Observing the Jersey City Streetscape

It has been a little over a year since we moved to Jersey City from the West Village in Manhattan. The move across the Hudson was a remarkable shift for me, a twenty-five year resident of the same gorgeous Greek Revival townhouse on a beautiful block in one of New York's most desirable neighborhoods. As my partner Rich and I scanned the metro New York real estate landscape, our attention was quickly drawn to Jersey City. The so-called sixth borough offered a convenient location, not far from our respective workplaces in New York City and an easy no-bridge-and-tunnel connection to our upstate farmhouse. As we searched the listings and toured available houses in Jersey City, the McGinley Square area along Kennedy Boulevard and adjacent to Lincoln Park presented some great options. The home search ended at a lovely Colonial Revival house on a pretty tree-lined block.

Fifteen months, several renovations, a lot of plastering and painting, and some serious gardening later, it's now time for me to know Jersey City better. The queries of New Yorker friends looking to cross the Hudson in search of good, affordable housing and my own search for good, convenient, interesting shopping has prompted me to begin this observation of Jersey City.

This blog will contain my observations of life in Jersey City. This is a maddening and fascinating city. It sprawls in all directions with no easily discernible overall street grid. It took me a while to figure out the lay of the land. The layout is remarkable enough that Kevin Lynch in his landmark book, The Image of the City, used Jersey City as a case study for his ideas about a process he named way-finding. I just wrote a book on the topic called The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places, published by Princeton Architectural Press.

The different neighborhoods of this city vary in scale and character and are home to diverse ethnic communities from all over the world. The mix is rich, the images, tastes, and textures make for a lavish buffet of experiences. Jersey City's location along the Hudson River and near New York City makes it a great place to live and also a good base for exploring the region.

I travel a lot these days, so I may occasionally share my thoughts about some other places I have visited. Perhaps these reflections on people and places abroad will inform my view of Jersey City, its assets, and its liabilities and help me dream about how my hometown can grow and develop.

The words and pictures that I post here will be the notebook of my observations. In the process, I hope to get to know Jersey City better. Likewise I hope readers will share their own observations and together we can build a scrapbook of the great, the interesting, the quirky, the unusual, and the desirable aspects of life in Jersey City.

Gotta go, time to walk the streets, make notes, and snap some pix. Welcome to the Jersey City Observer.