June 7, 2008 Open Meeting
Present: Ron Nielson; Etta Steiner; Jim Constantine [LRK]; Carlos Rodriques
[RPA/Chair Township Zoning Board]; Michael Suber; Ellen Posner; Sybil Parnes; Henry
Steiner; Dana Powsner; Henry Powsner; Matthew Weld; Julia Poulos; Barrie Royce
[Chair, Borough Zoning Board]; Pat Ramirez; Linda Artzenius; Marty Schneiderman;
Kevin Wilkes [Borough Council]; Harry Clark; Marvin Reed [Chair, Master Plan
Subcommittee, RPB]; Mike Gehret [IAS]; Peter Kann; Bill Moran; Sheldon Sturges;
Diane Rhodes; Robert Geddes; Marvin Bressler; Susan Hockaday; Hendricks Davis;
Roger Martindell [Borough Council]; Wanda Gunning [Regional Planning Board]; Linda
Sipprelle; Leighton Laughlin; Chip Crider; Louis Slee; Roz Denard [former Township
Committee]; Mary Laity; Chris Dorey; Josephine Constantine; Dina Rozin; Barbara
Williams; Mary Ellen Marino; Louisa Clayton; Pam Hersh [University Medical Center at
Princeton]; Jane Faggen [Historic Preservation Review Committee]; Melanie Stein; Len
Newton; Peter Morgan; Anne Neumann [Environmental Commission].
PF Panel: Marvin Bressler, Robert Geddes, Peter Kann, Susan Hockaday
Speakers: Jim Constantine & Carlos Rodriques
Robert Geddes: Thank you for coming this
morning. This is the third in a series of
meetings this spring. In many ways it is the
most important one because it is the one
where we begin to say “What if?”. “What
might happen?”. What the strategy has been
so far, over the years, starting in the year
2000, is to listen to neighbors, to listen to
business people, to listen to various interest
groups and to people who live here and
work here, and to try to understand what is
happening to our community. That has
resulted in ads, statements, publications and
so forth that have influenced the way we
have been developing the town. In fact, it
was “What If’ meetings that resulted in the
idea and development of this plaza and the
relationship of this library to that space.
What ifs are the most challenging because in
a way because you really want to have them
unbounded as to what is the context and
what is the content of what could happen.
The meetings so far have been largely
physical. They have been largely about the
physical environment. The spatial
environment. Buildings and landscapes.
Traffic and parking and so forth. Where we
have come this year, I think is to identify a
number of issues. Some of them are very
physical, but some of them aren’t. Many of
them are, in fact, an interesting combination
of social, political, environmental, and
economic problems, as well as what are the
physical problems. This is the ad we ran
earlier. The reason we ran that ad is that for
the for time in this town’s history, and
perhaps in any town’s history, we have been
working on 2 plans at the same time. That is
that there is the process of the Community
Master Plan and Marvin Reed, who is with
us today, is Chair of the Subcommittee that
is working on that. And, then, there is the
University’s Princeton Campus Plan. It is
the first time we have had a 10-yr plan from
the university. What is the correlation
between those two? That has been a matter
of considerable discussion. So, for that
reason, we said there were “Two Plans”.
But there was ”One Opportunity”. What is
the one opportunity is the question. With
that as the challenge, we then identified by
listening to you over the years and collected
all of this stuff. We tried to distill it down to
what turned out to be six sets of issues.
Obviously not separate in the world. One is
Housing. Almost everybody sees housing as
a set of issues. Whether it is affordable
housing. Where housing is. Whether it is for
old people, like some of us. Whether it is for
minorities. All of us are increasingly
minorities of one sort or another. Awareness
of tolerance. Awareness of the need for
diversity. Awareness of the financial
concerns for housing. In fact, some of you
would say that that is THE issue. I always
object to having one answer to a question.
However, I am also aware that when Frank
Lloyd Wright went to work as an apprentice
to Louis Sullivan in Chicago, Louis Sullivan
said to him: “Take care of the corners and
everything else will take care of itself.” I
thought that was kind of a clever thing until
I realized that the magic of Frank Lloyd
Wright’s architecture, and of most
architecture…look at the corners and you
will see how, in a way, it is a detail, but how
it affects the whole. Housing has that kind of
pervasive impact. The second issue that we
worked on was the whole idea of the
Downtown. You know, for many in the
community, it is ‘Uptown’. For others it is
Downtown. For others it is the core of an
emerging Region. The Downtown was
talked about for a long time I terms of
parking and traffic. In fact one of our
distinguished members of the panel today
refused to come to Princeton Future
meetings because all we talked about was
parking. There are great diversity of needs in
the downtown. The needs of the merchants.
The needs of the governments to have
support for services from taxes. There is a
balance. The need for the Downtown to
relate to the University. To become a better
College Downtown and vice-versa. I thnk
the recent triumph of having the University
Store and the wonderful Book Shop in the
Downtown is proving that the Downtown
and the University are related. The
Downtown is a wonderful place, a
wonderful thing. Yet as many of you know,
there are a lot of empty stores, rents are
rising. Affordability is an issue. So
Downtown has been a way a of seeing the
problems of the community as a whole. The
third and fourth issues have to do with the
Town as a whole. The Town and the Town.
As Peter Kann has said frequently.
“Princeton is the only community in the
country with Two Towns and One Political
Party. Most towns have one government and
two political parties!” Well, the whole issue
of consolidation has come to the fore. But,
in a way, it is only one aspect of the
functional and operational relationship of
governments, agencies and the communities.
