New Jersey Future‘s 2008 Redevelopment Forum last Friday in New Brunswick was a reminder that the state is still ahead of the rest of the region when it comes to successfully implementing smart growth. About 500 elected officials, city planners, developers, advocates, and others came to the forum to discuss smart growth and redevelopment issues ranging from the impact of parking policy to the ability of art and culture to drive redevelopment.
One interesting workshop TSTC staffers attended focused on shared parking as a way to reduce a project’s overall number of parking spaces. Several highlighted redevelopment projects reduced their parking spaces by up to 20% by including shared parking facilities. Particularly notable was the Highlands at Morristown Station transit village development, which includes a shared facility for residents and commuters.
The keynote address by developer Jonathan Rose highlighted the importance of design in creating dense, walkable developments that don’t feel overwhelming to communities. At one point, Rose asked the audience to guess the density of Jonathan Rose Companies’ Benedict Commons project in Aspen, Colo. based on pictures (such as the one at right). Audience members offered estimates in the range of 20-30 units per acre. Rose then performed the big reveal: 88 units per acre. Rose also said the average urban household in a green building used one-fourth as much energy of the average suburban household, and argued that affordable housing is “not for the Other; it’s for us.”
Events like the Redevelopment Forum and press like last month’s New York Times article on New Jersey’s successful transit villages underscore how smart growth has helped keep the state’s economy moving. They also underscore how important it is that state smart growth initiatives like the Transit Village Program and NJDOT’s Future in Transportation be sustained and strengthened.
Image: Benedict Commons / Jonathan Rose Companies
from the former Director of Conservation, NJ Audubon Society and the author of the essay “A Citizen’s Guide to the Missing Green Rail Vision for the MD/Metro DC Region:”
I wish good land-use and “Smart Growth” a solid future in NJ; but it would seem a lot of work still has to be done in light of taking a close look at Governor Corzine’s emphasis on spending so much to widen NJ’s toll roads as part of his massive debt reduction/refinancing proposal. I note that most of the major environmental groups in the state opposed these widenings as too costly to the environment. In light of the success of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Line, why weren’t there major new transit alternatives to the lane expansions on the table? Or maybe there were and we didn’t hear about them down here in Maryland? We need more rail and fewer lanes when it comes to capacity exansion…true in the DC area too…