Nearly all of our state looked like that before NY and Philly dwellers moved out of crowded Boroughs in search of a better quality of life. Jersey would have built up even if 95% of those people didn’t commute. My home town isn’t a big commuter town but the population is probably 4x what it was when I was born. It exploded because people fled the growing crime in Paterson and Passaic to a safer place. That had nothing to do with NYC.