Demographics, Other Factors Helping to Spur Suburban Revival

This article talks about a report from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, which discusses population changes in suburban and urban regions. For the past several years, migration from the suburbs to urban areas occurred. However, that trend is changing with population growth in suburban neighborhoods taking place.

“The reinvention of the suburban models will mean additional infrastructure and other costs, noted Ted Zangari, a member of the law firm Sills Cummis & Gross PC and chair of its Real Estate Law department, who also sits on the executive committee of the Rutgers Center for Real Estate.

“‘Municipalities must recognize that the unique added costs of redevelopment — structured parking, environmental remediation, vertical construction, affordable housing requirements and others — often create legitimate project financing gaps that require public incentives for the redeveloper to be able to achieve a reasonable rate of return and break ground,’ he said. ‘Also, where parcels are too small for redevelopment of any meaningful size or scale, municipalities must consider designating clusters of parcels as redevelopment areas, which allows for land assemblage, overlay zoning and tax abatements.’

“As a state, he added, ‘we need to view potential large-scale redevelopment projects from a regional perspective, evaluating their ability to transform an area well beyond the borders of the municipality in which it happens to be located.’”