Boroughitis is interesting because it's very inefficient to have so many governments/school districts/water utilities for relatively few people. The Northeast and upper Midwest have lots of this and the higher taxes that go with it.
I suspect the lack of townships, boroughs, villages has helped Northern Virginia and Maryland grow. I imagine it's also, in part, why the Sunbelt has thrived. Having the county be the provider of most services allows for economy of scale and probably lower taxes historically.
However, the upside of boroughitis is that those places are actual places - a random North Jersey town is more charming than a random part of unicorporated Northern Virginia or North Carolina. There are other factors of course, but I'd say the difference between Fair Lawn and Ho-Ho-Kus is probably more noticable than Burke and Centreville.
The tax/efficiency thing is definitely true - that's why Chris Christie wanted to consolidate them. So you have a Republican-ish priority running up against the NIMBY or maybe overly localist tendency in these places which can go either way politically.
It may be that local control has something to do with sense of place, but I'm not sure all of those localities are centered around actual "towns." Northern Virginia lacks towns for the most part because it developed after and around the automobile, whereas Jersey is full of rail, canal, and other legacy small towns. Whatever government happens to preside over that kind of physical place, it's going to feel like more of a place than automobile sprawl.
That said, I actually do think some of these later sort-of-places in the D.C. area are pretty distinctive. I've done a lot of writing on the evolution of these suburbs into more complex places.
Boroughitis is interesting because it's very inefficient to have so many governments/school districts/water utilities for relatively few people. The Northeast and upper Midwest have lots of this and the higher taxes that go with it.
I suspect the lack of townships, boroughs, villages has helped Northern Virginia and Maryland grow. I imagine it's also, in part, why the Sunbelt has thrived. Having the county be the provider of most services allows for economy of scale and probably lower taxes historically.
However, the upside of boroughitis is that those places are actual places - a random North Jersey town is more charming than a random part of unicorporated Northern Virginia or North Carolina. There are other factors of course, but I'd say the difference between Fair Lawn and Ho-Ho-Kus is probably more noticable than Burke and Centreville.
The tax/efficiency thing is definitely true - that's why Chris Christie wanted to consolidate them. So you have a Republican-ish priority running up against the NIMBY or maybe overly localist tendency in these places which can go either way politically.
It may be that local control has something to do with sense of place, but I'm not sure all of those localities are centered around actual "towns." Northern Virginia lacks towns for the most part because it developed after and around the automobile, whereas Jersey is full of rail, canal, and other legacy small towns. Whatever government happens to preside over that kind of physical place, it's going to feel like more of a place than automobile sprawl.
That said, I actually do think some of these later sort-of-places in the D.C. area are pretty distinctive. I've done a lot of writing on the evolution of these suburbs into more complex places.