Since 1975, the Mount Laurel doctrine has required that New Jersey municipalities provide their fair share of the regional need for low and moderate-income housing. Yet despite this landmark decision, New Jersey is still one of the top ten most racially and economically segregated states. In this paper, I will provide a working definition of exclusionary zoning in the both the economic and racial contexts. I will argue that despite the powerful efforts of the judiciary to position New Jersey’s at the forefront of inclusionary land use policy, the practice of exclusionary zoning …
Read MoreThis paper will demonstrate how variations in historical development patterns in the Borough of Paramus and the City of Garfield have resulted in striking differences in terms of the economic and educational opportunities currently afforded the residents of each. Part I will consist of an Equity Audit highlighting the differences in life outcomes between the residents of these municipalities. Part II, Opportunity Factors, will discuss how disparities in wealth and the socioeconomic segregation of schoolchildren affect opportunity in each community. Part III, Remedies, …
Read MoreWhile New Jersey is one of the United States’ most populous states, it is simultaneously one of its wealthiest. In other respects, however, New Jersey closely mirrors the overall demographic make-up of the United States, specifically in terms of race. When looking at New Jersey on a more micro and municipal level the state is equally illustrative of insidious problems plaguing the country as a whole, most notably the inequitable and disharmonious way in which wealth and race statistics are consolidated and segregated across New Jersey’s 566 municipalities, due in …
Read MoreThe New Jersey Constitution states that, “[t]he Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all the children in the State between the ages of five and eighteen years.” Although it has been about four decades since the first New Jersey decision that determined that relying solely on local property taxes was an unconstitutional way to fund public education, at-risk districts in New Jersey are still inadequate in comparison to their more affluent counterparts.
Read MoreWhat is the ‘American Dream’? When asked that question, many may envision houses with white picket fences coupled with children, hardworking parents and let us not forget the dog. A quite modest picture is painted, however the question and its subsequent answer that will have the most consequence for the future of America revolves around who and not what. Who is able to achieve the ‘American Dream’? Is everyone afforded the same opportunity to achieve the ever so coveted ‘American Dream’? As we perform an equity analysis on cities and suburbs …
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This paper will compare the townships of Maplewood and Irvington, New Jersey. Although the towns share a geographic border, the difference between the two communities is considerable. In Part I, I survey the financial differences and fairly typical Census measurements. In Part II, I will review how opportunity for class mobility is present or not present in each community. For this analysis, I am looking at how concentrated poverty in Irvington restricts mobility as compared to Maplewood where such hyper-segregation and concentrations of poverty do not exist.
Read MoreThe New Jersey Supreme Court‘s Mount Laurel decisions (1975 and 1983) ruled that local zoning had to take into account regional housing needs, obligating the state‘s 566 localities to provide their ―fair share of affordable housing. Although these two decisions havelong been seen across the nation as seminal ones with respect to land use and affordable housing opportunity, their role in New Jersey land use regulation and practice remains hotly contested many decades later. The cumbersome procedures and micro-management of local planning that have …
Read MoreIn the decade before and after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, de jure segregation, the system of racially identified space, coalesced with formal land use planning to institutionalize de facto segregation in the city and suburbs of New Orleans, notwithstanding some of the most considerable early antisegregation forces in the nation’s history. Although the actual geographic fault lines changed over time, the basic color scheme did not. Race-neutral land use regulation reproduced the patterns of racial inequality that slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation …
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