The Highlands at Morristown Station, an example of smart-growth, mixed-use development.

A new report titled “Building Better Budgets: A National Examination of the Fiscal Benefits of Smart Growth Development,” was released May 21 by Smart Growth America and examines a range of development cost and revenue studies conducted at various levels of government across the country. The report concludes that different patterns of growth can affect as much as one-third of a municipality’s budget – namely, the portion devoted to capital expenditures on infrastructure and on delivery of services. In every case reviewed in the report, smart-growth-style development – described as compact and higher-density with a mix of uses – offered significant savings over traditional low-density development, both on the upfront costs of infrastructure and on the cost of ongoing delivery of municipal services. In addition, the study looked at areas that had calculated the tax revenue per acre of various development styles and concluded that smart-growth-style development offered substantially higher revenue per acre than other forms.

“The current severe local budget constraints highlight why it’s important for municipalities to understand how much the development decisions they make can affect their long-term finances,” said New Jersey Future Executive Director Peter Kasabach. “This report demonstrates that in every municipality studied – regardless of the differences among them – the decision to manage development using a smart-growth approach yielded both higher revenues per acre and lower capital and operating costs than an equivalent level of low-density development would have. The message of the report is clear: Sprawl development is expensive.

“This report should be good news for residents anywhere who are complaining about municipal costs,” Kasabach continued. “It shows how our expensive our traditional patterns of development become, and it provides a clear framework for municipalities that want to grow without incurring those high costs. Elected officials and planning board members would do well to add it to their reading lists.”

The report, “Building Better Budgets: A National Examination of the Fiscal Benefits of Smart Growth Development,” can be downloaded from the Smart Growth America website.

To accompany the report’s release Smart Growth America will host an online panel discussion (free, but registration required) about the findings on Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 11:00 AM EDT.

Speaking on the call will be Rick Bernhardt, FAICP, CNU-A, executive director of the Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County, TN, planning department; William Fulton, Smart Growth America’s vice president of policy and research; and Chris Zimmerman, a member of the Arlington County, VA, board. Municipal leaders, members of the press and advocates are invited to join the call and participate, or to follow the conversation on Twitter at the hashtag #BuildBetterBudgets.

• 6 AICP CM credits
• 6 ASLA credits
• 5.8 CLE credits

Please print the confirmation which certifies your attendance. If you have any questions, please contact Marianne Jann  (mariannejannnjfutureorg)   or reach by phone at 609-393-0008 ext. 101.

They also can be considered a down payment on the past; that is, they’re intended to help homeowners, renters and businesses put back what was in place before the superstorm made landfall.

Preparing for the future is not complicated, but it’s also not sexy or exciting. But now that those short-term funds and programs are in place, it’s time to look forward.

How can we translate our heightened awareness of risk into tangible, practical steps that will make our communities stronger and safer? How can we ensure that the remaining billions in federal rebuilding funds enable a fundamental, longer-term shift in state and local government decision-making?

Read the full article on NJ Spotlight.

From left to right: Central Jersey Housing Resource Center Board President John Mooney; New Jersey Future Executive Director Peter Kasabach; Central Jersey Housing Resource Center Executive Director Sharon Clark; and New Jersey Future Research Director Tim Evans.

On April 18 New Jersey Future was presented with the Central Jersey Housing Resource Center Outstanding Achievements in Affordable Housing Award, for ”outstanding leadership in housing issues and land-use policies.” Each year, CJHRC selects outstanding elected officials — local, state, and federal — as well as public servants, volunteers, banks, developers, attorneys and housing experts for exemplary service to the affordable housing sector. This year, in addition to recognizing the organization’s long-time achievements, CJHRC singled out New Jersey Future Research Director Tim Evans for his work on the 2012 report Targeting Transit: Assessing Development Opportunities Around New Jersey’s Transit Stations, and the opportunities it highlighted to create much-needed affordable housing near transit. We’re honored to be so honored!

Farmland in N. Hanover. Photo: Nicole Heater

The New Jersey Assembly overwhelmingly approved the Cluster Development Bill, 74-0-1, on Monday, April 29.  The bill moves on to the full Senate, where it could be posted for a vote as early as May 13. 

Preserving open space and farmlands, as well as protecting historic sites are goals that everyone shares,” said prime sponsor Asm. Rob Clifton, R-12, in a recent statement. “This measure clarifies a town’s developmental goals as it provides a roadmap that puts landowners, developers and a town on a path to smart growth.”

