New Jersey Future Blog
Helping towns design for all ages: New Jersey Future’s aging-friendly program is gaining momentum
February 15th, 2021 by Tanya Rohrbach
Despite the challenges of 2020, several towns followed through on their commitments toward creating great places to age. They recognize that addressing the health needs of older residents includes making sure the built environment supports the ability of older residents to choose safe, suitable housing options and to easily get around town, whether for accessing daily needs and services or for getting exercise or averting isolation. The impacts of COVID-19 on the older population has made the need for intentional aging-friendly community design more apparent than ever. An aging-friendly community design model is based on the livability of a community and includes access to: housing, transportation, mobility, public and open spaces, social interaction, health and wellness services, and other community elements.
Here’s a summary of milestones recently achieved by a number of towns New Jersey Future is working with to implement aging-friendly land use goals.
- The Borough of Pompton Lakes, Passaic County, engaged in a planning process to complete an aging-friendly land use assessment for the borough. The land-use assessment identified key steps the borough can take to facilitate a more aging-friendly environment such as permitting other housing types in single-family detached zones, improving pedestrian and bicycle access to destinations, and zoning changes to promote more compact mixed-use development in the downtown area. Pompton Lakes is actively seeking redevelopment opportunities, and the aging-friendly land use assessment will assist the Borough in using an aging-friendly lens to ensure the community grows in a way that benefits all residents.
- The Village of Ridgefield Park, Bergen County, also worked through a planning process with New Jersey Future to develop an aging-friendly land use assessment for the village. The land use assessment identified aging-friendly components the village can incorporate into its master plan update, including the creation of public spaces for social interaction and activation in the downtown, an increase in smaller, centrally-located housing units suitable for older residents, specific improvements to the pedestrian environment, and access to the waterfront.
- The Borough of Fair Lawn, Bergen County, worked with New Jersey Future to create an action plan to implement aging-friendly land use strategies. Fair Lawn is also engaged in redevelopment efforts and aims to ensure community changes are in line with aging-friendly principles. The action plan provides specific things the borough can do to integrate aging-friendly decision-making into municipal land use planning, policies, and regulations.
- The Village of Ridgewood, Bergen County, participated in a thorough implementation planning process to develop a detailed implementation plan that outlines specific actions to implement priority aging-friendly objectives. The goals the village identified in the planning process include, improving pedestrian safety and mobility, expanding housing diversity and affordability, creating a more vibrant and mixed-use downtown, and aligning the master plan with aging-friendly community design goals. Ridgewood, along with all the towns New Jersey Future worked with, also aims to engage residents in meaningful and effective aging-friendly community building initiatives.
In November 2020, New Jersey Future published Creating Great Places to Age: A Community Guide to Implementing Aging Friendly Land Use Decisions to provide step-by-step guidance for any town or advocate endeavoring to create a more aging-friendly community. The guide contains detailed descriptions of New Jersey Future’s process: from education and community building to conducting a land-use assessment to implementation. It contains a plethora of links and resources for any community to work through the process or learn more about aging-friendly communities or land use planning.
To demonstrate ways towns are actively trying to meet the housing needs of older residents throughout the state, New Jersey Future produced a report highlighting case studies of municipal strategies to diversify housing stock for an aging population. Case studies in the report describe how five municipalities throughout New Jersey have each implemented a strategy, providing a roadmap for other local governments or advocates. Case study strategies include a public-private partnership or changes to zoning to allow for accessory dwelling units, promoting transit-oriented development, or adopting a form-based code. Although the list is not inclusive of all strategies implemented by all New Jersey municipalities, it demonstrates that towns are capable of implementing a variety of strategies in a variety of ways that are suitable to their needs.
Moving forward, New Jersey Future will put a particular focus on dismantling barriers so that community members historically left out of the planning, decision-making, and benefits concerning their built environments can engage in this expanding initiative. Good community design can only be achieved when disparities are addressed head-on. This is a guiding principle for New Jersey Future as we continue to engage communities in becoming better places for people to live as they age.
