The trouble with Small Thinking

PlanSmart NJ wishes all our members, supporters and readers a very happy holiday season! In response to popular demand, we are sending you a link to last year’s
“12 Days of Planning”

And in the hopes of provoking thoughts about the big picture and the long-term in the New Year, and linking them to solutions to the immediate crises we face,
here are my thoughts on the trouble with narrow thinking!

A provoking series of articles by Canada’s National Post titled “Rethinking Green” has been posted on a popular U.S. planning website, Planetizen. Two recent articles claim that riding public transit and recycling may be counterproductive to environmental goals.

The premise for this critique, it turns out, is “All things being as they are today.” The reporters point out that running empty buses, as we do today in some places, is bad for the environment. As is stockpiling recyclables that have no current market value.

The reporters quote no one who explains why buses may be running under capacity, why there is no market for recycling plastic or glass, or what can be done to change these conditions. Nor do the reporters explore possible solutions: running different kinds of buses on different routes, for example, or creating programs that shape the market for recyclables.

Furthermore, the reporters do not examine the seriousness of the problems that these policies were designed to address, e.g. If not by providing public transit, how can growth capacity be increased without the congestion of auto-dependency? If not by recycling, how can the huge waste stream into landfills and incinerators be reduced? The authors’ implication is to go back to the old ways or give up trying to change anything. And that is simply unacceptable.

Make no mistake, like these reporters, PlanSmart NJ makes a point of always holding policy-makers accountable for the actual results of their policies, rather than their stated intended results. However, these reporters do so in an irresponsible manner.

The thinking (it doesn’t rise to the level of an analysis) is simply too narrow. It does not inform or challenge the reader -- or our policy-makers -- to solve problems in the real world. And the reporters’ narrow selection of sources is designed to bolster their shaky argument.

The same kind of narrow thinking is often applied to criticize Smart Growth goals. Driving automobiles is so pervasive, the argument goes, and it will take so long to change land use patterns to capture more trips in public transit, there is no point in pursuing policies that attack auto-dependence.

But there are plenty of reasons that this argument ignores: changing land use patterns will help address climate change, energy consumption, housing prices, growth capacity, regional equity, environmental quality, and many other desirable outcomes.

Just because a solution will take a long time, or can only be successful if implemented within a package of reforms, is no reason not to tackle it.

It is true that we have made little progress in shaping new land use patterns to reach our goal of sustainability. There are many obstacles embedded in many parts of the land use system that support sprawl: the tax structure, zoning, state agency regulations, and many people’s expectations. Reform in all these areas will not be easy. Or quick. But the good news is that government can remove these obstacles – it can even change people’s expectations. Government simply has to have the will to do so.

So let’s challenge our policy makers, but let’s not assume that slogans or rhetoric will produce results. And let’s never give up trying to solve our society’s most vexing problems.

Below are Dianne Brake’s remarks delivered at the PlanSmart NJ Annual Dinner, October 29, 2009,at the Hyatt, New Brunswick.

Welcome and thank you for coming tonight. And a special welcome to the many new faces we see in the crowd this year – the next generation of New Jersey’s leaders. Thank you for coming. In this recession, you deserve a special thank you for making tonight so successful! It is energizing – and we see it as a demonstration of hope for the future. Hope that we think is well founded.

Yes, even in this so-called “Great” Recession, even when the future is so uncertain. Why should we hope?

Look around! Together we have power. The power to shape the future of New Jersey is here in this very room. Every year, the people who receive our awards stand at this podium and tell you that you can do what they do.

I know, we all have to vent about how broken New Jersey’s government is – it sometimes seems beyond repair. But if we allow venting to be all we do, than we waste the power we have.

Like a muscle, power atrophies if it is not used. And when we allow our power to atrophy, we allow those who have been given power by the Constitution and by the Electorate to waste it. Waste their power. Waste our time. And lay waste to our future.

