Based on James W. Hughes and Joseph J. Seneca’s nearly three-decade-long Rutgers Regional Report series, New Jersey’s Postsuburban Economy presents the issues confronting the state and brings to the forefront ideas for meeting these challenges. Hughes and Seneca describe the forces that are now propelling the state into yet another economic era. Their explanations are set in the context of historical and economic transformations as well as the technological, demographic, and transportation shifts.
As the United States moves toward becoming a nation of suburbs, New Jersey is a place more Americans should get to know. The challenges it has overcome and those it continues to face provide lessons that will help states across the country address the struggles of providing quality education, protecting the environment, improving the quality of life, and accommodating a multicultural society while sustaining growth and opportunity. Written by two of the most respected political analysts in the state, this is the only book available that provides a comprehensive overview of politics and government in New Jersey. This thoroughly revised third edition, published for the first time by Rutgers University Press, also highlights recent scandals within the government and the high profile of the governorship.
In the blink of an eye, vast economic forces have created new types of communities and reinvented old ones. In The New Geography, acclaimed forecaster Joel Kotkin decodes the changes, and provides the first clear road map for where Americans will live and work in the decades to come, and why. He examines the new role of cities in America and takes us into the new American neighborhood. The New Geography is a brilliant and indispensable guidebook to a fundamentally new landscape.
For generations, historians believed that the study of the African-American experience centered on the questions about the processes and consequences of enslavement. Even after this phase passed, the modern Civil Rights Movement took center stage and filled hundreds of pages, creating a new framework for understanding both the history of the United States and of the world. Suburban Erasure by Walter David Greason contributes to the most recent developments in historical writing by recovering dozens of previously undiscovered works about the African-American experience in New Jersey. More importantly, his interpretation of these documents complicates the traditional understandings about the Great Migration, civil rights activism, and the transformation of the United States as a global, economic superpower. Greason details the voices of black men and women whose vision and sacrifices made the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. possible. Then, in the second half of this study, the limitations of this dream of integration become clear as New Jersey--a state that took the lead in showing American how to overcome the racism of the past--fell victim to a recurring pattern of colorblindness that entrenched the legacy of racial inequality in the consumer economy of the late twentieth century. Suburbanization simultaneously erased the physical architecture of rural segregation in New Jersey and ideologically obscured the deepening, persistent injustices that became the War on Drugs and the prison-industrial complex. His solution for the twenty-first century involves the most fundamental effort to racially integrate state and local government conceived since the Reconstruction Era. Suburban Erasure is a must read for people concerned with democracy, human rights, and the future of civil society.
A paradoxical situation emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century: the dramatic upscaling of the suburban American dream even as the possibilities for achieving and maintaining it diminished. Having fled to the suburbs in search of affordable homes, open space, and better schools, city-raised parents found their modest homes eclipsed by McMansions, local schools and roads overburdened and underfunded, and their ability to keep up with the pressures of extravagant consumerism increasingly tenuous. How do class anxieties play out amid such disconcerting cultural, political, and economic changes? In this incisive ethnography set in a New Jersey suburb outside New York City, Rachel Heiman takes us into people’s homes; their community meetings, where they debate security gates and school redistricting; and even their cars, to offer an intimate view of the tensions and uncertainties of being middle class at that time. With a gift for bringing to life the everyday workings of class in the lives of children, youth, and their parents, Heiman offers an illuminating look at the contemporary complexities of class rooted in racialized lives, hyperconsumption, and neoliberal citizenship. She argues convincingly that to understand our current economic situation we need to attend to the subtle but forceful formation of sensibilities, spaces, and habits that durably motivate people and shape their actions and outlooks. “Rugged entitlement” is Heiman’s name for the middle class’s sense of entitlement to a way of life that is increasingly untenable and that is accompanied by an anxious feeling that they must vigilantly pursue their own interests to maintain and further their class position. Driving after Class is a model of fine-grained ethnography that shows how families try to make sense of who they are and where they are going in a highly competitive and uncertain time.