Continuing Implications of Broadband Inequity
February 11th, 2021 by Kimberley Irby
In September of last year, we described the state of broadband access in New Jersey and stated that “for [our] recovery from the pandemic to be successful, everyone should have the ability to access the internet at reasonable speeds with affordable prices regardless of their geography or income.” We noted that inequitable broadband access, which contributes to a variety of inequitable outcomes, is an infrastructure issue that must be addressed to achieve New Jersey Future’s mission of strong, healthy, resilient communities for everyone. Now, as we move closer to a full recovery with the rollout of vaccines, we must not lose focus on the issues surrounding broadband access that can hinder our progress towards a “new normal.”
Soon after COVID-19 caused many to shelter in place in March 2020, unequal internet access was featured in discussions about existing inequities underscored by the pandemic. Now, the issue is in the spotlight again as the rollout of vaccines gains steam. Just a few months into the distribution of two major COVID-19 vaccines, we are already seeing racial disparities in vaccinations nationwide and in New Jersey, and one contributing factor is the digital divide. Without access to the internet, it can be much harder to obtain information about where and when to get a vaccine as well as make an appointment for one, as sign-ups are being largely coordinated online. This issue is also impacting seniors, a group that is prioritized to get vaccinated as soon as possible. In a call to close the digital divide in order to vaccinate the country, Dr. Ranit Mishori notes, “When it comes to vaccine distribution, [those who have trouble accessing the relevant websites] are all shut out of opportunities to access a vaccine that can literally save their lives.” In the short-term, efforts will have to be made through low-tech means to overcome these hurdles, but this serves as yet another stark reminder of the great investments needed over the long-term to eliminate broadband inequity, which can ultimately help achieve broader health equity.
In addition to health, education has been the focus of unequal internet access throughout the course of the pandemic. As of early February 2021, roughly 400 New Jersey students are still in need of devices or internet access, down from 231,000 that were in need at the beginning of the school year. Though significant progress has been made, there are still challenges related to remote learning and certain districts have been disproportionately impacted. As schools gradually begin to reopen, administrations will have to address mistrust among Black families, persisting even as their children suffer from remote learning, which is due in part to inadequate internet access. Additionally, though younger students have been the focus of work to close the digital divide, many college students that were reliant on school computers and Wi-Fi to complete their studies are also struggling. Even once the pandemic is a thing of the past, some schools, at every level of education, will likely keep some degree of remote learning, so the permanent erasure of the digital divide must continue to be a priority even as students are able to gather in classrooms more regularly.
Now that the Biden administration is in office, we can expect to see increased federal efforts through its plans to expand rural broadband, municipally-owned networks, and telehealth, as well as facilitate the ongoing process to improve FCC broadband maps. At the state level, New Jersey has made progress on closing the digital divide for K-12 students, and the state Senate has recently approved legislation to form a commission that would assess the feasibility of community broadband networks and report on its findings within a year. It is exciting to consider the potential momentum for broadband support at the federal level, which will hopefully be coordinated with state and local efforts to ultimately provide equitable access to broadband both in New Jersey and nationwide as we “build back better” from the pandemic.
Older Homeowners in Car-Dependent Suburbs Face Difficulty Downsizing
February 11th, 2021 by Tim Evans
Arthur Nelson at the University of Arizona recently released a study, “The Great Senior Short Sale,” describing the mismatch between retiring Baby Boomers seeking to sell their mostly single-family detached homes on large lots and younger homebuyers who are mostly looking for other housing options. The study predicts that “many baby boomers and members of Generation X will struggle to sell their homes as they become empty nesters and singles,” because young homebuyers don’t want what they are selling.
New Jersey Future has called attention to a similar predicament facing older residents in our 2014 report Creating Places To Age in New Jersey, which noted that there were hundreds of thousands of people “aging in place” in places that were designed for travel almost exclusively by automobile, creating a looming mobility problem for older people who may soon be looking to scale back their driving—or may be forced to give it up altogether. And we have noted (in our 2017 report Where Are We Going? Implications of Recent Demographic Trends in New Jersey) that Millennials are drawn to compact, walkable towns where they don’t need a car every time they leave home and are hence unlikely to represent a strong market of buyers for the Boomers’ suburban homes in car-dependent neighborhoods.