In just a few days, New Jerseyans will know who our Governor will be for the next four years. Whoever he is, let’s flex our muscles. Let’s call on him to immediately put away the banners and badges on Wednesday, and begin governing.

On paper, New Jersey’s Constitution gives the Governor more power than any other Governor in the country. But it does nothing to ensure that the Governor will actually use his power to do what needs to be done. That’s where we come in.

Let’s make him forget the “Us versus Them,” the “We win/you lose” way of thinking. Beginning on November 4, New Jerseyans are once again all in the same boat. And we want it on the right course. With your support, PlanSmart NJ can help navigate.

First: Let’s demand that the Governor stop tinkering around the edges. New Jersey can’t afford to work on only one problem at a time. The economy, traffic, climate change, and regulation – they are all connected.

Instead let’s start with New Jersey’s assets: its location, its infrastructure, and its skilled labor force. Build on these assets, fix the system, link them in a strategic plan, and get all agencies of government to work together to rebuild our future.

OK, wait. Don’t worry! I know that when I begin to talk about PlanSmart NJ’s planning frameworks, strategies, and tools for how to make things right, your eyes may begin to glaze over (even though we know this is what you appreciate about us!). So I will simply tell you why the Governor must pay attention:

It’s about our quality of life. We all need jobs and housing, right? We ride on trains, drive on roads, drink the water, flush the toilet; we breathe the air, and enjoy the fall color. Well, all of these are things are connected as regional systems.

The bad news is that right now all these systems in New Jersey are broken – fragmented and directionless. The good news is that they are all strongly influenced by government plans, regulations and investments – things the Governor can influence! So he can get New Jersey back on track by integrating its plans, regulations and investments. That’s it.

But, instead of focusing on what is real, some of our elected officials behave like the drunk who lost his keys in the dark and is looking for them under the lamp post because that is where the light is. We need to show them a better place to look and light their way. It may not be easy, but it is guaranteed to get results.

I must warn you that too many other Smart Growth and sustainability advocates will be no help here. They are too focused on the local and not at all on regional systems. Let me give you a transportation example of why that’s a problem.

Many of you here this evening are working hard to get permits for Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and other types of redevelopment projects. These are vital – we have supported such development for years. But your TOD will only succeed if there is an efficient transit system to serve it. That’s why planning for regional systems is so important.

Make transit work for New Jersey and get it built. We can build a Jersey-centric system, rebuilding hundreds of communities, adding growth capacity and the promise of a better economy, environment, and regional equity. It is what is real, important – and, yes –difficult. But it is where we need the Governor to focus.

This is no time to say, “It’s too broken” or “It’s too big.” There are young people coming up behind us! And yes, you can do it in a recession.

PlanSmart NJ’s Smart Growth Economy Project saw how the economic engines in New Jersey were stalling even before the “Great Recession.” And so did others. Some of the major sectors have already come up with what they need to thrive in the Garden State.

The transportation industry – the biggest of our economic engines, capitalizing on our location, ports, highways and rail systems – it created the Liberty Corridor Plan. The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) – a major asset to New Jersey – unveiled their strategic transportation and housing plan for South Jersey last year. It is designed to meet a job target and find places for workers to live and provide the means to get to work. PlanSmart NJ gave an award last year to Tom Carver for his leadership on this plan.

And the bio and high tech industry – another huge driver of our economy – have mapped their major assets. The next step for them could be to follow CRDA, beef up their Einstein’s Alley and the Innovation State campaigns, and plan for where their workers can live and how they will get to work.

The Governor not only has these plans to work with, he has major investments in public transit already underway.

Most powerful among them is the billions of dollars we are investing in the new ARC Tunnel – which PlanSmart NJ is recognizing tonight in an award to New Jersey Transit and the Port Authority of NY and NJ. There are also plans to expand transit in South Jersey.

But these plans and investments will be wasted, unless the Governor uses his leadership – his power – to connect the dots, build a shared vision of the future of New Jersey, a shared vision that will not pit the economy against the environment, the suburbs against the cities, or the rich against the poor. And then get your Administration to work together.

