Category: Metro Briefs

Locust Valley-Oyster Bay View Larger Map of Higley 1000 neighborhoods in Locust Valley and Oyster Bay The area I call Locust Valley-Oyster Bay evokes the sylvan past of the Gold Coast much more richly than the more densely populated Great Neck. The zoning requirements of these contiguous “golf villages” insure large lots surround the large [...]

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 [...]

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’ [...]

West Suburban Chicago View Larger Map of Higley1000 neighborhoods in West Suburban Chicago The West Suburban cluster of neighborhoods is centered on Oak Brook and Hinsdale. They are the odd couple of Chicago’s suburbs. Hinsdale (the Felix Unger of the two) is older, gracious and stately. Hinsdale’s lovely tree lined streets have been the site [...]

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 [...]

As I have mentioned in my posting on wealthy urban neighborhoods, one cannot really compare entire city neighborhoods to homogenous single family suburban neighborhoods. The 69 suburban Chicago neighborhoods in the Higley 1000 have an average of of 624 households. The 11 contiguous central Chicago neighborhoods spotlighted in this essay have an average of 7,740 [...]