Seven years later, this problem has gotten more urgent. As of the 2018 five-year American Community Survey, there are about 700,000 New Jersey residents age 65 or older who are living in municipalities that score poorly on measures of compactness and walkability that New Jersey Future uses to identify aging-friendly towns. And the wave hasn’t crested yet, with the younger half of the Baby Boom generation still to hit retirement age. Many of these aging homeowners will face difficulty downsizing within their existing community, since the state’s more car-dependent places also tend to offer few options beyond single-family detached homes.
Read the full report for details, and for recommendations for what communities of different types can do to make themselves more aging-friendly.
New Jersey Future and other Jersey Water Works Members Call for Federal Funding for Water Infrastructure
February 10th, 2021 by Missy Rebovich
New Jersey Future joined 56 Jersey Water Works members calling for federal investment in our water infrastructure in a letter sent to New Jersey’s congressional delegation.
New Jersey’s communities continue to confront issues including aging infrastructure, lead in drinking water, combined sewer overflows, and polluted waterways. With the added burden of the COVID-19 economy, the funds needed for these infrastructure investments exceeds the resources available to local and state governments, making a federal infrastructure investment essential.
The letter details five steps the federal government can take to ensure safe, clean drinking water for every New Jerseyan, including:
- Increasing the Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds (SRF) to $14 billion and $13 billion, respectively, as well as revising limits on principal forgiveness.
- Introduce a House companion to the Drinking Water Infrastructure Act of 2020 (pending in the US Senate) to facilitate replacement of toxic lead service lines.
- Create a federal water affordability program to provide financial and water efficiency assistance to low-income customers, as suggested by the EPA’s National Drinking Water Advisory Council’s Affordability Work Group in 2009.
- Advance climate solutions drawn from the Blueprint to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure as well as the Water Infrastructure Act (WIA) of 2020 and the Drinking Water Infrastructure Act (DWIA) of 2020, that include solutions for small, financially disadvantaged, and rural communities.
- Develop a new COVID-19 recovery package that targets significant new investments in community development programs that address long-standing and unjust environmental, health, and economic burdens, specifically Community Development Financial Institutions, Community Development Block Grants, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Program, expanded funding for federally qualified health centers, and Environmental Justice Small Grants Program.
Read the full letter here.
Want to Get Ahead of Flooding? Use NJF’s New Tool, the Enhanced Model Stormwater Ordinance
February 9th, 2021 by Andrew Tabas
Stormy days ahead call for strong municipal stormwater ordinances. Climate change is bringing increased rainfall and flooding to New Jersey which, if ignored, will damage property, threaten public health, and pollute waterways. Municipal governments’ responses to this challenge will define the quality of life in their towns for generations. Fortunately, municipalities have a strong device to promote responsible and resilient development: stormwater ordinances. The stormwater ordinance is key to implementing public and private green infrastructure, a group of practices that mimic the natural water cycle to capture rainwater where it falls. Municipal leaders should use New Jersey Future’s new tool to update their town’s stormwater ordinance as soon as possible to increase green infrastructure and reduce flood risk.
To prevent flooding in the face of increased rainfall from climate change, municipal leaders should use NJF’s Enhanced Model Stormwater Ordinance to develop their local stormwater ordinance.
With the state’s most recent amendments (effective March 2) now requiring stormwater to be managed with green infrastructure (GI), each municipality can decide how best to bring the benefits of GI to their communities with an enhanced ordinance that is stronger than the state’s minimum requirements.
To help municipalities make choices about how to adopt a stronger stormwater ordinance, New Jersey Future developed a new tool, the Enhanced Model Stormwater Ordinance for Municipalities, also available as an editable Word document. It compares and recommends several options for improvements to the minimum requirements in NJDEP’s example stormwater ordinance. While NJDEP’s requirements represent a paradigm shift in stormwater management, municipalities that want to get ahead of flooding and climate change, improve water quality in local waterways, and encourage developers to use more GI in their projects should consider going further. Municipalities can use their stormwater ordinance to partner with developers of both public and private projects to build GI, multiplying its benefits.
