Community Design
Community design focuses on the building blocks of the built environment — the buildings, roads, sidewalks, parking lots and public spaces – and relates them to each other and the natural environment: the streams, wetlands, lakes and hills.
There are many different ways of arranging these building blocks, and the quality of the design affects both how communities look and how they function. Community design also determines the scale and character of communities and, perhaps most important, how the scale and character are experienced by the public. At a time of heightened public sensitivity over issues affecting land development, such as density, good community design plays an increasingly important role in shaping places that are embraced as welcome additions to towns.
In addition to winning a New Jersey Future Smart Growth Award, Byram Township has also won a national technical-assistance grant for its planned Village Center.
An analysis of properties in New Brunswick and the Morristown area finds that compact downtown developments pay significantly higher property taxes per acre than lower-density development located outside downtown areas.
Hoboken’s adoption of a Complete Streets approach — which shifts the emphasis from accommodating more cars and parking to making roadways more convenient for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, transit riders and automobiles — has earned the city a Leadership Award from Sustainable Jersey.
Presentations and other documents from several sessions at the New Jersey chapter of the American Planning Association’s annual conference.
Complete streets, safe routes to school and joint-use policies can help change the built environment and increase access to existing facilities, thereby offering multiple additional opportunities for physical activity.
New Jersey Future is pleased to be part of the project team that will manage a $5 million HUD Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant award, announced today by Secretary Shaun Donovan.
Trransfer of development rights (TDR) and clustering are tools that municipalities in New Jersey can use to direct growth and preserve open space.
A former chocolate factory has been given new life as a school for more than 300 students from kindergarten through eighth grade.
A planned annex to New Jersey City University’s (NJCU) main campus, the 21-acre NJCU West Campus will be much more than a typical university campus – it will also be a place for city residents to work, shop, and live.
Waterfront Corporate Center is the cornerstone of the Hoboken Waterfront Redevelopment Plan and one of the most visible signs of the work that has been done to revitalize an area whose abandoned buildings, fenced-off lots and brooding piers provided an all too obvious contrast to the lively, attractive, diversified downtown area of Hoboken.
See all Future Facts and Articles in this category »
Reports, Presentations and Testimony
- complete-streets-report-FINAL-web
- DFatton Land Use Trends APA-NJ 11-4-2011
- Financial Benefits of Density in Two New Jersey Downtowns 7-11 (Intern report)
- Land Use Trends NJPHA 2011
- 12-14-2010 Testimony on Historic Property Reinvestment Act
- 05-18-2009 Testimony on Smart Housing Incentives Act
- Climate Change and Land Use 10-08
- Smart Growth: The Basics 10-03
