Working for Smart Growth:
More Livable Places and Open Spaces
Road Costs and New Development
Laying a local, two-lane road typically costs $1 million a mile.
The cost per resident can be reduced dramatically if plans for new roads are coordinated with plans for more compact development – even when that development is no more “compact” than found in a small town.
Roads built to serve sprawling […]
50 Years Ago in New Jersey
In 1950, we munched Sugar Pops and Ball-O-Fire gumballs for the first time. Most of us (58 percent) lived in places with urban or small town densities where you could walk to stores, movies or even work – Newark, Camden, Maplewood, Princeton, Red Bank, Collingswood. Today, only a third of […]
Spillover Sprawl
The newest frontier of New Jersey suburbanization is actually in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The population of Monroe County, Pa. grew by 34 percent in the past decade; Pike County, Pa. grew by a whopping 48 percent. New Jersey’s fastest growing county, Somerset, grew by a comparatively “meager” 20 percent.
Both Pennsylvania counties are served by […]
Only a third of all New Jersey households are families with children under 18, making only one in three households a primary market for new single-family homes (per 1990 census).
Yet from 1990 to 1999, 83 percent of all building permits issued in New Jersey were for single-family homes.
This imbalance severely limits the choice of new […]
Since 1975, Montgomery County Maryland has required that at least 15 percent of all new homes in any new development of 50 or more homes be affordable to moderate- and low-income families.
Creating mixed-income neighborhoods in such modest proportions has had no adverse impact whatever on the resale value of market-rate homes in this wealthy D.C. […]
The drawbacks of new business development — from heavier traffic to lost open space — are often shared by surrounding communities. Minnesota requires its communities to also share the tax benefits.
When a business moves to a new community in Minnesota, law requires that the other communities in the region share 40 percent of the […]
Oregon has statewide zoning for farmland (16.4 million acres) and private forest land (8.7 million acres). This zoning protects about 40,000 square miles from development – an area about the size of Indiana. New Jersey has no farm or forest zoning.
In contrast to the millions of acres it protects from development, Oregon has set […]
Suburban Distress
Urban distress is beginning to seep into the suburbs and small towns that border New Jersey’s major cities. Many of these communities have fallen behind the state pace in three important measures: change in per capita income, change in residential value and change in their share of regional employment.
In north Jersey, they include Newark […]
NJ Population Growth
New Jersey’s population growth in the past decade would have been negligible without immigration from other countries.
The number of residents leaving New Jersey for other states between 1990 and 1999 exceeded the number moving in from other states by 380,000.
This population loss was barely offset by natural population increase (births minus […]
Zoning and Communities
New Jersey’s most densely populated community is Union City, with 45,000 people per square mile — a higher density than Brooklyn or Queens.
Our least densely populated community is Walpack Township, near the Delaware Water Gap, with only 2.9 people per square mile.
Nearly every inch of New Jersey — with the exception […]
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