Green infrastructure, like this bioswale in Somerset, New Jersey, captures rainwater and reduces flood risk. Towns can use their stormwater ordinances to require green infrastructure. Source: Maser Consulting, 2020.
This new tool—a menu of options for towns—offers several ways for municipalities to go above and beyond DEP’s requirements, including:
- Redefine the threshold for “major development.” Reducing the threshold to trigger management of stormwater for major developments will include more development projects, capturing more stormwater. Towns that are more dense may wish to use even smaller thresholds.
- Add a definition and requirements for “minor development.” This will require additional, smaller sites to use GI. The requirements for minor development are less stringent than the requirements for major development.
- Require stormwater management on existing impervious surfaces, not just new. To add a requirement for GI in redevelopment projects, municipalities can expand the definition of “regulated impervious surface” to include “all impervious surface within the project area” instead of the “net increase of impervious surface.” Regulating existing impervious surfaces includes redevelopment sites, which will address longstanding runoff issues from existing development. Not taking this step will allow historical polluted runoff to continue to exist.
- Require infiltration of a specific volume of stormwater onsite. Requiring the infiltration of a specific volume of stormwater will increase the amount of clean stormwater returned to the ground and reduce runoff. Decreased runoff will lower the flood risk from frequent, small storms.
- Reduce “maximum contributory drainage areas.” Each GI best management practice (BMP), such as a rain garden or pervious pavement, is designed to receive stormwater runoff from a specified area. Reducing the drainage area for each BMP will prevent the BMPs from becoming overloaded and will increase the number of BMPs used in each development.
Understanding New Jersey’s rules and requirements and the opportunities for going above and beyond can help municipal leaders to build a safe, healthy, and resilient town. Photo credit: Andrew Tabas.
Ordinance enhancements in 2021 will dovetail with NJDEP’s plan for future regulatory amendments to address climate change later this year. By writing their updated stormwater ordinances with purpose, local leaders can put their towns on the path to managing flood risk and to being greener, more attractive, and safer places. For additional information on how to implement GI, municipal leaders should consult the Green Infrastructure Municipal Toolkit and the Developers Green Infrastructure Guide. The result of these efforts by each town in New Jersey will be a thriving state whose streets are tree-lined, whose waterways are clean, and whose people are happy and healthy.
For questions about New Jersey Future’s Enhanced Model Stormwater Ordinance for Municipalities, contact Kandyce Perry (kperry
njfuture
org) .
New Jersey Future Releases Guide to Implementing Aging-Friendly Land Use Decisions
January 15th, 2021 by Tanya Rohrbach
New Jersey Future, with funding from The Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation, developed Creating Great Places to Age in New Jersey: A Community Guide to Implementing Aging-Friendly Land Use Decisions to provide local communities with a step-by-step process to design their towns for the needs of older adults. The guide can be used by professionals, municipalities, or residents.
Land use is a critical factor in a town’s livability, and especially for older residents. Including aging-friendly factors in local planning for features like affordable and diverse housing, transportation, walkability, flexible employment opportunities, and access to daily activities and socialization helps towns ensure that older residents can continue to live and thrive independently in the communities they know and love.
With an anticipated 8,000 members of the Baby Boom generation turning 65 every day for the rest of the decade, there is an increased urgency for land use planning to accommodate the growing population of older adults. For example, this demographic is at risk of social isolation and that social isolation presents serious threats to mental and physical health, and older adults face limited access to community resources when isolated. Where people live in relation to destinations and neighbors has a major effect on isolation risk. Older adults living in New Jersey, like many populations in our state, face difficulty in finding affordable and adequate housing. Access to transportation or safe mobility options can also affect the extent to which people can engage in their communities as they age. And these issues are exacerbated by race and class inequities or during a crisis like a natural disaster or a disease outbreak.
This guide provides information on how to organize an aging-friendly initiative, engage the community, develop a land use assessment for your town and, most importantly, how to implement aging-friendly land use actions. The guide also offers profiles of some of the municipalities New Jersey Future has worked with to become more aging-friendly.