New Jersey Future has worked with a powerful, diverse coalition to craft the cluster development bill, which has been introduced as A3761 and S2608.  Special recognition goes to bipartisan sponsors Asms. Green (D-22), Clifton (R-12) and Handlin (R-13) and Sens. Van Drew (D-1) and Oroho (R-24). 

To learn more about the bill’s provisions, get updates, or sign up as a supporter, visit our informational web page. 

Without dedicated funds for resiliency planning and a strong state commitment to move them forward, our communities have neither the support nor the resources to rebuild in a “safer, smarter, stronger” way, as Secretary Donovan said in his announcement. We hope that the next round of CDBG funding, combined with other federal disaster spending, will address these critical issues.

Read our full statement.

Stafford Forge, Ocean County. Source: New Jersey Pinelands Commission

New Jersey has a long and proud history of regional planning.  Perhaps the crown jewel in this history is the landmark 1979 Pinelands Protection Act, which established a regional plan (the Pinelands Comprehensive Management Plan, or CMP) and governance structure (the Pinelands Commission) restricting development in environmentally sensitive areas in order to preserve natural and cultural resources for millions of New Jerseyans in the southern half of the state.  Underlying the CMP  is the principle that future growth should be directed into locations that already have the infrastructure in place to support development, or where such infrastructure can most efficiently be extended while minimizing the effects on the environment.

The Pinelands CMP seeks to channel growth into certain locations, not to stop growth altogether.  In the Pinelands CMP there are three primary types of growth areas:  Pinelands Towns, Pinelands Villages, and Regional Growth Areas.  The first two types are generally pre-existing stand-alone centers surrounded by natural or agricultural lands, while the third category consists of lands near the edge of the “Pinelands Area” (the area designated by the Pinelands Protection Act as being under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Pinelands Commission) that are adjacent to already-developed and largely suburban areas just outside the Pinelands boundary.

How well have these designations succeeded at steering growth away from critical agricultural and water recharge lands?  Have they done so without acting as an undue drag on overall growth? And what effect has overall growth had on natural resources in these areas?

Pinelands Effort Succeeds in Steering Growth

On the first question, we can turn to Tracking New Jersey’s Dynamic Landscape: Urban Growth and Open Space Loss 1986-1995‐2002 (pdf), a report prepared by land-use researchers at Rowan and Rutgers universities.  Section 4.2 of the report, beginning on p. 46, looks at land development in the Pinelands Area and assesses whether the CMP has been effective at preserving open lands and steering growth into designated growth areas.  The report finds positive results on both counts:

In 1995, the Pinelands contained 25.8% of the land available for development in the state.  However, during (the period from 1995 to 2002) it experienced only 7.5% of the state’s (land) development growth. In contrast, areas outside the Pinelands Zone developed 92.5% of the state’s growth (over the same period), even though it contained only 74.2% of the state’s available land. The overall pace of urbanization gauged against the proportion of available land demonstrates that the magnitude of (land) development was considerably slower inside than outside of the Pinelands.

And:

More significant than controlling the magnitude of urbanization in the Pinelands, the findings demonstrate that the Pinelands CMP has functioned well at channeling the development into the designated growth areas.

…

A substantially higher proportion of development occurred in the designated areas, which include the Regional Growth, Towns, Villages, and Rural Development areas, when compared to the more protected Preservation, Special Agricultural and Forest areas which receive far less development.

On the second question – has steering population growth into specific growth areas while restricting it in the preservation areas resulted in overall growth being suppressed? – the answer, perhaps surprisingly, appears to be no.

The Pinelands Area as defined by the state legislation includes all or part of 53 municipalities.  Some municipalities have only a small corner of their land within this area, but there are 46 municipalities with at least 20 percent of their land in the Pinelands and 32 municipalities with at least half their land area covered.  Eleven municipalities are entirely within the Pinelands Area.

Regardless of which group of municipalities we consider, the Pinelands Area consistently has grown faster than the state as a whole since 1970, the last decennial Census before the Pinelands CMP was created, as well as over just the 2000-2010 decade.  The table below shows New Jersey total statewide growth rates for the 2000-2010 decade and for the entire 40-year period from 1970 to 2010, and then provides growth rates over the same two periods for municipalities with different percentages of Pinelands-governed land.

The municipalities that are partly-inside, partly-outside the Pinelands have clearly been outstripping statewide population growth by substantial margins.  But even if we look only at the “heart” of the Pinelands — the 11 municipalities that are entirely contained within the Pinelands Area– we still see them growing slightly faster than the state as a whole over the last decade and nearly three times as fast as the statewide growth rate for the entire 40-year period.  It should be noted that all 11 of these municipalities contain at least one Pinelands Growth Area, and all but two of them contain part or all of at least one Pinelands Town or Village, the growth areas that are meant to be centers.

