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Bergen, Hudson and Passaic counties alone have over 2 million people. Add in Essex, Morris and Union and you’re nearing 4 million. You’d have a NFL, NBA, NHL, and probably an MLB team, but no second or third team.
North Jersey on its own supports Devils hockey and MLS soccer with the Red Bulls, but lost the Nets, and the 2 New York NFL teams have a large percentage of their fan base there.
Even with being just a part of the New York metro area, Newark/North Jersey would probably be the best place for an expansion baseball team, but the Yankees and Mets would never allow it.
Double the population of Charlotte or Nashville, with very high income, a rabid fan base, and corporate support.
North Jersey would be less populated because the Bronx would be Manhattan and the area directly across from the Bronx has poor access to the Hudson River. and Queens and Brooklyn would be flipped in how dense/urban they are
North Jersey has always had its own identity as the bastion of never ending suburbs combined with urban grittiness. So to answer the original question yes it would still be a large Metro area without Manhattan but with more high rises and more mid size cities similar to a Northern VA.
North Jersey would be similar in stature with Baltimore if NYC did not exist. The area would be centered around Newark, the regional seaport. If Bergen would have taken off, it would be the center instead. Perhaps Newark might be a second city to the metro (unless Bergen is very dominant).
I have a feeling that the current day Bronx would be the "Manhattan".
I forgot to mention Da Bronx in my original post, they would definitely be a lot more people. Rangers and Knicks would make their home in the Bronx, and the Nets possibly stay in a more Manhattanized NJ.
NYC is what it is, because it was the early immigrant arrival spot due to its shorter proximity to ships bound to/from Europe that poured in there, compared to other colonial cities. Without the right advantages in place, it is possible another large colonial city could have captured that growth.
If Manhattan never existed, the growth, attention, and people would have still gone somewhere.
During earlier colonial times, most large cities formed on the seaboard near rivers and large inlets where there was a large island or peninsula that would be easy to protect. They looked from protection from other colonial powers and natives from both land and sea. They looked for areas where the water inlets could be fortied from multiple sides and for areas where land connections could be controlled and more easily fortified at choke points.
That is the issue with New Jersey. Historically, it would have never had these advantages when the original city centers and economic trade was established. It would have always been easier to protect the island and spread eastward and northward from the perceived threats during settlement and establishment.
Without Manhattan, and assumming the New York area still was successful in establishing well enough to stay the European immigrant hub, I would expect earlier settlers to consider the lower Bronx or parts of Long island to have been the better protected area to establish. My guess would be somewhere near Astoria or Mott Haven.
They would still have the same natural advantages protecting the water inlet, been further up river, and both locations over some sort of geographic advantage to start a city center that could be protected on land. Long Island would be attractive being a narrow island and South Bronx being attractive as a Peninsula that could be fortified more easily in one direction. At least that is my outlook on how colonial settlers would have started the city off differently in the absence of Manhattan. If that happened, I don't see what would make New Jersey much different than today.
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