While the focus of this guide is on increasing aging-friendliness, the suggested actions will benefit the entire community, making our towns not only great places to age, but making them stronger, healthier, and more equitable for everyone.
New Jersey Future analysis of the New Jersey Economic Recovery Act of 2020
December 21st, 2020 by Peter Kasabach
There is much for smart growth advocates to like in S3295/A4, the economic incentives legislation passed by the New Jersey Legislature today. The comprehensive package of programs represented in this bill recognizes that place matters and that government subsidies, when directed toward places where we want and need growth, can help achieve a New Jersey in which everyone can thrive. Additionally, virtually all of New Jersey Future’s smart growth recommendations have been incorporated into the legislation.
First and foremost, the suite of programs in this package recognizes the importance and preeminence of the State Development and Redevelopment Plan in assessing where growth should occur in the state. Most of the programs detailed in the bill would prioritize projects that take place in the designated growth areas, and in some cases the growth location is a key eligibility criteria. The additional targeting of federal Opportunity Zones and lower-income communities is another positive feature that will align investments with policy objectives.
The Community-Anchored Development program, the Main Street recovery program, and the entrepreneur zones working group are all evidence that this legislature and administration understand that place-based economic development is critical to the future of our state. Place-based economic development requires careful targeting, comprehensive planning, and a recognition that creating walkable, mixed-use, diverse, equitable places is a cornerstone of economic growth. A crucial inclusion in this bill is the allocation of funding for economic development planning grants for towns to assess their current situation and develop smart, implementable strategies for moving forward.
The state’s first historic tax credit program will help redevelop and revitalize our older downtowns and communities, and will allow smaller and mixed-use projects to participate, which oftentimes form the important fabric of these places.
The brownfields incentive program should be a good complement to the current brownfields clean-up programs at the state, and the other redevelopment incentive programs in the package. The current bill seems to be open to smaller, mixed-use, and residential projects, but the implementing regulations will determine if they can access the program in a feasible manner. Many of our older communities where we want to see growth and redevelopment have been stymied by the existence of contaminated sites and the extra costs that come with needing to clean them up. This is especially true in our environmental justice communities.
The Aspire program (successor to ERG) includes the very important aspect of mixed-income, residential development in targeted locations. This type of housing can be the necessary first step toward transforming downtowns and a precursor for future commercial redevelopment, job creation, and investment. The program also introduces the concept of an infrastructure fund, which is an essential acknowledgement that place-based economic development requires an investment in the infrastructure that surrounds development projects and makes a place attractive and functional for residents and businesses.
Both the Aspire program and the Emerge program (successor to Grow NJ) incorporate a new level of transparent reporting and third-party evaluation. Evaluating whether or not these programs are delivering the intended policy results and are advancing growth and development in the places where they will do the most good is a necessary process to ensure that the significant amount of state deferred revenue is being fully leveraged and well invested.
That the Evergreen program and fund puts the state in the role of investor and partner, rather than just grantor, is a positive. This relationship should allow more innovative and difficult projects to advance. If done well, it should also allow projects to expand their bottom line goals to improve community conditions, include racial and economic equity concerns, and promote more minority inclusion.
A few of the programs incorporate the concept of Community Benefits Agreements. This is an important step toward ensuring that projects don’t just serve the developer or owner, but also the surrounding host community and neighbors. The current language creates a seat at the table for the host municipality and the EDA. We recommend taking a step further to ensure that actual community members that are immediately affected by the project are also at the table. It would be wise to provide a small stipend to these individuals, since otherwise they will be the only people at the table not being paid.
While there is much to like in this long-awaited package, turning it into law is just the first step. The programs outlined are sound frameworks that need to be turned into streamlined, implementable programs that are accessible to a large number of stakeholders, especially those in lower income communities and communities of color. One aspect to note is the large allocation of funding for “transformative projects.” While this has its upside, an unintended consequence is reduced availability of funding for other projects, which may prevent many smaller, catalytic projects, led by smaller developers from advancing. It will also be important to see if the program incentive caps imposed by this legislation will slow growth and stall redevelopment momentum in our urban communities and downtowns where the most opportunity and need exists.
