Zoe Baldwin, New Jersey Director, Regional Plan Association

In an interview with Invest:, Zoe Baldwin, New Jersey director of the Regional Plan Association, highlighted the importance of dedicated funding for NJ Transit and proactive housing policy. Reflecting on recent progress, she noted, “Housing and transportation are two of the most fundamental building blocks of equity.”

Reflecting over the last year, what changes and milestones have most impacted the Regional Plan Association and in what ways?

One of the most important things we’ve done over the past year is establish the dedicated funding for NJ Transit, which is currently the corporate transit fee. Since it was created, NJ Transit hasn’t had dedicated funding, and it was all over the place; it was left up to the whims of the legislature in terms of how much they got, and then they had to make do. That’s not how it works in 99% of the country. They have dedicated funding because they know that it’s a critical utility of the state. At least for the next couple of years, we have that funding source in place, and it’s a little bit of breathing room for the agency. 

Taking a broader look at the economy, how have ongoing changes in the market impacted your organization?

We’re non-profit, so the market doesn’t impact us much. We don’t have a bottom line in that way. But we are paying a lot of attention to the long-term expectations for housing in the community. 

We are over 100 years old, so we have a longer view. For example, we released the first report in a two-part series taking a deep dive into New Jersey’s housing production over the last 40 years. One of the things we have noticed is less of an immediate trend, but in the last 20 years, we have produced 28% less housing than we did in the 80s and 90s. It’s important because it’s a hot-button issue that generates a lot of visceral responses; people have emotional and strong responses about how they feel about their community, and that’s understandable. But the reality is that the population is increasing every year, and those people need somewhere to live. When we’re not producing housing at the rate needed, that drives everyone’s cost of living up. 

It’s always going to be a more expensive market in New Jersey. We’re sandwiched between two world cities, and that’s great because that means we all make more money when we go to work every day. But it also means we need to take a more proactive approach to make sure we have enough housing so that people can afford to live and raise families here and still go to work. 

Housing is an important part of everyone’s budget, and any reduction we can make is going to be meaningful to the broader economy. It’s basic; you want people to have expendable income so they can go to their downtowns, and we can have more vibrant local businesses. 

How do you assess New Jersey’s position in shaping planning compared to other states?

Infrastructure is filled with several different sectors. On the housing front, where we still have a housing gap, we need to produce more. We are producing far more than our neighboring states of New York and Connecticut, basically because of Mount Laurel. In our constitution, we have case law that says, “New Jersey has to build housing”, and thank goodness. If we didn’t have that, it would be even more expensive to live here than it is now. Mount Laurel has given the state a good institutional framework to make sure we’re doing the work of governance, which is to make hard decisions and do things like deal with people who disagree with your plans. 

How would you characterize the current state of New Jersey’s infrastructure, and what role does RPA play in envisioning and advancing key projects?

We were formed when urban planning was still a new concept, and basically, people in New York noticed that what New Jersey and Connecticut were doing was greatly impacting what’s happening in the metropolitan core and in Manhattan, so they tried to collaborate to make it all work better. In addition to doing that across the three states, we also work on those issues in New Jersey. 

We’re excited to see a new state plan that’s on the cusp of being released. It’s smart for a state to be thoughtful about where it’s driving growth and where it is investing. How do they make sure that the land use decisions aren’t exacerbating other societal problems like public health or food deserts, and they are not just making arbitrary decisions in infrastructure? 

Separately, we do a lot of research, and from that research, we try to work with both local governments to try to fix the problems identified there. Sometimes it’s just to highlight a specific aspect. I’m proud of the report that we put out before the holidays, which highlights the economic value supported by NJ Transit. With that, we have this talking point where it’s this economic driver or economic engine, and we wanted to quantify what that meant. We did a regression analysis and looked at what happens if we don’t have transit. You take that and do an economic analysis, and the answer is that NJ Transit every single year supports just under $14 billion. That kind of research would hope to help guide state governments and to help draw the boundaries about what is a cost, what is an investment, and also what types of infrastructure we can make. These all link to other societal issues, so every time a legislator sees a bus full of people, they should think “those are people that can get to a job, to their family’s house, to a grocery store, and have full social lives.” It’s the same with hospitals and healthcare. 

Housing and transportation are two of the most fundamental building blocks of equity. You can have the best hospitals and all of the high-paying jobs and amazing schools, but if you cannot get there, it literally doesn’t matter. That needs to be emphasized again because I think there is a comfort in feeling that things are less interconnected than they are for the government, because then they can put it in their buckets, and they can fund things separately. 

What we do at RPA is to make clear that these are interconnected systems and they’re highly complex systems. If you don’t treat them like that, you’re bound to make mistakes, and this is expensive and harmful for a given community. 

When people look at infrastructure, especially in mobility and housing, they think of either programmatic affordable housing or regular housing. What they don’t understand is that our market-rate housing is not affordable to most gainfully employed people. That delta needs to be minimized; we want people to spend their money at New Jersey businesses and attractions, not just on mortgages. You want to have as much disposable income as possible spent in our state. 

What trends on the technological side have you noticed that are shaping the future of urban design and public space planning in New Jersey?

One thing that’s not talked about enough, which is important in New Jersey, is that for the last 10 years, there have been major advancements in the ability to clean contaminated sites. For New Jersey, we have such an industrial legacy that it’s relatively toxic, and a lot of land is a brown field and is pretty contaminated. Some companies, like Kramer Environmental, are leading some of the efforts to clean these areas. It has been fascinating to see how much progress has been made in our ability to meaningfully clean a toxic site for a functional amount of money. That used to be something that would slow down projects for years.

Another thing I’m excited to see, despite whatever federal policies are going on, is that we’re going to have a lot more EV car chargers come online. People should be able to stop in our many rest areas and charge up.

What economic impact will the $16 billion gateway program have on the New Jersey region, and how is RPA ensuring that the state captures those benefits?

There is a long-term impact from an infrastructure development of this size. What we did was an economic analysis from 2023 projected out to 2060. The numbers of this project are high because it’s expected to generate $445 billion in economic activity. The important thing to remember when we talk about infrastructure is what the longer-term value is, because construction jobs are a certain window. This tracks out through the supply chains. This is important because a lot of that work is going to be done by local subcontractors, and a lot of the material suppliers are likely to be in this region. So much time in our New York-New Jersey region is lost to traffic and failures in the transportation system. Gateway is going to be important, not just for the economy, but for mobility and transportation.