I call all of you in this room tonight to embrace your hope and exercise your power. Vote on November 3. And then join us on November 4 in a call to action.

We can succeed. The future depends on it.

Redeveloping Communities Can Result from ARC Tunnel Investment

by Dianne Brake

The proposed $8.3 billion ARC Tunnel will double the capacity of New Jersey's transit system, accessible to three quarters of the State's population. This new transit capacity could set us on the path toward sustainability, including meeting New Jersey's ambitious 2050 Greenhouse Gas emissions reduction targets by reducing auto trips.

It could add economic growth capacity, which is currently limited by auto-dependency and congested highways. It could encourage housing investment in "smart" locations, turning the tide of sprawl which had carried much of New Jersey's labor force to Pennsylvania and other cheaper locations.

Furthermore, the doubling of New Jersey's transit capacity could stimulate the regeneration of countless communities that have been abandoned or neglected in favor of suburban sprawl for decades. The increased capacity could provide growth opportunities in places stymied by gridlock and new vitality in places plagued by poverty. It could improve the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people throughout the State.

If the construction of the ARC Tunnel achieves these results, it will truly be worth this huge public investment.

BUT, who is in charge of making sure that these results are achieved? We know that these questions have not even been raised in connection to the ARC Project or any of the other major investments made under the current economic stimulus package. None of these benefits will be achieved unless they are demanded by residents and consciously agreed and implemented by the coordinated actions of all levels of government.

Without the State taking action to reform its land use decision-making system, any new economic development planned for these new transit-friendly locations will be mired in New Jersey's regulatory morass and obstructed by out-dated ideas about growth, housing and transportation.

As the most transit-friendly state in the nation, New Jersey could be the first to demonstrate how proximity, extensive new service (commuter trains and BRT to local shuttles and jitneys), carbon-trading and other strategies can make New Jersey more sustainable. This in turn can create a market for jobs and housing in places that had suffered from a weak market for decades.

PlanSmartNJ believes that the ARC Tunnel is one of the most strategic projects that could be advanced right now. The Tunnel will have the power to transform hundreds of communities and change how thousands of people travel throughout the State. The construction of the ARC Tunnel will create thousands of jobs for its planning and construction, and could - if leveraged as PlanSmartNJ advocates - put New Jersey on the path to a more sustainable future.

PlanSmartNJ's June 11, 2009conference will explore how to leverage the investment in the ARC Tunnel and other new transit projects to spark successful redevelopment and regional equity. It is not too late to sign up and earn 5 CM Credits. Please visit our website www.plansmartnj.org to register today.

---

Dianne Brake is currently President of PlanSmart NJ, Founded in 1968, PlanSmartNJ is a Trenton-based statewide not-for-profit research and advocacy organization that advances the quality of community life through sound land use planning and regional cooperation. PlanSmart NJ aims to renew the landscape so that communities in the future will have a sustainable economy and environment, based on resource efficiency and social equity. Email her at dbrake@plansmartnj.org

Securing New Jersey's Natural Capital:Nature's Top Dollar Value

by Noelle Reeve, AICP,PP
04/22/09

It still goes slightly against the grain of this environmental planner, originally from "Super Natural British Columbia," to think about putting a price tag on nature. I'm not talking about the price we place on commodities nature provides, such as timber or fish, but about the services we receive that may appear invisible when we first look at a landscape. These services arise from the relationship among the various plants and animals and geographic systems that make up ecosystems. We don't readily see wetland plants filtering pollutants or storing water to prevent flooding; we don't readily see trees removing greenhouse gases from the air. We have traditionally taken these benefits for granted as free services and without a dollar value, society has so undervalued these services they have been treated as worthless.