This is a very large and complicated bill that includes many details that are not yet fully researched or understood. It is the kind of bill that would have benefitted from additional time for the public and policymakers to understand the nuances and detailed parameters being imposed by the legislature. However, New Jersey Future does look forward to working with the legislature and administration to move from vision to incentivized projects on the ground.
Stuck with Stormwater Issues? See Expert Solutions to Fight Flooding and Pollution in the Updated Municipal Toolkit
November 10th, 2020 by Andrew Tabas
If your town experiences localized flooding and degradation of nearby waterways due to stormwater runoff, there is a sustainable solution that can help. Green infrastructure (GI) can make your town a healthier, cleaner, and safer place to live by reducing flood risk, returning clean water to the ground, cleaning and cooling the air, and aiding in pedestrian safety.
Not only is green infrastructure a sustainable and effective tool to manage stormwater that all municipalities should implement, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) now requires new public and private major developments to manage stormwater runoff with green infrastructure. This Spring, the NJDEP published the new Stormwater Rules (NJAC 7:8), which take effect March 2, 2021. As the private sector builds more GI to comply with the rule amendments, elected officials and residents will see the resulting increased economic, environmental, and public health benefits.
To achieve the maximum benefit from GI while balancing many priorities, municipal leaders need comprehensive, practical guidance in order to take action. New Jersey Future’s newly updated Green Infrastructure Municipal Toolkit is a one-stop green infrastructure resource designed to help municipal leaders and advocates address the related problems of nuisance flooding and polluted waterways. The new updates will help municipalities leverage the rules to work with developers, understand the effect of the rules, and organize the approval of green infrastructure projects.
The Green Infrastructure Municipal Toolkit, updated in November 2020, contains resources to help municipal leaders to encourage the implementation of green infrastructure.
What Municipal Requirements Do NJDEP’s Stormwater Rules Include?
The key takeaway from the Stormwater Rule amendments for municipal governments is that municipalities are required to update their municipal stormwater control ordinances by March 2, 2021 to comply with the new rules. To assist municipalities with this update, NJDEP has released a model ordinance and indicates that municipalities may go above and beyond the state’s minimum standards to increase the benefits described above. New Jersey Future’s toolkit lists a few ways to do that:
- Reduce the definition of major development so that it applies to smaller projects in order to increase the number of projects that use green infrastructure, which will in turn reduce flood risk across your entire municipality.
- Extend the requirement for green infrastructure to redevelopment projects in order to mitigate the negative effects of stormwater runoff from existing developments.
- Require the retention of at least 1.25 inches over two hours onsite, which eliminates flooding from 90% of New Jersey’s rain events.
Green infrastructure improves stormwater management and beautifies cities. Photo credit: Andrew Tabas.
Updated ordinances will affect both public and private development projects. For public developments, municipalities will need to collaborate with contractors to ensure that green infrastructure is built according to the best standards. For private developments, the rules provide a pathway for municipalities to work with developers to increase the use of green infrastructure on private land. The toolkit provides resources that are applicable to both public and private projects.
What to Do Next
So, what else can you do to bring the benefits of green infrastructure to your town? Visit the newly updated Municipal Toolkit to check out the following resources.
First, use these checklists to ensure that green infrastructure projects are designed, built, and maintained effectively:
- NJDEP’s “Checklist for Conducting Stormwater Management Reviews.” This checklist presents a straightforward process for municipal boards to approve projects, which makes it easier to ensure that each phase of the project is completed correctly. It includes everything from soil testing to water quality, water quantity, and groundwater recharge requirements.
- Municipal Stormwater BMP Inspections Checklist. This will help municipal engineers to inspect sites during construction. It provides a straightforward way to know which components need to be inspected for each green infrastructure Best Management Practice (BMP).
- Monitoring Logbook. The monitoring logbook will help municipalities to keep track of ongoing monitoring and maintenance activities to ensure GI BMPs are functioning properly.
