Developers hope we're dense about density

Expect to hear a lot from developers on how high-density residential and commercial development will save New Jersey from high-density residential and commercial development. How is this miracle to occur?

In 25 years or more, all the open land in the state will be developed, according to dismayed, and I assume inconsolable, developers.

To save us from this evil, bless their hearts, they're touting a mixed-use "concept" called traditional neighborhood development. This comforting description is a repackaging of bad planning practices to convince us that stacking apartments, condos, stores and offices atop each other, like cord wood, can avoid that bug-a-boo developers have encouraged for decades - suburban sprawl.

Our caring developers also hint it may extend their stay in New Jersey before they have to move on to despoil other states. Suburban sprawl, meet thine sworn blood enemy, urban density.

To use a colloquial term becoming lost to us as Jersey farmlands yield to overdevelopment, hogwash. Packing as many dwellings, stores and offices per acre as possible doesn't reduce suburban sprawl. It just replaces it with urban sprawl.

Developers like to promote their high-density packed projects as bucolic settings where residents, not needing cars, stroll along grass-lined walkways to shop and greet friends and neighbors.

Idyllic, but nonsensical.

In these not-so-traditional projects, developers like to claim residents won't have to commute to work, they'll only need to shop at neighborhood stores, and all their friends will live in the same project. Their descriptions try to conjure up the image of an 18th century village - not any New Jersey community I've ever seen. One developer even alludes to 19th century building practices by describing a project that, incredulously, will offer merchants living quarters above their stores.

It gets sillier. Road congestion will be reduced because the high-density projects will "get cars off the road by providing a market for mass transit," one developer claims. This misleading statement alludes, of course, to our now nonexistent statewide transit system. He's thinking of Europe, not the United States.

Developers also are offering another old bromide: dense mixed-use projects won't require additional municipal services and will stabilize taxes. However, every tax study proves what no developer wants you to realize - all development leads to higher taxes.

One developer gave his game away by admitting that in one of his own projects, only 19 percent of the land will be set aside for open space. Underwhelming, as the average 100-by150-foot single-family building lot provides at least 60 percent of open space. He also bragged about detached garages that allow residents to wave to their neighbors as they tote their groceries into the house - a real advantage during inclement weather. Of course, these long shed-like garages are much less expensive to build than attached garages.

Developers are campaigning for our hearts and minds by claiming high-density mixed-use projects will combat suburban sprawl.

What they don't say is that such projects are cheaper per unit to build than detached suburban houses, that they require more municipal services, and that they provide less tax revenue than single-family homes because land is much more expensive than buildings. Also unmentioned are increased highway congestion, air and water pollution and urban sprawl.

Beware the siren song that high-density projects will solve New Jersey's ills. The taxpayers will be stuck with rising tax rates as developers - the only real winners - take their new-found profits and live in those sprawling McMansions they pretend to decry.

Judith Stanley Coleman

president

Monmouth County Conservation Foundation

Middletown