The Farming Towns Are Becoming The New Suburban Metropolises

I live in Marlton New Jersey, a large suburban community in Southern New Jersey. This town was known for all of the great seasonal fruits and vegetables it produced during it farming era. I remember driving through Marlton on our way back from the shore, we would stop off at a local fruit stand and get some of the best white corn on the cob, sweet peaches, and the Jersey tomatoes this was how New Jersey became known as the Garden State. Now as each year passes it becomes harder to find these fruit stands that once lined the road, the farms have been sold and turned into housing developments or shopping centers. My house is on a half acre of land that used to be owned by a farmer, who owned 300 acres of land that have now become a secluded residential development.

The Quakers formed this town in 1688 and named in Evesham after a township in England. Evesham was a farming town as were most towns during that tome period, the original name was changed to Marlton around 1845. The ground in Marlton is made up of mostly Marl which is a natural mix of green clay and shell that became popular for use as a fertilizer. Over the last 30 years Marlton has transformed into a one of the most desirable community to live and work in Southern New Jersey as many of the farms have been sold to developers. The developers then built amazing new residential developments and many upscale shopping developments. This growth has resulted in the population of the town doubling during this 30-year period.

I moved to Marlton in 1995, I felt so proud that I was moving into a large upscale middle class white-collar neighborhood that had many new families. I grew up in small blue-collar town where most everyone knew everyone where Marlton is the opposite it is made of mostly white-collar workers in fact over a third of the people are employed in executive, managerial, or a professional capacity according to Marlton Economic Advisory Commission (MEDAC). Maple Shade is one-seventh the size and has about half the population as Marlton says the Census 2000.

I took one of my closest friends Steve to the house I was buying in Marlton and while showing my friend the house I met some of my neighbors. I met my next-door neighbor Benny who was Italian like myself and has lived in the development since it was built. As we talked I discovered that we had very little in common and our personalities very different. He must have pegged me as a racist because as we talked he told me there was not much of nigger problem except for the townhouses just down the road. I am thinking what kind of a person says this kind of garbage when you first meet them. I tried to disregard the comment figuring he just did not like black people, but then he went on tell about the Jewish problem, now I am thinking I going to be living next door to the biggest racist I have every met. He went on about how bad the Jewish people were and I had to cut him off mid sentence to properly introduce him to my friend Steve Goldman who was Jewish. At this point I could see my dreams of raising my family in a nice middle class community were not going to a dream instead it was going to be a nightmare. My friend to his credit excused himself from the conversation and I quickly ended my conversation to go and join my friend. I lived in that house for about five years before we decided to move mostly the people were difficult to get a long with and because of Benny. My family just did not fit in with the established group so we relocated to another section of town where we have very few neighbors in the Pine Barrens, plus is a more upscale section of Marlton.

My hometown of Maple Shade was known as white town but it was racially diverse. White families mostly owned the houses in Maple Shade; the other races lived in the many apartment complexes. Marlton is all together different, as of the 2000 census the total population was over 42,000 people. The racial makeup of Marlton is over 91 percent white, while the Asian population is just over 4 percent, African Americans only make up a little over 3 percent, and all other groups make up the other 2 percent of the total population in my town (The Free Dictionary dot Com, 2005).

The people in Marlton leans towards the Republican Party and an example was during the 2004 Presidential election in late October when President Bush came to our town for a last minute campaign stop. All town elections in Marlton are non-partisan, the town council is made up of five members including the mayor and as you would expect from the numbers presented earlier it is not diverse, all five members are white of which four are men and one woman. I have only gone to a couple of town meeting and notice these people to be professional individuals and did not get a sense of bias towards men or women.

According the Marlton Economic Development Advisory Commission it shows that the majority annual household income earns between $50,000 and $75,000 annually; this represents just over forty percent of the households. The next group is just over thirty-eight percent and they earn between $75,000 and $150,000 annually. When you have this many household making this kind of money you find that many of the people are controlling people. I know when I was growing up my family did not have this much money and it was tough to make ends meet, but the people had a common bond, they were all fighting to keep their heads above the water. I find in Marlton there are many shallow people concerned about material objects where in Maple Shade the people were happy to have a job. I would say the people of Marlton do not want any part of poor people this town does what is required by state law for providing low-income housing. The members of the community get concerned when the township must decide where they will provide low-income housing.

My two children are involved the recreational sports offered by the township and I volunteer to be a coach. I made one close friend during my years of coaching in the in-town leagues and have become familiar with many other people within the community. This experience of coaching has helped me form a better opinion of the community members and also discovered that Marlton has a lot of people with Italian heritage like me. I coach two in town sports, soccer and baseball. Most of the time you hear about how bad the soccer moms' are but I must say the baseball moms are a lot tougher to get along with than the soccer moms. I think this has to do with how Marlton runs the sports more than it has to do with the parents of the children playing in the sports. The sports programs for in-town sports are designated to be fun and political correct rather than teaching the sports to them properly, however the best teams in the leagues are always connected with the people that