Second, to get a sense of the improvements that green infrastructure could bring to your municipality, check out these two side-by-side comparisons:
- The Mixed Use Comparison shows the improvements to stormwater management under the updated Stormwater Rule. The example site is able to count infiltration in its stormwater management calculations, which makes it possible to increase the use of bioretention systems while decreasing the size of gray infrastructure. The site also uses a decentralized approach to stormwater management, with green infrastructure distributed throughout the site.
- The Green Streets Comparison demonstrates the benefits of turning a traditional street into a green street. These include improved stormwater management, more beautiful streets, increased accommodation for walkers and cyclists.
Green streets are pedestrian-friendly alternatives to traditional streets. See the toolkit for a side-by-side comparison of green and traditional streets. Graphic designed by E&LP for NJF.
Third, visit the toolkit’s resources page to check out additional resources that are useful for municipalities, including a maintenance manual, case studies on green streets, and a presentation on harmful algal blooms.
Municipalities have an exciting new opportunity to gain green stormwater upgrades through new development and redevelopment. For more updates, sign up for our mailing list!
The Green Infrastructure Municipal Toolkit is a product of New Jersey Future’s Mainstreaming Green Infrastructure program.
Visualizing an Aging-Friendly Built Environment for Implementation in Ridgewood Village
November 10th, 2020 by Tanya Rohrbach
Communities in New Jersey and across the country are responding to the need to design their built environments with older residents in mind. Our population is aging, and towns are taking steps to create better places for people to live during their later years. Considerations include creating housing that is of diverse type and more affordable, providing for greater mobility, and enhancing public spaces to be more accessible, safer, and welcoming.
New Jersey Future partnered with the Village of Ridgewood to develop the Creating Great Places to Age: Aging-Friendly Land Use Implementation Plan for the Village of Ridgewood. The plan identifies a number of aging-friendly strategies the town can pursue based on an implementation planning process that New Jersey Future facilitated. The process prioritized recommendations of the aging-friendly land use analysis completed previously for the village by New Jersey Future. Four high-priority strategies are detailed in the plan and include the specific action steps the town would need to take to implement each.
To provide design support to the village for one of the plan’s action items, a graduate design studio class at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University worked from the town implementation plan and presented five tactical urbanism design concepts for several community locations to village engineers and council members. The students developed design concepts that involve installation of a temporary demonstration project to test a more permanent solution or that will provide a low-cost community amenity that is adaptable to changing needs. This approach is often referred to as tactical urbanism and is a great way for municipalities to take actions with community involvement.
Students presented visualizations for tactical urbanism designs to improve walkability, create a more welcoming park space, adapt outdoor dining and retail for winter activities, and redesign certain intersections with traffic-calming installations. All of the design concepts incorporated low-cost materials and modular components so that Ridgewood could implement meaningful improvements without spending a lot of money or committing to major infrastructure changes. For example, students pointed out the lack of a crosswalk and insufficient seating at Van Neste Square Memorial Park, which is located about two and a half blocks from the train station and centrally located in the downtown business district. The design recommendations for this space included installation of a decorative crosswalk, additional seating, and flower gardens that would all be developed based on a community engagement process to identify stakeholder issues and solutions and subsequent documentation through observation to modify the design as needed.
Another design concept for the park showed a plaza extension to better accommodate the park’s use as a location for events, gatherings, and outdoor leisure and exercise activities. The extension proposed uses an existing adjacent parking area to install temporary, modular chairs, tents, planters and other features that would change with the seasons and adapt with community needs. These kinds of designs are intended to improve pedestrian safety, attract people to the area for community engagement, and support businesses at a very low cost to the town.
Students recognized the work Ridgewood has already done to respond to the effects of COVID-19 on local businesses by permitting outdoor operation of dining and retail under certain conditions and closing some streets to vehicular traffic to permit pedestrian-only use at certain times. To provide a means for Ridgewood to winterize these activities beyond the current set up of basic tables, chairs, and umbrellas, students presented examples of different types of enclosures that could be constructed, modified, or dismantled easily and are low-cost. Sketches of parklet models showed semi-enclosed spaces constructed of pallets and included recommendations for storage options, drainage considerations, accommodation of different sized groups, and even carnivorous plants. Designs for repurposing street space and some parking spaces for outdoor activities were offered as a means to create temporary outdoor dining and retail spaces that would be more welcoming to pedestrians and provide more benefits to businesses able to operate outside their establishments.
