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Recently-released figures from the 2000 U.S. Census show that more and more of New Jersey's commuters leave their home counties to get to work. In some counties - including Warren, Hunterdon, and Somerset - over 75% of the residents commute to other counties. The number of New Jerseyans who travel outside of their home county for work increased by 11 percent during the 1990s, while the number who work within the borders of their home county dropped by 5 percent. This means New Jersey has one of the most scattered commuting patterns in the country.
This data also highlights the fact that so many aspects of our every day lives - where we live, where we work, where we shop, where we go to school - do not heed municipal boundaries. Improved means of transportation and communication have made municipalities more dependent upon each other. The problems and needs of the region in which the municipality is located are also the municipality's problems and needs - highways, land use, recreation, conservation, open space, economic development, water supply, air and water pollution control, sewerage, lake management, drainage, solid waste management and other community services are matters of regional concern.
The Tragedy of the Commons
In 1968, Garrett Hardin conceived a parable that explains why various entities - motorists, builders, business firms, municipal governments - so often act in their own self-interest to the detriment of the common good. In medieval England, the commons was a pasture for all herdsmen. This communal pasture was viable as long as the community was small enough to keep the number of animals below the carrying capacity of the land. But the compact deteriorated as each herdsman began to ask himself, why can't I add just one more animal to the commons to maximize my short-term personal gain?
New Jersey's land use practices are a direct parallel. Our commons is our air, water, and land. When our municipalities were discrete entities, with lots of open land between places of settlement, each town could maximize its well-being by "spending" its land on development, for economic advantage. When the population was much smaller, this could be done without too much noticeable damage to the commons. But today, the cumulative impacts of such "land-spending" decisions are apparent to all - deteriorating water quality and quantity, decreased habitat and biodiversity, unpleasant and uneconomic traffic, loss of farmland and open space, and rising housing prices.
Hardin's herdsmen made rational decisions based on their understanding of the world around them. Local government officials are doing the same today in New Jersey. Some of their decisions can be changed by getting better information and more technical assistance to them at the right time. Others require systemic changes in overarching public policy. Importantly, each depends on and builds on the other. We need to work aggressively at both levels if we are to preserve natural resources, rehabilitate our communities, and protect the quality of life in New Jersey.