Cities and Towns

Read New Jersey Future’s perspective on some of the possible effects—both positive and negative—on the geographic patterns of residence, employment, shopping, and travel behavior if the stay-at-home advisories of the pandemic era translate into a permanent increase in the number of people working from home.

New Jersey Future, along with our partners, has spent many years working with downtown leaders to understand how to create vibrant, walkable, equitable downtowns and have provided resources, guidance, and direct services to many of these places. With this experience, we have made several recommendations to improve the impact of the small business program.

As part of its Creating Great Places to Age program, New Jersey Future has been researching strategies that dozens of municipalities in New Jersey have implemented to provide a more diverse housing stock. These examples of successful local strategies demonstrate possible paths other towns can take to meet the needs of their residents and develop great communities.

According to the traffic data analysis consultant INRIX, New Jersey is #1 in staying at home, notching a 63 percent drop in statewide personal vehicle travel as of last week, when compared to the baseline week of February 22nd.

Now is the perfect time for cities to experiment with complete streets practices such as protected bike lanes, trails, and greenways  that prioritize pedestrians and cyclists to keep our streets safe for everyone. 

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.

An interim report, three years after Hurricane Sandy, on New Jersey Future’s groundbreaking local recovery planning manager program, including lessons learned and recommendations. October 2015.

An analysis of household income distributions in the neighborhoods around New Jersey’s transit stations shows that not all station areas offer the benefits of transit access across all income levels. June 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.