But How Are Growing Areas Affecting Natural Resources?

This overall growth makes the third question – what has been its effect on natural resources? – especially important. Has the fact that the Pinelands area of New Jersey has grown at a fairly rapid rate, and more rapidly than the state overall, resulted in a degradation of its critical water resources?

According to Carleton Montgomery, the executive director of the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, a not-for-profit that advocates for  preservation and protection of the Pinelands’ natural resources, there is a lot of data on the impacts of development inside and around the Pinelands on the natural resources the program is designed to protect, but the overall verdict is mixed.  The CMP has worked extremely well for watersheds whose headwaters are protected and where impervious cover is very limited throughout the watershed, but in others development is slowly degrading water quality and, in many areas, draining wetlands and streams.  In the preservation areas where the forest has largely been kept intact, water is good and plentiful, and native and rare species generally thrive.  Where the forest has been fragmented and where wetlands have been compromised, the same is not true. 

Says Montgomery: “These basic points should serve as a foundation for the need to continue being vigilant, for continuing to study the effects of the program, and for doing adaptive management where science shows the CMP is not working as intended.”

Note: This post has been updated with information about the Pinelands Preservation Alliance, and also to correct the number of municipalities having at least some of their land area within the Pinelands Area.  That number was initially reported as 55 rather than the correct number of 53.

New Jersey Future’s comments highlighted the fact that Gov. Christie’s original plan did not allocate sufficient funds for resiliency planning, and urged the governor to revise the plan to increase that allocation. The final plan made no such adjustment. 

Without those funds, said New Jersey Future Executive Director Peter Kasabach, “Towns and counties will not have the resources to include in their rebuilding framework such factors as projected sea level rise or increasing storm severity. If we’re not able to plan ahead so we know what we must do differently, we leave ourselves just as vulnerable to the next Superstorm Sandy as we were to the last one.”

Housing and community development advocates also expressed concern that the assistance to low-income renters proposed in the bill underestimated the number of renters displaced by the storm.

The full letter to Secretary Donovan is available here, and a selection of comments on Gov. Christie’s original draft plan may be downloaded here (PDF).

Aerial view of port facilities along Newark Bay. Source: flickr user Maureen

Robert Powell Ph.D., managing director at Nassau Capital Advisors LLC, introduced the Ports and Redevelopment session at New Jersey Future’s annual Redevelopment Forum by reminding attendees that port development depends not just on the facilities of the port itself but also on land-based facilities related to warehousing and distribution. The session focused on how the conflict over land that is readily usable for the port but that is also suitable for other kinds of development, such as residential or commercial, is playing out and what’s at stake.

The Port of Newark/Elizabeth is the largest port on the East Coast and the third largest in the United States, Powell noted. The importance of its “competitive position in the world … should be of great concern to policymakers in New Jersey because as the economic health of the port goes, so goes the job-creating ability of the New Jersey economy.”

Next to speak was Richard Larrabee, director of the port commerce department at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who gave an overview of the current level of activity at the Port of Newark/Elizabeth and of its coming capacity expansion. Most Americans don’t have opinions on seaports, he pointed out, and yet cargo is vitally important to our day-to-day lives. The maritime transportation system has created a low-cost, almost frictionless ability for manufacturers to produce goods in the cheapest locations and sell them where demand is highest. To illustrate the point, he noted that the cost of transporting a pair of shoes to Newark that was manufactured in China is about the price of stamp.

Historically, Port Newark handled trade primarily with Europe but by 2003, after a wide variety of manufacturing had moved to Asia, China became its No. 1 trading partner. The amount of cargo coming into the region has doubled in the last 15 years and is expected to double again in the next 20, representing about 3 percent to 4 percent annual growth for the foreseeable future.

Newer, larger ships to handle this increased volume cannot currently traverse the Panama Canal or travel under the Bayonne Bridge. Once the canal widening is completed, the bridge roadbed will need to be raised by about 64 feet, a project scheduled for completion by late 2015.

The port also adds about 30,000 to 40,000 trucks trips a day to the region (a small percentage of the total regional truck traffic). An extensive environmental program is in place to reduce the carbon footprint of this traffic, and Larrabee stressed that everything they do has an environmental component to it.

Colette Santasieri Ph.D., director of strategic initiatives at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, spoke next, discussing her research on the relationship between the port municipalities and the port itself. Her study focused on Newark Bay and the five surrounding municipalities – Newark, Elizabeth, Jersey City, Bayonne and Kearny – and noted four key ways in which the cities and the port are related: spatial (they occupy the same space); economic (the port drives some portion of each city’s economy); societal (including positive effects such as job creation as well as negative ones such as truck traffic and pollution); and political (the nature of the relationship between the port and the cities’ leaders).

