 3% of its workforce every morning it’s a. Suburb less than 3% it’s something else
JC and Hoboken aren't suburbs. Suburbs don't have a regional rail terminal(not station, terminal) with multiple rail lines. Nor does it have a population of over 250K with HIGH transit usage w/o a car.
Yes, I agree.
A better example of a traditional suburb that meets Youtube guy's criteria would be Dormont, PA.
Small, dense, has its own light rail station that takes you right into downtown Pittsburgh, has its own identity/business district apart from Pittsburgh, and is actually a suburb.
The Inland Empire cities that are close enough to Los Angeles to meet this criteria would be too big and too traditionally suburban. Also, the characterization of the Inland Empire as a Los Angeles suburb isn't really accurate (though they likely have better rail connections to L.A. than most suburban cities around the country to their core cities).
I really enjoy CityNerd and he sets out his own parameters which is fine but personally I don't really see any of the examples he gave as "suburbs that don't suck" as really suburbs. To me, all of them seem like neighbourhoods within the larger city or an older city that got swallowed up by a bigger one. Of course it's his channel so he can do whatever he wants.
Hopefully at some point he will do another such video but use only post-war suburbs which is what I think most of us think of when someone says they live in the suburbs. They may have a very small original town area but essentially they are just standard modern suburbs. It would be great to see such areas that have done modern development right.
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