The Millenium Ecosystem Assessment publishedby the United Nations in 2003, determined that worldwide, fifteen of the twenty four ecosystems services examined had been degraded, including water supply, natural hazard protection, improvement of air quality, waste treatment and detoxification, cultural benefits, etc. In the past, New Jersey, as every other state, filled in its wetlands, cut down its forests, paved over its agricultural land and polluted its waterways because there was, until recently, no reckoning of the financial and environmental cost of losing the ecosystem benefits these lands provide.

In 2007, New Jersey became the first state to estimate the dollar value of its natural capital. At a staggering $20 billion/year, or three-quarters of the 2009 state budget, replacing the natural capital of the state would be impossible, even if scientists fully understood and could replicate nature's services.

In this time of evaporating financial returns, natural capital represents an asset whose value is increasing as more and more economists assign dollar values to the economic benefits that healthy ecosystems provide over an extended period of time and more and more markets develop for these services.

So how can New Jersey's natural capital be secured? Parks and protected areas are the basis of conservation, but by themselves are not enough. Land use planning changes are needed to get away from site by site decisions that erode New Jersey's natural capital assets. Because land use is largely controlled by municipalities, the NJ Department of Environmental Protection funded Protecting New Jersey's Natural Capital Through Land Use Planning: Opportunities and Challenges, PlanSmartNJ's latest report.

On this year's Earth Day, PlanSmart NJ would like to encourage municipal officials, environmental commissions, planners and interested citizens to read the report and contact us if you are interested in:

• learning how to account for natural capital in the Capital Improvement Plan to reduce the need for engineered solutions to stormwater management and other infrastructure expenditures;
• receiving compensation for the capacity to sequester carbon within your community;
• understanding your municipal and regional natural capital values to protect them in the Land Use Element of your Master Plan; or
• exploring other ways to protect natural capital.

Recognizing and protecting New Jersey's natural capital is the basis for wise land use planning; the unfolding Green Economy; and for resilience to climate change. To learn more about PlanSmartNJ's proposals for land use reforms for a better New Jersey see Improving Conditions on the Ground.

---

Noelle Reeve is currently Vice President of Planning for PlanSmart NJ, a Trenton-based statewide research and advocacy group focused on sound land use planning and regional cooperation. Email her at nreeve@plansmartnj.org
Go to www.plansmartnj.org for more information.

Move the State Planning Commission, Change the Plan

April 16, 2009

Given the State’s current economic crisis and the longstanding challenges that threaten our future, New Jersey desperately needs a new Plan – a Plan that will provide a robust framework for directing all actions of government toward strategic results in multiple areas.

The fact that the long-overdue new State Plan was not released in March as scheduled, and now the April State Planning Commission meeting has been canceled, does not bode well.

The first two State Plans, it must be acknowledged, did not provide this framework. Instead, they were packed with hundreds of platitudes that blurred into a confusing, even conflicting backdrop to where the real attention was focused – the State Plan Policy Map.

The Map divided the State into five general Planning Areas where growth was encouraged and where it was not. It seemed for a while that these areas were going to mean something, but not anymore: the Plan and the Map have both been eclipsed.

Several years ago the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) produced its own maps showing more limited areas for growth, and backed them up with their own regulations – some of the most powerful in state government. The result has been the loss of a comprehensive State Plan that would optimize results on multiple goals in a coherent fashion.

It has been replaced by a process driven at the state level by environmental regulation, in direct conflict with a process driven at the local level by zoning. Zoning steadfastly encourages the suburbanization of the landscape, driving an ever more urgent need to protect environmental resources. In this vicious circle, other vital goals – such as creating jobs and housing, optimizing transit and reducing the concentration of poverty – are lost.

In spite of this track record, PlanSmart NJ stands firm in our belief that effective statewide planning is the last and best hope for the future of New Jersey. What is needed is a State Plan that is significantly different from the Plans that came before.

In other words, an effective State Plan would identify how much and what type of growth should go where to produce what results. Given the current constraints on statewide planning, however, it seems unlikely that the next Plan will rise to this standard.