The biggest conflict in port-city relationships, she said, is a difference in missions. The city is focused on citizens and their quality of life, while the port has a global focus and is essentially a business. One major source of ongoing tension is the potential loss of waterfront property for non-industrial uses. The development of such property for non-port-related uses, which may be more beneficial economically to the cities, would threaten the functioning of the port, since port-related businesses can’t be moved inland.

Anne Babineau Esq., a partner with the law firm of Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer PA, finished the discussion with an overview of the legal relationship between local municipalities and bi-state agencies such as the Port Authority, which sits between the federal and state levels. The Port Authority exists as a voluntary delegation of limited power, granted by the states of New York and New Jersey to the agency and away from the states themselves. Several cases were discussed to illustrate the delicate balance of authority and decision-making that the Port Authority and the states negotiate, a balance that Babineau said shifts back and forth over time and depending on specific circumstances.

As the session made clear, this is just one of several balancing acts that take place on an ongoing basis between ports, their governing bodies and their hosts.

Sources: Centers for Disease Control – National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey/U.S. DOT – Federal Highway Administration, Annual Vehicle Distance Traveled in Miles and Related Data

On March 18, Together North Jersey, the regional sustainable planning initiative funded by a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, co-hosted a day-long workshop to introduce the concept of Health in All Policies. Health in All Policies is an approach to policy development that builds consideration of public health impacts into decision-making in a wide range of “non-health” policy areas such as transportation, housing, environment, energy and economic development. It argues that the choices made by non-health decision-makers, whether at the state or local level, within the public or private sector, have tangible impacts on the health of citizens.

Margaret Round, senior environmental analyst with the Massachusetts Department of Health, described an inter-agency working group pilot project in Somerville, Mass., to incorporate health into the transportation planning process using a health impact assessment (HIA). Although there was initial concern about project delays that could result from requiring an HIA, Round explained, “Health impact assessments do not stop projects; HIAs identify the positive aspects of a project and they identify the negative aspects that can then be mitigated.”

Leslie Meehan, director of healthy communities at the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), presented their efforts to update their 2035 Regional Transportation Plan. To direct their work, the Nashville MPO used four guiding principles that they thought would improve quality of life: livability, sustainability, prosperity and diversity. After an extensive stakeholder input process, the MPO executive board endorsed a new direction for future investments made with MPO-managed funds. In general, the new program created a shift away from typical roadway capacity projects toward a more thoughtful approach where “roadway improvement projects that best meet overall goals and objectives for a safe, efficient, multi-modal transportation system will compete for [much] of the funding.”  Three other highlighted shifts include: 

1. 15% to encourage the development of active transportation choices and walkable communities.
2. 10% to support other regional investments in public transportation and mass transit.
3. 5% to improve the efficiency of the transportation system through innovative management and operations upgrades.

This change in policy direction led to real changes in the way the Nashville MPO transportation dollars were spent, and, among other things, resulted in more sidewalks and bike lanes being incorporated into the transportation network.

One point Meehan underscored was the need for greater active-transportation choices as one way of addressing the country’s rising obesity problem (see graph ¹, which illustrates the correlation between rising obesity and rising vehicle-miles traveled). The need for increased activity as a way to curb obesity is also underscored in a recent paper published in the journal Circulation, in which researchers from the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center in Aurora, Colorado, concluded that the current obesity strategies of “just eating less” aren’t sufficient. “We are not going to reduce obesity by focusing only on reducing food intake. Without increasing physical activity in the population we are simply promoting unsustainable levels of food restriction. This strategy hasn’t worked so far and it is not likely to work in the future.”

Among the recommendations to encourage activity documented in a new report published by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, titled Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention, is a focus on the built environment. “Communities, organizations, community planners, and public health professionals should encourage physical activity by enhancing the physical and built environment, rethinking community design, and ensuring access to places for such activity.” The Nashville MPO and Massachusetts examples demonstrate the benefits of multi-sector approaches to addressing obesity, and can serve as models for New Jersey. The Health in All Policies workshop was a starting point to highlight ways we can build capacity in our region. One excellent place to begin doing this is in Together North Jersey’s three local grant programs: the Local Demonstration Project Program, the Community Organization Micro-Grant Program, and the Local Government Capacity Grant Program. Local governments or organizations should be encouraged to submit proposals for these grants that focus on ways to incorporate health into local policies, so that templates may be developed to help other organizations do the same.