ABSTRACT
The contemporary scene in some of New Jersey's largest cities bears a disturbing similarity to old newsreels of World War II era destruction and its immediate aftermath. The significance of location relative to the larger region, state, and world is related intimately to accessibility and to transport technology. The routes of the canals and railroads were commonly expensive to construct and maintain, and their profitability was based on high-density use of these spatially fixed investments. Within cities, congestion was the norm until the evolving technology of horsecars, then electric streetcars, made commuting a working-class option. The subsidiary position of New Jersey's cities within the urban "solar systems" of which New York and Philadelphia are the central stars has meant that New Jersey's cities lost their retailing functions even faster than most US cities. The rise of a modern highway-based long-distance trucking industry, greatly accelerated by the interstate highway program, has led to new rules of location for most economic activity.