The Plan has been handicapped for years by the lack of interest of successive Administrations, the chronic lack of resources devoted to the process, the recent power struggles between State agencies and the loss of the environment community as one of the Plan’s strongest supporters. Furthermore, the State Planning Commission and its staff have been bureaucratically demoted, with a significant loss in independence, stature and relevance.

The 1986 State Planning Act put the Commission and its staff in the Department of Treasury. This location reflected commitment to several important principles:

1. Integration: It embraced statewide planning as an application of “good government” practice. If land use patterns are to change to produce better results in the future, government requires a comprehensive statewide framework – sustained over time – to reconcile the sometimes competing actions of all the State‘s agencies and its 566 municipalities.

2. Independence: It acknowledged the need to protect statewide planning from fads, partisan politics and power struggles between “line” agencies. Changing the trajectory of trends statewide requires steady guidance toward targeted, strategic outcomes over the long term.

3. Implementation: It placed statewide planning in the important role of husbanding the State’s resources, making sure that public investments are used more efficiently and effectively toward intended results – a clear directive from the enabling legislation.

Executive and Administrative Orders over the last seven years, however, have overridden the statute and cast aside these principles. The State Planning Commission and its staff are now a section of the Department of Community Affairs. In DCA, the State Planning Commission has not only been given a diminished status with other State agencies, but it now has an uncomfortable and unreconciled relationship with another section of DCA, the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH).

A statewide Plan that has no strategic problem-solving function, no clear policy direction, no map of conditions or policy targets and no commitment from the Administration, has no relevance to any agent of government.

But a Plan that is relevant to today’s problems (one that provides a clear direction, useful performance standards and has the commitment of leadership) -- could pull coherent policy out of New Jersey’s fragmented and convoluted land use system. It would articulate a geography of existing conditions and desired improvements in regional economies, watersheds, natural resources, transportation, housing, concentrated poverty and infrastructure.

Such a Plan would be created only with leadership at all levels of government. It will take leadership to select strategic, statewide priorities to build growth capacity and environmental quality into a gridlocked system. It will take leadership to change the tactics – not the mission – embedded in State agency regulations. It will take leadership to transform zoning and other entrenched land use regulations at the local level.

And it will take time. Meanwhile, as the first step, PlanSmart NJ asks the Governor to undo previous Executive and Administrative Orders and put the State Planning Commission back into Treasury and fund the Office of State Planning to do its job – produce the Plan that the State needs today.

Such a move will signal all sectors of New Jersey that the State is committed to shaping a better future and is willing to direct all agents of government to make their contribution count.

PlanSmart NJ has a long track record of contributions to statewide planning, going back to the 1970s. Our 2008 white paper, Improving Conditions on the Ground, outlines a metrics framework for transforming the land use decision-making process from state to local government and across multiple issues, serving as a blueprint for a new and improved State Plan. Go to www.plansmartnj.org for more information.

Change Zoning, Change the Future

March 3, 2009

Although always awkward, acronyms sometimes become widely known. The acronym for the NJ Council for Affordable Housing (COAH) is a case in point. Declarations of “I want to put a stake through the heart of COAH!” and “I come here not to praise COAH, but to bury it!” have become rallying cries all around the state. COAH, a quiet state agency that carries a big stick over municipal zoning, has triggered an all-out revolt against what is seen as the unfairness of its latest rules.

More than 250 towns met COAH’s December deadline to submit affordable housing plans. But they did so under protest. And their bitterness is spreading: the Legislature is considering a number of new COAH “remedies” and some early gubernatorial candidates are staking out their credentials as the best man to slay COAH.

Having advocated for affordable housing for the last 40 years, PlanSmart NJ agrees that COAH’s regulations need to be thrown out -- but only to start over and make them more effective.