New Jersey: A History of the Garden State presents a fresh, comprehensive overview of New Jersey’s history from the prehistoric era to the present. The findings of archaeologists, political, social, and economic historians provide a new look at how the Garden State has evolved. The state has a rich Native American heritage and complex colonial history. It played a pivotal role in the American Revolution, early industrialization, and technological developments in transportation, including turnpikes, canals, and railroads. The nineteenth century saw major debates over slavery. While no Civil War battles were fought in New Jersey, most residents supported it while questioning the policies of the federal government. Next, the contributors turn to industry, urbanization, and the growth of shore communities. A destination for immigrants, New Jersey continued to be one of the most diverse states in the nation. Many of these changes created a host of social problems that reformers tried to minimize during the Progressive Era. Settlement houses were established, educational institutions grew, and utopian communities were founded. Most notably, women gained the right to vote in 1920. In the decades leading up to World War II, New Jersey benefited from back-to-work projects, but the rise of the local Ku Klux Klan and the German American Bund were sad episodes during this period. The story then moves to the rise of suburbs, the concomitant decline of the state’s cities, growing population density, and changing patterns of wealth. Deep-seated racial inequities led to urban unrest as well as political change, including such landmark legislation as the Mount Laurel decision. Today, immigration continues to shape the state, as does the tension between the needs of the suburbs, cities, and modest amounts of remaining farmland. Well-known personalities, such as Jonathan Edwards, George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, Dorothea Dix, Thomas Edison, Frank Hague, and Albert Einstein appear in the narrative. Contributors also mine new and existing sources to incorporate fully scholarship on women, minorities, and immigrants. All chapters are set in the context of the history of the United States as a whole, illustrating how New Jersey is often a bellwether for the nation..
States and markets are integrated segments of government that rely on one another for efficient operation. Research on the workings and happenings among these two entities is essential to ensure optimal functioning of public management and the political economy. Positioning Markets and Governments in Public Management is an advanced reference publication featuring the latest scholarly research on modern-day issues within political economy. Including coverage on a range of topics such as public policy, healthcare, and immigration, this book is ideally designed for professionals, researchers, and students interested in research and frameworks concerning governments and markets.
The changing economic and demographic patterns of the United States have many measurements; few of them, however, are more comprehensive than the new circulation realities of the press. This volume tells the story of the twenty-six daily newspapers of New Jersey from the 1960s to the 1980s and in so doing tells the story of the rise of suburbia and the golden age of suburban journalism. In an intense effort to keep pace with the changing location of their readers--and most particularly with the upscale consumers--the shift to the suburbs was marked by changes in news coverage, advertising, and promotion. Though people have predicted the decline of newspaper business for more than fifty years, they were proven wrong by the rise of the suburban press and by the survival of most newspapers, urban and suburban alike, through the 1980s and 1990s. But in the twenty-first century, the news and information industry has changed, and the national and international economy has faltered. In his new preface, David Sachsman takes the reader on a tour of what happened to each of the New Jersey daily newspapers since the publication of the original. The twenty-six newspapers studied have dwindled to sixteen, and huge losses in circulation have caused drastic cutbacks and mergers. The decline in New Jersey newspaper readership is part of a national trend. This is an essential book for all American historians, journalists, and communication specialists.
The changing economic and demographic patterns of the United States have many measurements; few of them, however, are more comprehensive than the new circulation realities of the press. This volume tells the story of the twenty-six daily newspapers of New Jersey from the 1960s to the 1980s and in so doing tells the story of the rise of suburbia and the golden age of suburban journalism. In an intense effort to keep pace with the changing location of their readers and most particularly with the upscale consumers the shift to the suburbs was marked by changes in news coverage, advertising, and promotion.Though people have predicted the decline of newspaper business for more than fifty years, they were proven wrong by the rise of the suburban press and by the survival of most newspapers, urban and suburban alike, through the 1980s and 1990s. But in the twenty-first century, the news and information industry has changed, and the national and international economy has faltered.In his new preface, David Sachsman takes the reader on a tour of what happened to each of the New Jersey daily newspapers since the publication of the original. The twenty-six newspapers studied have dwindled to sixteen, and huge losses in circulation have caused drastic cutbacks and mergers. The decline in New Jersey newspaper readership is part of a national trend. This is an essential book for all American historians, journalists, and communication specialists.