Intersection and circulation improvement designs presented by the students included bicycle lanes, island extensions, curb bump-outs, and a roundabout constructed with an art installation. What makes these design concepts feasible and desirable is their low cost, relative ease of installation, and adaptability to community input and needs. If the temporary installation of traffic cones and painted streets demonstrates improved pedestrian safety and activity, for example, the municipality could then pursue a more permanent solution. In the process, community stakeholders can take part in creating the temporary installation and interact with the design to provide input for a permanent improvement.
At the student presentation, the mayor of Ridgewood offered insight to contextualize the designs and suggest design modifications and expressed an overall pleasure with how the concepts added color and pedestrian-oriented community spaces to the downtown. All of the design concepts demonstrated that age-friendly design also benefits residents of all ages and is compatible with creating a vibrant downtown economy centered on pedestrian-oriented civic spaces.
Does School District Fragmentation Support Residential Segregation?
November 9th, 2020 by Tim Evans
Geography of Equity and Inclusion Series. There are many causes of racial and economic segregation in New Jersey. In our Geography of Equity and Inclusion series we look at some of the issues and dynamics that help us better define the problem, its causes, and system changes needed for reversing. Today’s installment looks at the relationship between school district fragmentation and the role it may play in fostering and maintaining a racially and economically segregated state.
New Jersey has an overabundance of small school districts when compared nationally
The level of government at which public schools are operated and funded varies widely from one part of the country to another. New Jersey’s public school landscape is particularly fragmented—it averages 28 school districts per county, the most of any state, and averages just under 15,000 residents per school district, well below the national average of 23,344. New Jersey Future has written about how New Jersey’s fragmented collage of public school districts leads to land-use incentives that discourage residential development. We are interested in exploring whether this fragmented system may also contribute to residential segregation, both by income and by race.
New Jersey Future has compared New Jersey’s 21 counties with a set of counties in nearby states (including some that are major destinations for New Jersey out-migrants) where the provision of public education is organized differently, to see if the degree of fragmentation appears to be related to the degree to which certain disadvantaged groups (lower-income, Black, and Hispanic populations) tend to be concentrated in relatively few neighborhoods. We included in the comparison a number of counties in states where schools are run at the county level, as well as looking at statewide data in Hawaii, which is unique in having a single statewide school district. County-run school districts—as in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina—generally serve much larger populations than those run at the sub-county level, as they are in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware (see graphic).
There is a relationship between district fragmentation and segregation
The results of our analysis strongly suggest a relationship between the degree of fragmentation in the organization of public education and the degree of residential segregation. The same incentives that intensify both competition for commercial and industrial properties and resistance to residential development when the units of competition are smaller also appear to result in higher degrees of segregation by race and by income. For example, when looking at what percent of a county’s poor population lives in a high-poverty neighborhood (see graphic), it is counties in New Jersey and New York—the two states with the most fragmented systems of public education—that dominate the top of the list. Meanwhile, the counties with countywide school systems are generally clustered near the bottom. Even the two North Carolina counties, which are each dominated by a single large city, outperform many of the New Jersey counties on the list, despite the fact that large cities are where high-poverty neighborhoods are most frequently found.
Results are similar for segregation by race, where counties with countywide school districts tend to have smaller percentages of their Black and Hispanic residents living in majority-Black or majority-Hispanic neighborhoods, respectively, relative to the overall sizes of their minority populations than is true in counties with more fragmented school districts like New Jersey’s.
More localized responsibility for school funding appears to make discriminatory impulses not only more of a cold, calculated fiscal strategy but also easier to carry out via localized land-use decision-making. If we want to address New Jersey’s status as one of the most segregated states in the country, mitigating these incentives by organizing and funding public education at a higher level of government might be a good place to start.
See the full report here.
