Google Labs has developed a tool it calls the Book NgramViewer, which allows a user to search Google’s book archives over a specified time period for the appearance of specific words or phrases. Among other things, this tool can be used to compare the frequency of use of two terms that have […]
Author Archive
“Smart Growth” vs. “Growth Management”
Thursday, January 6th, 2011Insights from Review of “The Ethics of Metropolitan Growth”
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011A review by Daniel Nairn of a new book, Ethics of Metropolitan Growth: The Future of our Built Environment, by Robert Kirkland. The review is insightful and worth reading in full, but it contains a few points that are particularly relevant to New Jersey Future and its mission.
Population Growth Slows in NJ, Nationally
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010
map source: Census Bureau
One of the headlines that has already been mentioned repeatedly in news stories about the new 2010 Census national and state population totals is that the country’s rate of growth in the 2000s — 9.7 percent — is its slowest rate of growth over a decade since the Great Depression (the US […]
Plenty of Room for Growth in ‘Built-Out’ Communities
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010“Built-out” municipalities issued more than twice as many building permits per year in 1998 and 1999 than they had averaged earlier in the decade.
Report Finds Robust Growth in “Built-Out” Towns
Thursday, December 9th, 2010A New Jersey Future analysis of building permits issued over the past two decades reveals that there has been more robust construction activity in towns that are already at least 90 percent “built-out”.
Governance by Watershed: What Would It Look Like in NJ?
Monday, November 15th, 2010image source: Strange Maps
Strange Maps today takes a look at a map illustrating what the Intermountain West would have looked like if the US government had heeded the recommendation of explorer John Wesley Powell that state boundaries in the country’s arid region be drawn to coincide with drainage basins. (A larger version of the map […]
Smaller Houses: Symptom of the Recession, or Long-Term Trend?
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010The New York Times Magazine [registration required] takes a look at shrinking square footages for new houses and muses on whether this represents a long-term trend or merely a temporary response to the recession. The crash of the housing market certainly has served to remind people that housing prices don’t automatically keep going up forever…perhaps […]
Best Town Name in New Jersey?
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010New Jersey is legally comprised of 566 municipalities, but culturally it is made up of untold hundreds of localities with which residents often more closely identify. The names of many of these places are rooted in New Jersey’s rich Lenni-Lenape Native American heritage or some natural or man-made feature in the community, but whatever their provenance, […]
Municipal “Ratables Chase” Doesn’t Necessarily Pay
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010Do municipalities with the highest concentrations of commercial properties also tend to have the lowest tax rates?
Sprawl Not Yet a Thing of the Past
Thursday, July 29th, 2010New Jersey has long been the nation’s most developed state, but new data show it is now more developed than anything else.
