Community Design

Towns enrolled in the Sustainable Jersey program can now get recognition for completing actions that make their communities more livable. The Sustainable Jersey action, Community Design for All Ages, launched in March 2022, offers several ways for municipalities to engage in age-friendly community-building. New Jersey Future participated in the development of the action, which is based on New Jersey Future’s Creating Great Places To Age: A Community Guide to Implementing Aging-Friendly Land Use Decisions.

The demographic story of the 2010s in New Jersey was the return of population growth to the state’s walkable, mixed-use centers—cities, towns, and older suburbs with traditional downtowns. Driven in particular by the Millennial generation’s desire for live-work-shop-play environments, many of the state’s older centers experienced their biggest population increases since before the 1950s.

Increasing the housing stock in the most densely populated state in the country may seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. Panelists shared how they resolve the tension between municipalities’ need to grow and residents’ fear of change at the 2021 Planning and Redevelopment Conference’s Filling the Missing Middle: Context-Sensitive Design and Development Innovations for Diverse, Sustainable, Walkable Neighborhoods panel.

Guest author AIA NJ President Joshua Zinder shares the importance of providing “missing middle” housing options to fill a gap in housing and revitalize communities.

NJDOT’s new model complete and green streets policy and guide provides practical guidance for municipalities, counties, and agencies to improve roads and the overall landscape.

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.

A one-hour webinar explaining a new, parcel-based tool that assesses financial vulnerability to coastal flooding and sea-level rise. Friday, May 15, 2015, noon – 1:00 pm.

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.