ABSTRACT
New Jersey is culturally diverse, which is an amalgam of varied ethnic, national, and racial groups. From its colonial origins, New Jersey has had a heterogeneous culture that reflected no particular or distinctive proto-American culture and thus reflected in fact the new, definitively American culture. An important corollary of New Jersey's intermediate position between New York and Philadelphia has been its corridor function. Geographer Peter Wacker felt obliged to ask the rhetorical question as to why New Jersey should be of interest to scholars, answering with the observation that if New Jersey were an independent country of comparable population, or even another state, the question would not arise. New Jersey's value added by manufacturing outranks every other state with but six exceptions. Metropolitan areas have been recognized by the US Bureau of the Census since the late 1940s. The effect of the new definitions of metropolitan statistical areas will be to increase New Jersey's metropolitan counties from seventeen to twenty.
