Future Facts
New Jersey Future is speaking at an Energy Master Plan stakeholder meeting (and you can, too!)
July 16th, 2019 by Missy Rebovich
Downtown Bordentown. Photo courtesy of JGSC Group.
New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities released its draft Energy Master Plan last month and has scheduled six stakeholder meetings on three days over the coming months:
- Stakeholder meetings 1 & 2: Wednesday, July 17 from 10 am to 1 pm and 1:30 pm to 4:30 pm in the State House Annex, Committee Room 4 (131-137 West State Street, Trenton, NJ).
- Stakeholder meetings 3 & 4: Thursday, August 8 from 1 pm to 4 pm and 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm in the Larson Auditorium at Seton Hall Law School (One Newark Center, Newark, NJ).
- Stakeholder meetings 5 & 6: Thursday, September 12 from 1 pm to 4 pm and 4:30 pm to 7:30 pm in the Black Box Theater at the Kroc Center (1865 Harrison Way, Camden, NJ).
New Jersey Future’s Tim Evans will be speaking at the afternoon meeting on July 17 on the importance of reducing vehicle miles traveled in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. After all, what better way to curb pollution from the transportation sector than to reduce the need for driving altogether? If you are unable to attend this meeting, you can read our submitted comments here.
If you are interested in speaking at any of the meetings, make sure to register by noon the previous day.
Proposed stormwater rule change means green infrastructure training for municipal engineers
June 24th, 2019 by Kenzie Smith
Six months after proposing significant amendments to New Jersey’s stormwater management rules NJAC 7:8), the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) is working diligently on responses to public comments. One of the proposed amendments signals a paradigm shift in design methods of stormwater management systems toward sustainability. Read the rest of this entry »
Population Growth in Older Centers (but not all of them) Continues To Outstrip the Rest of the State
June 3rd, 2019 by Tim Evans
Jersey City which is enjoying growth rates not seen since the 1930s.
The Census Bureau last week released municipal population estimates for 2018, and the story is similar to what it has been all decade: Redevelopment continues to be the name of the game in New Jersey.
The eight urban centers identified by the New Jersey State Development and Redevelopment Plan (Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Elizabeth, Trenton, Camden, New Brunswick, and Atlantic City) as a group have accounted for 18.6 percent of statewide population growth from 2010 to 2018, after having contributed only 4.0 percent of growth in the 2000s and only 1.5 percent in the 1990s. (However, this combined growth statistic does mask some important variation among the individual cities, as will be noted below.) Read the rest of this entry »
Focus on Water for Infrastructure Week
May 21st, 2019 by Ed DiFiglia
Each year, Infrastructure Week offers a nationwide week-long series of events designed to bring attention to the need for investment in infrastructure of all kinds — roads, bridges, transit, broadband, energy and water. This year, New Jersey Future and Jersey Water Works celebrated Infrastructure Week by hosting three events that focused on water infrastructure, as well as publishing several articles drawing attention to the specific problems facing water infrastructure in the state. Read the rest of this entry »
Job Growth Finally Following Population to Compact Centers
May 3rd, 2019 by Tim Evans
-
Aerial view of Newark, which has seen the largest improvement in private-sector job numbers since 2014.
Population growth began returning to compact, walkable places starting around 2008
- Job growth, in contrast, did not appear to be following suit – the 2008-2014 period still looked a lot like 1999-2008
- From 2014 to 2017, though, jobs appear to be belatedly following people (especially Millennials) back into cities and older suburban downtowns
Population growth began returning to compact, walkable centers back in the mid-to-late 2000s, as the Millennial generation began aging into young adulthood and expressing their preference for walkable urbanism. But a similar trend had not manifested itself in the geographic distribution of job growth – until now. Read the rest of this entry »
Community Solar Pilot Program Now Accepting Applications
May 3rd, 2019 by New Jersey Future staff
This article was written by Joseph L. Fiordaliso, president, New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU).
