Despite Naysayers, Facts Support Transit-Based Development

Real estate professionals are well versed in the challenges posed by suburban sprawl. We understand that developing compactly promotes energy and land conservation, and is wise in an era of scarce infrastructure dollars. Compact urban environments are also key locations for workforce housing and locations of innovation and job growth in the information economy. Since compact development is perhaps a real estate panacea, why is it so hard to achieve?

The challenge is easily identified. Decentralized zoning control and the prevailing attitude among local leadership to keep the status quo in the face of NIMBY voters has resulted in development in locations of least resistance, furthest from our region's core. While a handful of New Jersey towns like Morristown, Cranford and South Orange have embraced dense transit-oriented development, the vast majority of municipalities are running the other way.

For meaningful change to occur, radical governance changes are required to help support job creation, while doing our part to protect the environment. A bold initiative is needed, one that would provide new zoning for land close to transit. All land within one-half mile of any commuter rail station would be suitable for this coordinated planning. In Essex County, NJ, for example, there are over 8,000 acres within half a mile of mass transit. If only 10% of this land is deemed suitable for up-zoning, we could still accommodate 20 million to 40 million square feet of transit-oriented development at threeto four-story scale.

"Transitlands" must be carefully studied in an inclusive process, with professional planners and the best interests of New Jersey and the regional economy at the helm. These planners will understand local zoning tensions, but they will have also studied the implications of inadequate regional planning. They will have culled lessons learned from regional planning successes from around the country. Once sites have been up-zoned for mixed uses, development should then proceed "as-of-right" through an administrative site-plan-review process.

The counterattacks to this growth-oriented zoning initiative will be harsh, but fortunately the facts are on the side of TOD advocates. Peak-hour traffic generation from housing adjacent to transit is negligible, with residents walking to the train. Schools will only benefit from new ratables, since dense development generates few school-age children, as low as 50 units per school-age child. Open space, sewer and water infrastructure will need to be assessed and improved, with developers picking up their fair share of costs and the balance coming from state aid redirected from sprawl locations. Meanwhile, downtown commercial investments will benefit from new vitality. As for affordable housing, 10% of all housing can be reserved as affordable with no municipal funding required. (For more on infrastructure, see the Midyear Report Card, page 37.)

The environmental and economic consequences of sprawl are real and our inability to address this challenge results from thinking that what works locally will work regionally. But the opposite has now proven true. The political challenge of such a dramatic wresting of local control does not go unnoticed. But 100 years from now, when our great-grandchildren are writing the history books, let them speak favorably of our wisdom as we used wellestablished tools of regional planning for the betterment of New Jersey and anywhere transit-based development makes sense.