Having affordable, workforce housing would be such a boost to the State’s economy, that the Governor should consider ways to use Economic Stimulus Package to support its construction. But first, he should appoint informed and dedicated people to the Housing Commission, established by legislation adopted last summer with PlanSmart NJ support, to develop a comprehensive and effective housing plan for New Jersey.

Meanwhile, COAH should throw out the regulatory mess it created and get back to the basic principles established almost 35 years ago by the NJ Supreme Court and almost 25 years ago by the Legislature. The mandate is:

Develop an agreement among state agencies and local government – an agreement among themselves and with each other – to work with the same set of goals about where growth should go and where it shouldn’t.

Develop a strong State Plan to reflect the agreement and then changing zoning accordingly. The result for housing will be more of it in the right places, for more income groups.

It’s all about planning and zoning. In 1975, citing the “general welfare” clause in the State’s constitution, the NJ Supreme Court told municipal officials that if they were going to use zoning, which is a police power just like eminent domain, they could not use it to “exclude” low and moderate income households. Instead, their zoning should provide a “reasonable opportunity” for developers to construct enough housing to meet “a fair share” of the “regional need” for affordable housing.

Sounds fair enough. But many towns ignored that ruling and the lawsuits continued. In 1983, the Court upheld its original position, but added that a “fair share” may not necessarily be the same in each municipality. The Court acknowledged that responsible planning principles, including environmental concerns, could be used to identify regions where growth should be encouraged and where it should not. (Along with the NJ Chapter of the American Planning Association, PlanSmart NJ had filed a “friend of the Court” petition asking for the Court to take this position.)

Following the Court’s second decision, the Legislature passed the Fair Housing Act in 1985, which set up COAH to define the need, and to insure that towns were satisfying this need. The State Planning Act in 1986, which established the State Planning Commission, required that areas be designated for growth and conservation and encouraged towns and state agencies to work together on applicable planning principles including affordable housing.

After showing initial promise, it is widely held that both agencies are now seriously off-track.

COAH has manipulated the housing targets so much that they have lost legitimacy. No one expects much housing to be built as a result of the 250 plans that were just submitted, because twenty four more lawsuits have been filed against COAH challenging its regulations -- again. Instead of changing their zoning to produce more affordable housing opportunities, towns are just waiting for the dust to settle.

The State Plan, last re-adopted in 2001, has been set aside and a new one has not replaced it. This is due in large measure to the NJ DEP replacing the adopted State Plan Policy Map in 2003 with a map of its own, and steadfastly working since then with that mapping as the basis for their rules. This action has put the State Planning Commission at loggerheads with DEP and has encouraged every other State agency to go their own way – the opposite of “state agency cooperation” and the integration of policies called for by the State Planning Act.

Instead of changing their zoning to implement the vision for a better New Jersey in the State Plan, towns are just waiting it out.

Meanwhile, the zoning that is currently in place in many parts of New Jersey, is not that different from what it was in 1975. It was zoning originally designed to address 19th century public health concerns with overcrowded tenements and noxious industries. It continued to serve throughout the 20th century during the rise and dominance of the automobile. It didn’t bother most public officials – or most planning practitioners, for that matter – that this land use pattern was inaccessible to people without the means to own a home or keep an automobile.

The fact that those left behind in poverty were primarily people of color was rarely mentioned in relation to zoning – until the Court said it was wrong.

Changing zoning to suit the needs of the 21st century, supported by state agency cooperation, which includes the need for far more affordable housing in the right places, is one of the most difficult challenges we face. PlanSmart NJ has developed tools and strategies that will help.

Keeping the current zoning in place will speed the loss of jobs, increase the disparities among communities, traffic congestion and environmental degradation. In spite of this clear and present danger, it will not be easy.

Change will take leadership from the Governor and the cooperation of every State agency, some of which have rules in place that encourage the outmoded zoning. But taking on this problem directly will show our neighbors and the country at large that New Jersey is taking the lead into a prosperous 21st century.

