In counting America's major cities, most people can name New York and Boston as the oldest, but few realize Newark, New Jersey's largest city, founded in 1666, is third on the list. Newark is the forgotten great American city, a home to industrial innovators, such as Seth Boyden, who in the late 18th century invented patent leather and malleable iron. It is also home to influential inventors, including Thomas Edison and Hannibal Goodwin, the person responsible for celluloid film, and important commercial institutions, including the Prudential and Mutual Benefit insurance companies. But while every New Jersey resident studying at Brandeis can probably identify Boston's Prudential Tower, few even have heard of Newark's tower, Prudential's headquarters.By the 1960s, Newark had fallen from grace, along with most major industrial centers in the United States; this industrial decline was compounded by massive riots, spurned by racial discontent, which in 1967 rocked the city and helped push Newark's whites further into the surrounding suburban towns. Newark's population has fallen from a high of 439,000 in 1950 to 274,000 today, one of the most remarkable declines of any city. At the same time, the surrounding towns of Elizabeth -- now a city of over 120,000 people itself -- Montclair, Bloomfield, Belleville, South, East and West Orange and Maplewood have grown in population by leaps and bounds. Newark is also now one of the few American cities with a majority black population; whites make up only 14 percent of the city.

Today, however, things are changing in New Jersey. In a state famous for suburbanization, northern New Jersey is reinventing itself as an urban center. North Jersey's largest urban concentrations, Newark and Jersey City, together accounting for more than half a million people, are in a process of redefinition. Jersey City has already emerged as a "sixth borough" of New York City, its skyscrapers rising on the west bank of the Hudson across from the World Financial Center -- a veritable Wall Street West. Newark has also seen massive investment, with new office buildings rising downtown next to the great office towers of the 1950s. Newark Penn Station, a sister of New York's, has also been renovated, and unlike New York Penn Station, it has retained its original architectural grandeur.

Newark today is being revitalized because it has to be to save New Jersey from destroying itself through wealth. New Jersey Governor James McGreevey has committed to fighting suburban sprawl in the sprawl state, confining new development to cities and older suburbs. Newark is the inevitable center of New Jersey's urban population expansion. But Newark is also being revitalized because it should be: It is located 13 miles from midtown Manhattan -- connected to Newark by subway -- and is at the center of the massive Northeast railroad grid, connecting Washington with Boston and points in between. Newark benefits from a cultural diversity hardly ever matched, with famed districts such as the Ironbound, home to Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants. Newark's largest park was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the architect of Manhattan's Central Park. The city is also home to more cherry blossoms than Washington.

Newark, the birthplace of Whitney Houston, Queen Latifah, Frannkie Valli, Paul Simon, Joe Pesci, Brooke Shields, Savion Glover and Shaquille O'Neal, among the famous, is poised to rise as a great city again. It is home to New York's busiest airport, Newark Liberty, which brings millions of people in and out of the city every day. The State of New Jersey has made great efforts to make Newark a center of entertainment as well as business, establishing the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in the city. YankeeNets, the corporate owner of the New York Yankees and the New Jersey Nets, is fighting to move its basketball franchise, as well as hockey's New Jersey Devils, to a new downtown Newark arena from suburban Bergen County. This move will be the ultimate example of a new urban spirit in New Jersey, which will finally be placing what is central at its center.

It is in the interest of every state in the union to advance urbanization to save open space. This is the only way to protect our water sources and other irreplaceable resources. In New Jersey, the state with the highest population density, the problem is more acute; where urban centers provide the space and amenities for great populations, to build single-family mansions on whole acres of land in former forest and farmland is to rape the landscape. Here's to rebuilding Newark, America's insurance capital!

-- Matthew Bettinger '05 submits a column to the Justice.