Bergen-County: Southern Workshop

Bergen County is the most populous county in New Jersey (over 900,000 residents), and also the one with the most local governments - seventy municipalities on 246 square miles, an average of only 3.5 square miles/municipality. While often described as the quintessential suburban county the reality on the ground is considerably more complex. In fact, Bergen County is a microcosm of the state of New Jersey, exhibiting many of the same contrasts and contradictions, strengths and shortcomings, on a smaller scale, as the state as a whole.

Bergen is a county of deep contrasts and startling extremes. Within its borders can be found a broad range of land use conditions, from highly urbanized high density places capable of supporting sophisticated transit services to quasi-rural, auto-dependent low density ones. The county’s population is extremely diverse, with a wide variety of ethnic groups and an equally wide diversity of religious beliefs and world views. One of the most affluent counties in the Nation, it nevertheless hosts significant pockets of populations that struggle to make ends meet. Its workforce is highly skilled and educated and its employment base boasts leading medical and health care facilities but it also hosts a large number of relics from an earlier manufacturing age that undermine its tax base and are a blighting influence on surrounding neighborhoods. It is a county with a world class park system that includes large nature preserves, but most of its residents are not within walking distance of a park or public open space. It is a retail mecca with a major concentration of regional malls and outlet centers and the healthy demographics to support them, yet a number of the county’s small downtowns are struggling and depopulated. Limited access highways offer convenient North/South linkages, but East/West mobility is seriously hampered by a sparse network of mostly local roads that always seem congested, twist and turn in unintuitive ways and are notoriously difficult for outsiders to navigate.

A new master plan for the county must recognize and meet the challenges contained both in these conditions and in the jurisdictional fragmentation that constitutes the county’s political landscape. The new master plan must take a hard look at current conditions, understand why things are the way they are, and identify ways to reinforce the county’s strengths and mitigate its weaknesses. Key to this is developing a common vision that transcends municipal boundaries and empowers small local governments to work together on initiatives that are often too large for each of them to tackle individually. Sharing resources, skills, knowledge and practical experiences is crucial to a smarter, more efficient future.