Category: Metro Briefs

Great Neck and Manhasset Neck
View Larger Map of Higley 1000 neighborhoods in Great Neck and Manhasset Neck
Great Neck
Today the Gold Coast has matured and differentiated west to east. Great Neck and Manhasset Neck are much more densely settled than the Locust Valley and the Oyster Bay area. Although there are still grand waterfront estates in [...]

Fairfield County, Connecticut has one of the highest concentrations of Higley 1000 neighborhoods in the country. It will come as no surprise to most that Greenwich, with no less than 12 Higley 1000 neighborhoods, dominates the highest reaches of the list. Three adjacent neighborhoods in North Greenwich (Round Hill, Burning Tree Country Club, and Stanwich-Conyers [...]

Long Island has 53 Higley 1000 neighborhoods that I have divided into four distinct geographic clusters: the dominant Gold Coast area, the Five Towns area, Garden City, and a cluster of elite suburbs along Suffolk County’s shoreline that I have dubbed St. James-Three Village. Each of these groups have their own posting with maps on [...]

Princeton, located halfway between New York City and Philadelphia, doesn’t really “belong” to either metro area although for statistical purposes it is tallied with Gotham by the Census Bureau. In many respects, Princeton operates as Micropolitan area with the Borough of Princeton serving as the CBD. Princeton Township (which geographically surrounds the borough) is the [...]

Monmouth County, New Jersey is one of those counties in the BosWash megalopoli that is difficult to categorize. The county has a relatively large population (635,285, 2006 Census estimate), but no true central city. Historically, the closest thing to that end has been the twin resort towns of Long Branch and Asbury Park. Both communities’ [...]

Morris, Somerset, and Hunterdon counties have the largest number of Higley 1000 households in New Jersey. The three counties are the exurban extensions of suburban Essex and Union counties, and are characterized by quaint villages, discrete estates on country lanes, and even a few standard suburban subdivisions. There are extensive areas of horse farms, particularly [...]

Union County is Essex County’s smaller, poorer neighbor to the South without the racial diversity found in some of Essex’s Higley 1000 neighborhoods. The wealthiest neighborhoods of Union County are an extension of the physically similar suburbs to the North along the first Watchung Mountain. At the apex of Union County’s suburbs is the fully [...]

One of the laments of this web site it the paucity of African-American households found in the Higley 1000 neighborhoods across the United States. Although Blacks made up 11.4% of all households in the United States, they made up only 1.0% of all households found in the wealthiest neighborhoods. That is not to say that [...]

Suburban Essex County is beautiful. I supposed the burghers of Montclair and Short Hills are inurred to insults so often hurled at New Jersey by late night comedians. I can’t help but sneer at the provincial Manhattanite hipsters who denigrate the Garden State as is if it all looked like the ghastly stretch of [...]

The second cluster of wealthy neighborhoods in Bergen County is what I have dubbed the Saddle River-Ridgewood area. Ridgewood’s West End is unquestionably the wealthiest of the neighborhoods in this area with a mean household income of $326,140. The West End of Ridgewood is the 6th wealthiest neighborhood in New Jersey. The top Five are [...]