SUMMER INSTITUTE 2013

QUESTIONS & IMAGES

NEW JERSEY’S HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

THE GEOGRAPHY OF NEW JERSEY

ROWAN UNIVERSITY

Question: What is Human Geography?

CULTURE RACE POLITICS

ECONOMICS

HUMAN GEOGRAPH

Y

POPULATION

ETHNICITY HISTORY ECOLOGY

“the application of a spatial perspective to the study of humans, our ways, and the footprint

we leave on the planet”

Question: What are the two ways the population of a place like New Jersey can grow?

Question: What factors help explain varying rates of population growth in New Jersey over the past 200 years?

NEW JERSEY POPULATION

Pop. % Gain

1790 184,139

1800 211,149 14.7%

1810 245,562 16.3%

1820 277,575 13.0%

1830 320,823 15.6%

1840 373,306 16.4%

1850 489,555 31.1%

1860 672,035 37.3%

1870 906,096 34.8%

1880 1,131,116 24.8%

1890 1,444,933 27.7%

1900 1,883,669 30.4%

1910 2,537,167 34.7%

1920 3,155,900 24.4%

1930 4,041,334 28.1%

1940 4,160,165 2.9%

1950 4,835,329 16.2%

1960 6,066,782 25.5%

1970 7,168,164 18.2%

1980 7,364,823 2.7%

1990 7,730,188 5.0%

2000 8,414,350 8.9%

2010 8,791,894 4.5%

DMT Stage

Explanation Time Periods

What Was Happening in New Jersey?

1 High Birth & Death Rates

1790-1840 Agricultural lifestyle – need boysSmallpox, TB – Hi child mortality

2 Death Rates Fall, Birth Rates High

1840-19301930-19451945-1970

Immunization & Immigration !Great Depression & WWIIBaby Boomers – only Dad works

3 Birth Rates Fall 1970-1990 Empowerment of women; women marry later, fewer children

4 Low Birth & Death Rates

1990-2010 Euro-NJ averaging 2 or fewer kidsLatino/Asian higher fertility rates

Question: Who were the original residents of New Jersey?

Chief Oratam, sachem of the Hackensack Lenape

Question: Why was the path taken by African-Americans to New Jersey an unusual one?

Question: What role did New Jersey play in the greatest mass migration in human history?

1850 1880 1900 1930 1960

GermanyIreland *

England

Poland **Russia **Italy

* response to Irish Potato Famine of 1845-52 ** mostly Eastern European Jews

Summary of Major European Immigration to U.S.

Question: What ingredients form New Jersey’s melting pot today?

Question: What were the roots of New Jersey’s transportation system?

Question: How did people travel before the automobile?

Question: Why do we owe much of what New Jersey is today to the railroads?

Jersey Central running through coal regions of PA’s Lehigh Valley enroute to Jersey City hub

Question: Which 20th century invention changed life in New Jersey the most?

Question: What happened in Lakehurst, NJ on May 6, 1937?

The famous newsreel footage

Question: The first ______ opened in Camden in August, 1933?

Question: How did transportation change the way we want to work & live in New Jersey? How was this change part of a larger

process still unfolding?

THE CITY

JOBS PEOPLE

1780-1860

JOBS

PEOPLE

1860-1920

PEOPLE JOBS

JOBS

PEOPLE

1970-2011

1920-1970

Question: Which New Jersey resident was responsible for helping to launch the Age of Manufacturing & Technology?

Question: How can one company – Roebling of Trenton – illustrate the history of manufacturing in New Jersey?

Question: Which companies spearheaded the Age of Information in New Jersey, and how did this change how we (and who) did

business?

Question: Have Atlantic City’s casino’s delivered on their promise?

Question: Who

were the original

European settlers in

what is now

called New

Jersey?

Question: How was New Jersey originally divided, and why did we almost go to war with New York over it?!

East & West Jersey, circa 1700

Question: Why was New Jersey called the Crossroads of the Revolutionary War?

Check out the map that allowed Washington to triumph at the Battle of

Princeton

Question: What were some of the critical, fascinating, and controversial ways New Jersey participated in the Civil War?

Abraham Lincoln in Gen. McClellan’s tent at Antietam

Question: Who were some of New Jersey most prominent heroes and villains?

Question: How does the idea of “regionalism” help define the cultural geography of New Jersey?

“There is something about Jersey Pride.

But many of us still form our identities around major metropolitan areas: North Jersey with New York, South Jersey with Philadelphia and the Shore people tend to wrap their arms around the beach and dread the mainland (or at least anything 5 miles west of them).

The rest of us might find something else to rally around: the Boss, a diner or Rutgers football.”

(a NJ filmmaker)

Question: How has New Jersey and especially the Jersey Shore continued to shape American culture for generations?

Snooki & Rutgers make “The Ridiculist List”

Question: How have the needs of a growing population impacted the environment in New Jersey?

Question: How has the NJ Pinelands Commission

successfully preserved nearly 1 million acres

of forest in the heart of New Jersey?

Question: What other ecological and open space initiatives are at work in New Jersey?

Question: What man-made threats does the Jersey Shore face today?

“Barrier islands are ideal habitat for wildlife, not for people”

Fun Fact: First Evidence of Big Bang Found in New Jersey !

Scientists Wilson & Penzias in front of Bell Labs dish in Holmdel, NJ