As the cost of renewable energy continues to drop, “going solar” becomes a viable option for more New Jerseyans. Over 100,000 homes and businesses in our state now benefit from solar, many of which are seeing savings on their utility bills. Governor Phil Murphy and NJBPU are advancing renewables in the Garden State. However, not everyone is able put solar panels directly on their roof. To address that, New Jersey just launched its first Community Solar Energy Pilot Program, and started accepting applications in April. This pilot program is intended to increase access to solar energy for New Jersey ratepayers. Read the rest of this entry »
New County Population Estimates: More of the Same Changes
April 24th, 2019 by Tim Evans
-
Map Courtesy of Digital-Topo-Maps.com
New Jersey’s population growth continues to be most pronounced in the North Jersey urban core of Hudson, Essex, Union, and Bergen counties; this is a stark contrast with the 1990s and early 2000s, when most growth was in suburban and exurban counties
- Growth in New York City has ground to a halt, however; four of the five boroughs (all except Staten Island) have lost population in both of the last two years
- Philadelphia – which has much lower housing costs than New York City – continues to grow at a rate comparable to the urbanized counties of North Jersey
- Growth has tentatively returned to the exurban frontier of northeastern Pennsylvania, though not to northwestern New Jersey
- Far southern New Jersey continues to languish, a victim of both a weak Atlantic City economy and a shortage of downtowns that appeal to Millennials
The Census Bureau last week released county population estimates for 2018, along with revised annual estimates for earlier years since the 2010 census. The picture for New Jersey between 2017 and 2018 looks a lot like it has all decade, with the fastest growth happening in the North Jersey urban core and with the northwestern exurbs and far southern New Jersey continuing to languish. Read the rest of this entry »
Are Millennials Leaving New Jersey Because Housing Costs Too Much?
April 22nd, 2019 by Tim Evans
What do the compact, walkable counties that attract New Jersey’s out-migrating Millennials – and the ones that don’t – tell us about why Millennials are leaving? Part 4 of a series investigating where New Jersey’s out-migrating Millennials are going.
New Jersey Future intern Alexandra Rome assembled the migration data on which this analysis is based.
- When Millennials leave New Jersey, they are usually looking for compact, walkable, transit-friendly places
- In particular, they are often looking for compact, walkable, transit-friendly places with lower housing costs than New Jersey’s
- New Jersey has a lot of compact, walkable, transit-friendly places, but perhaps most of them are too expensive for young adults to afford
In parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series, we looked at the most common destinations, by county, for adults who move from New Jersey to other parts of the United States, and explored how the preferred destinations of Millennials differ from those of older out-migrants. The results were consistent with the documented preference for compact, walkable, mixed-use places expressed by the Millennial generation within New Jersey. In part 4, we look at the specific counties that are attracting a lot of New Jersey Millennials – and some of the ones that aren’t – and consider what these counties might tell us about what Millennials want that they aren’t finding in New Jersey. (Once again we restrict our analysis to migrants age 20 and older, using migration data by age from the 2010 and 2015 editions of the American Community Survey combined.) Read the rest of this entry »
New Jersey Future Executive Director To Co-Chair Waterfront Alliance Coastal Resilience Task Force
April 10th, 2019 by Elaine Clisham
Will present at organization’s annual conference May 5
New Jersey Future Executive Director Peter Kasabach will co-chair a new Coastal Resilience Task Force being organized by the Waterfront Alliance. The alliance, which focuses on accessible, resilient shorelines around New York Harbor, is convening the task force to build consensus around needed resiliency adaptations, investments, and policies. According to the alliance, the task force “will deliver a final report that frames resiliency recommendations in the context of climate adaptation,” and then will launch an advocacy campaign “to encourage public funds to be invested in critical resiliency priorities, with policy alignment among local, state, and federal authorities.for all communities.” Read the rest of this entry »
At Convention, Builders Take Interest in Green Infrastructure
April 10th, 2019 by Kandyce Perry
Changing rules will make it a central element of stormwater management.
Why does green infrastructure make good business sense in private-sector projects? Two experts explain why in a new video produced by New Jersey Future. George Vallone, founder and chief executive officer of Hoboken Brownstone Company, and Jeromie Lange, engineer and senior principal at Maser Consulting, make several convincing arguments about the business sense and overall return on the investment in green infrastructure and debunk myths you may have heard. Read the rest of this entry »