Dianne Brake is the President of PlanSmart NJ. She was on COAH from 1990 to 1995, serving as Vice Chair, and she was on the State Planning Commission from 1996 to 2001, serving as the Chair of the Plan Implementation Committee.

Dare to Dream

January 23, 2009

It was fitting that the first African-American President was sworn into office during the week in which we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. Both men dared to dream of a better future, and worked hard to bring about the changes that would make that dream come true.

The Martin Luther King Day holiday, however, has lost Dr. King’s focus on change. Instead, people are encouraged to use it as a day of service, to help clean up an abandoned lot, for example, or serve in a soup kitchen. Important as these actions are to the individuals involved, it does nothing to help them “keep their eyes on the prize” of changing the structures that created these conditions in the first place.

PlanSmart NJ’s mission is structural change. Our work is focused on reforming New Jersey’s broken land use decision-making system: it is fragmented, costly and completely incapable of producing the future that we want and need.

We have our eye on the prize: Land Use Reform in New Jersey: Improving Conditions on the Ground describes new planning tools and strategies. If applied, these tools could integrate government actions across the boundaries of separate agencies and across the distance between regional goals and local actions. They bridge these distances with and unify public purpose with a set of planning metrics, with performance targets that makes every agency of government accountable to meet.

Dry as changing the land use decision-making system may sound, PlanSmart NJ sees it as a glittering prize indeed. Fixing this system, built up over the last hundred years, could mean transforming the future prospects for hundreds of communities.

For it is New Jersey’s broken land use system that has pushed jobs away from public transit; made housing unaffordable to most people. It has eroded our economic base and created rigid patterns of racial and economic segregation.

In New Jersey, if you are white and poor, you are likely to live in mixed-income communities, with access to good schools, safe neighborhoods and good jobs. If you are black and poor, on the other hand, you are likely to live entirely surrounded by poverty, in places where many schools are failing and jobs continue to be lost.

According to a study commissioned in 2003 by PlanSmart NJ and others in the New Jersey Regional Coalition, New Jersey is the 5th most segregated state in the country. Surely this does not measure up to Dr. King’s dream.

The changes necessary to see our dream fulfilled go far beyond changing a few policies. They will require a paradigm shift away from the thinking that created today’s conditions over the course of a century. For this reason, President Obama’s words this week resonate with us, “[Our challenges] will not be met easily or in a short span of time.”

For Martin Luther King Day, then, we challenge all to dare to dream, for it is the power of your dream that will fuel your commitment and sustain you over the long haul.

To meet our own challenge, PlanSmart NJ commits to educating people on the shocking disparities among communities across regions. We will strive to make visible the connections between us that are palpable, but invisible within our Home Rule structure. In addition, we commit to making the concept of regional equity a pillar of land use planning. Regional equity is the concept that a region can act together to reduce the disparities among its communities and improve everyone’s access to opportunities within it.

We will challenge anyone who wants to frame public issues as “us” versus “them.” And we will ignore anyone who dismisses our dreams with “that will never happen!” or that is “too difficult to do.”

We challenge all to question, think through, find out, plan actions, and celebrate success. And dare to dream, using Martin Luther King Day to remember it each year. As the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead is often quoted as saying:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

New Year’s Resolution for New Jersey: A New Strategic Action Plan in 2009

January 8, 2009

January is the time for resolutions based on hope and determination as to what can be accomplished in the course of one year. In the face of today's economic meltdown, however, hope and determination are in short supply.

As John P. Holdren, President-elect Obama's recently named science advisor, explained the extent of the problem in a December speech,

"Without energy there is no economy. Without climate there is no environment. Without economy and environment there's no material well-being, there's no civil society, there's no personal or national or international security."

PlanSmart NJ proposes that State leaders use initiatives that are already underway in New Jersey that can link energy, economy and environment as the source of their hope and the focus of their determination to make significant progress in 2009 toward a better future for New Jersey.

