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+1 my neighbors are wonderful.

Great article - thanks for sharing. I definitely share the sentiments in this article. I feel more engaged and connected to my City than pretty much most of my friends that live in the burbs. JC is an interesting place to live, and I am glad to live here.

NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ

Twenty-nine-year-old Mark Bunbury is a poster child for upward mobility. He grew up in Jersey City in a low-income family, the son of Trinidadian and Guyanese immigrants. He attended a public high school, graduated from Penn State, then went on to law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He?s now an ambitious, gregarious labor attorney, with disposable income to burn.

Still, despite some expectations from family and peers, he never went across the river to New York. Instead, he carved out a niche in his hometown at the urging of a few friends who stayed.



?I kept hearing all this buzz about Jersey City, how it was changing, how people were investing a lot here,? he says. Even though Bunbury?s mom was ?super weirded-out? by his return, he?s thriving here and has no plans to leave.

For Bunbury and many of the Millennials I met there, Jersey City functions as a lot more than just a ?sixth borough.? It has the dual upsides of being smaller (its population is right around 250,000), cheaper, and more community-oriented than its gargantuan neighbor?yet closer to the tip of Manhattan than some places in Brooklyn and the upper Island. Real estate prices in downtown Jersey City, which has experienced rapid development over the past few years, can rival yuppie Brooklyn?s, but residential neighborhoods like Jersey City Heights are starting to entice young people with actual cheap rent, laid-back bars, and a cornucopia of inexpensive ethnic restaurants. One Jersey City twentysomething described the Heights as having the melting pot feel of Queens?except maybe closer to your downtown job.

Bunbury loves the influence he can wield in his hometown. He volunteered to campaign for newly elected Mayor Steve Fulop, the 36-year-old who rose to prominence after an unlikely city council election victory at the age of 28. Bunbury is also on the board of the Riverview Farmers? Market in the Heights (where he lives) and the president of a young professional group called Jersey City Ties. He doubts he?d be able to have this level of involvement a few stops east on the PATH train.

?It?s harder to find ?your people? there,? he says. ?[In New York] you meet someone, and you never see them again. Here, it?s a small enough environment that you can see people with some regularity and develop a sense of neighborhood.?

Bunbury also pays $775 in rent to live in a modern apartment with a roommate that?s ?luxury compared to that price in New York.? A year ago, he was living in another spacious apartment with a roommate for $530 a month, including utilities.

The modest prices are a big part of what keeps Laryssa Wirstiuk, 28, a Montville, New Jersey native, in the Heights. She pays $779 for a large, charming studio apartment with a kitchen bigger than most New Yorkers? bedrooms. She teaches, tutors, and writes on a freelance basis?she prefers variety to a 9-to-5?and she credits Jersey City with allowing her to have that more flexible life. There?s a lively and accessible arts scene here, she says, which provides ?an energy that constantly stimulates me as a creative person.?

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