Sprawl

The State Planning Commission at its Sept. 7 meeting officially adopted the Warehouse Siting Guidance drafted by the Office of Planning Advocacy (OPA) earlier this summer, intended for use by municipalities in deciding how best to plan for warehouse developments.

Industries devoted to the movement and storage of goods are a pillar of New Jersey’s economy, providing jobs to nearly one out of every eight employed New Jersey residents. Growth in e-commerce and in the volume of international trade arriving at the country’s second-busiest port, the major facilities of which are located in North Jersey, are creating unprecedented demand for warehouse space.

The Office of Planning Advocacy, the staff for the State Planning Commission, has issued first-of-its-kind guidance on where and how warehouses should be located in New Jersey.

Earlier this year, New Jersey Future released a report about the growth of warehousing in New Jersey, and that growth pressure has only grown more intense in the intervening months. The report focused mainly on the use—and in many cases, the re-use—of land for warehouse development and its impact on host communities in terms of […]

The warehouse development that has been steadily spreading south into farm fields along the New Jersey Turnpike might be a preview of things to come if we fail to plan for the growth in the movement and storage of stuff.

This report identifies strategies to lower both cost and risk in redevelopment projects, as redevelopment increasingly becomes the norm for accommodating growth in New Jersey. January 2016.

In this report, New Jersey Future analyzed housing affordability in each New Jersey municipality, to see where households headed by someone 65 or older have high housing costs. The places where housing cost burden is greatest fall into two groups: towns that are expensive for everyone, and towns that are dominated by larger, single-family housing stock. December 2015.

In this report, New Jersey Future and Smart Growth America analyzed per-capita road usage. The results show that places with the highest activity density have the lowest per-capita usage, suggesting per-capita road-maintenance costs can be reduced by even marginal increases in density. November 2015.

The Economic Opportunity Act of 2013 included additional incentives for projects destined for “smart-growth” areas. This report analyzes how effective the updated incentives have been at directing growth to those areas. December 2014.

There is a significant mismatch in New Jersey between where large numbers of older residents live and which municipalities are most prepared to accommodate them. This report matches every municipality against four age-friendliness indicators, and analyzes the degree to which New Jersey’s older residents are living in places that, from a land-use perspective, are not prepared to accommodate their changing needs. January 2014.