The Divergent Paths of Irvington and Maplewood, New Jersey

Diana Pasculli

May 2012

This paper will compare the townships of Maplewood and Irvington, New Jersey. Although the towns share a geographic border, the difference between the two communities is considerable. In Part I, I survey the financial differences and fairly typical Census measurements. In Part II, I will review how opportunity for class mobility is present or not present in each community. For this analysis, I am looking at how concentrated poverty in Irvington restricts mobility as compared to Maplewood where such hyper-segregation and concentrations of poverty do not exist.  I focus mainly on opportunity outcomes in housing and education in both towns and address additional issues such as race relations and crime. 

In this research I was curious to see how two communities that are positioned so closely to one another could have such differences of wealth and opportunity.  Additionally, I wanted to see how the paths of both communities compared to the typical population patterns described by the leaders in regional equity studies, which we have read throughout the semester. In particular, I was curious about how and why Maplewood’s racial diversity defies tipping point data explained by Myron Orfield, David Rusk, Douglas Massey and Thomas Shapiro, among others.  Thus in regards to regional equity, I asked: 1) What solutions exist to diffuse the concentrated poverty of Irvington? 2) Do all of the residents of Maplewood have increased opportunities because of its diversity? 3) Is this diversity sustainable? Replicable? 4) What does Regional Equity entail when municipalities that are so close in proximity but so different in wealth and opportunity?

Irvington and Maplewood are two New Jersey towns located directly to the west of Newark.  Irvington Township’s 2.8 square miles is surrounded on three sides by the Newark City, but shares a fourth boundary with Maplewood.  Maplewood, slightly larger at 3.8 square miles, borders Newark, Irvington, Union and South Orange.  Irvington residents outnumber the number of Maplewood residents by about a two to one ratio. In appearance and feel, Irvington, although technically a suburb of Newark, now resembles the outer, forgotten edge of Newark’s urban center.  Most of Maplewood resembles more of a small suburban town.  While I chose to compare these two towns because of their stark differences, their small geographic size and close proximity makes the discrepancies all the more troubling.

Although both towns were once part of a larger farming community, Irvington broke off and incorporated as its own municipality in the 1800s. Thanks to the electric trolley, Irvington transformed from a “country village” to a substantial Newark suburb at the turn of the century. From the 1880s through the 1970s, Irvington experienced a large influx of German, Jewish, Polish, Italian and finally, Ukrainian immigrants. The various groups typically created their own ethnic enclaves within the East, West or North Wards. In the 1970s, almost all Irvington residents were white. However, the mass exodus following the Newark riots of 1967 drastically and quickly changed the racial make-up of Irvington. By 1980, Irvington was 40% black and 70% black by 1990.  

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The Divergent Paths of Irvington and Maplewood, New Jersey