A Geography of New Jersey

New Jersey is "the city in the garden." It is a bundle of paradoxes - a highly industrialized state famous for its seashore and mountain resorts; a fairly conservative state politically that nonetheless pioneered state land use, zoning, and environmental protection legislation. The only state to be characterized by the U.S. Census as entirely metropolitan, New Jersey has the highest population density in the nation. It is a highly suburbanized state that remains important agriculturally, one in which both very large and very small farms continue to multiply. New Jersey is also a state in which widespread suburbanization of residents, shopping, and jobs has affected the most remote corners but in which old central cities are being revitalized by massive immigration which is demographically and dramatically changing the face of the state. New Jersey should be understood as both a microcosm of the United States and a leading indicator of things to come for the nation.