We are confident that with immediate action and strong leadership, these projects can be leveraged to turn New Jersey around. PlanSmart NJ offers the tools and strategies that we have developed to make this plan work.

The projects are: 1) the construction of the Access to the Region's Core (ARC) Tunnel; 2) the integration of state agencies' actions with local land use decisions in a number of other transportation investments, such as the Route 1 Growth Strategy, the Liberty Corridor Plan, the PATCO extension and other infrastructure projects; and 3) editing the Global Warming Response Act Recommendations to include stronger actions to integrate land use and transportation planning.

We ask the State to resolve to use these projects to drive a comprehensive, yet strategic short-term action plan for 2009. And use that plan as the model for transforming the State Development and Redevelopment Plan by the end of 2009 into the plan that it was always meant to be - relevant and effective in meeting New Jersey's many challenges.

With a new short-term action plan focused on these projects, the State would have the basis for an effective economic stimulus package, the groundwork to eliminate obstacles to sustainable development that are currently in the system, and a demonstration of how to integrate the independent actions of hundreds of agents of government.

Here, then, is PlanSmart NJ's reasoning as to how and why these initiatives should be built into a new strategic action plan as quickly as possible:

1. Use the construction of the ARC Tunnel to unify and direct government action: The construction of this project will double the capacity of New Jersey's transit system and provide new intra-regional transit options to three quarters of New Jersey's population!

The construction of the ARC Tunnel will create thousands of jobs for its planning and construction, and could - if leveraged as we advocate - put New Jersey on the path to a more sustainable future.

For 2009, there are two vital financial goals to be met: secure early this year the commitment for the $3 billion federal share of the total cost of the project; and find the money to replenish the State's Transportation Trust Fund by the end of the year.

Another important goal, which must be begun in 2009, is to prepare the many existing and potential station areas for making the best use of the new capacity that will be added to the system. The State must coordinate the land use plans, government regulations and investments of all agencies of government - as recommended by PlanSmart NJ's Smart Growth Economy Project - to meet:

• job targets for station areas (how many, what kind, where) to build up the economic base of the many places that will have new transit.

• housing targets (how many, what kind, where) to meet the pent-up demand, rehabilitate the existing stock, and provide new homes affordable to those taking new jobs.

• a target to reduce the concentration of poverty by using new development in station areas to:

• open up exclusionary communities with new affordable housing

• create jobs and wealth-building opportunities within distressed communities

• prevent displacement by rehabilitating the existing housing stock and maintaining affordability levels.

• targets for the restoration, enhancement and protection of natural resources and provide the basis for the protection of large tracts of land from development.

2. Use the Route 1 Growth Strategy, the Liberty Corridor Plan, the PATCO Line Extension, new Bus Rapid Transit proposals and other transportation projects as demonstrations as to how regional plans can link economic growth, local land use plans and state infrastructure investments. These projects are smaller applications of the approach proposed to be taken in the development of the ARC Tunnel (see above).

3. Edit the Global Warming Response Act Recommendations to reinforce the proposed new strategic approach to making investments around the state:

The integration of land use and transportation policy clearly has a significant role to play in meeting 2050 emissions targets. If New Jersey fails to work aggressively to achieve this integration, the only hope we will have of achieving these targets will be to let job loss, white flight and other socially negative trends do their worst.

Instead, New Jersey must reform its agencies' regulations and incentive programs to create economic and regional equity opportunities in transit-friendly centers and promote large tracts of rural landscape to be protected and watershed conditions improved.

As the most transit-friendly state in the nation, New Jersey could be the first to demonstrate how proximity, extensive new service (commuter trains and BRT to local shuttles and jitneys), carbon-trading and other strategies can make New Jersey open to economic growth while reducing waste and becoming one of the greenest and most socially and economically integrated states in the nation.

This New Year's Resolution flows directly from PlanSmart NJ's 40 years of research and practice. Our experience tells us that these resolutions should be, can be and must be accomplished if New Jersey is to succeed in recasting its future.