Town and Town relations are important
because they have to do with the way we
sustain ourselves…and the way we have
services…and, in a sense, govern ourselves.
I was thinking that one of the few people
who was surprised in discussing all of this
was I. It was a very popular result. I would
thought there were many other functional
issues which might have been coming to the
fore. And, then Town & Gown. This is a
college town. It is a town in which the
university is a major employer. It is a major
source of revenue. It is a major source of
pleasure. Relationships between the town
and the university are…well, I think, for the
first time, at least since my time here, have
become very open and creative. The
administration of the university, the faculty,
the students, their involvement in
Community-based Learning. There are
many indications of a much more fluid
relationship between the two. On the other
hand, from the town perspective, it is also
the case that the question of equity…of
the fairness of support is foremost. So
Town-Gown is one of the first 4 issues. All
of them are essentially physical. That is, you
can see where the town is, the university is,
where the housing is, and so forth. When
you get to the next two, which was the
subject of our meeting on May 3. They were
much broader. One panel was on Diversity.
One panel was on Sustainability. It had to do
with pervasive issues about the character
and quality, about the politics of our
community, really. Where we put our
priorities. What we seek to be. Whether
affordability is part and parcel of how we
approach our future. Marvin Bressler led the
discussion on diversity and Rob Socolow led
the discussion on sustainability. He leads the
Princeton Environmental Institute which is a
world leader in understanding the physical
environment and what the environmental
issues are. All of this has been recorded and
is available now for analysis.
As we moved along, it began to be apparent
that many of these issues were discussed 8
years ago when we started. We know a lot.
But we don’t know everything. So one of
the proposals that Princeton Future is going
to be making is: Not only should we be
learning from each other. One source of
information. But we should be using
analysis that demographers and economists
and planners use to understand the trends,
the changes, the facts. For example. Long
Island which is a much more bounded place
than Princeton. They have a Long Island
Index in which the facts about Long Island,
about what’s happening to it on a continuing
basis are brought forward. We believe that
we need to know more about each other.
In Providence, in addition to there being
information on the town as a whole, every
neighborhood has information about itself.
So that the Mercer Hill Neighborhood, the
Witherspoon-Jackson Neighborhood, the
Tree Streets. Each of the neighborhoods of
the community knows what is happening
and what the changes are. It is all available
on the web. So we think information of this
sort is very important to ove the process
forward. But, even with this information, we
still believe that maybe the problems are
eluding us because the problems may be
structural. Thy may not just be topical or
factual. They may be how we are structured
fundamentally to do the community’s work:
the relationship between governments,
between communities…between operating
forces and so forth….if, I may say, are 20th
century, or even 19th century. We think that
maybe the problem is the structures
themselves. So that is where we are. This
session and the one that will follow in the
Arts Council building deal with the
structures. And how we work on these
things. Today, we have two guest speakers
to lead us in the discussion. One about
Planning. One about Regulation.
I have a friend, Jack Chancellor, who, when
he moved here from New York, used to say
“You know whenever you talk about
planning, there is a MEGO effect.” That is
my eyes glaze over. He could never break
through on television…as soon as you talk
about planning, that is what would happen. I
hope that we can break through. Today we
will talk about two things that are critical to
the operations of the community and its
government. Planning and Regulation. Then
we will break and have coffee thanks to
Witherspoon Bread and Raoul Momo. And
we will then open it up for conversation.
This will be a “What if?” session for you.
We will talk about What Ifs in terms of
planning and regulation.
Our two speakers have 2 advantages. One is
that they are very knowledgeable.
Extraordinarily knowledgeable. In any other
place they would be considered experts. The
other great advantage they have is that they
are local. They actually live and work here.
One lives in the Boro. One lives in the
Township. One works on Historic
Preservation. One works on Zoning. They
are really engaged WITH us in the everyday
dealing with these issues. I’d like to
introduce both of them and turn it over to
them. First will be Jim Constantine. Jim is a
Principal in a national firm of architects and
planners. One of the largest in the country.
He has had a remarkable record of
experience and awards. Smart Growth
Awards…But what is interesting and
immediately interesting is that he is engaged
as a planner for the new Transit Village in
West Windsor. He has done the Plainsboro
Town Center. Jim is a professional planner.
Probably, you don’t know this, but New
Jersey…I think it is the only state…in
which, in order to be a planner, you have to
be registered and licensed. Otherwise, you
could be brought to a State Board for the
illegal process of planning! The three of us
are professional planners. I have a license!
That’s important. The fact of the matter is
that Jim is a real, live, working planner. He
works largely with the private sector. His
clients are developers. People who do real
harm in the world!
The other speaker will be Carlos Rodriques.
Carlos is the New Jersey Vice President and
Director of the Regional Plan Association
with its office now on Nassau Street. He had
been for a long with the State Planning
Commission. He is a very distinguished
person in terms of what is happening in New
Jersey with respect to its planning policies &
procedures. Carlos also serves as Chair of
the Township Zoning Board of Adjustment.
PLANNING
Jim Constantine: Thank you, Bob. Thank
you, Princeton Future. Thank you everybody
for coming out on a Saturday morning. What
I am going to talk about today is maybe
trying to step back to a view at 30,000 feet. I
really don’t want to talk about Princeton, per
se. Carlos can speak about Princeton. I
would like to share some perspective. I think
that will help you to think about Princeton.
The first thing: Princeton is not unique. I
have had the chance to in other college
towns. Most people in college towns don’t
realize the truth about college towns:
College Towns are really tough places. Part
of that is because college towns are all about
discourse and discussion. Sometimes there is
trouble making decisions. College towns are
fabulous and Princeton is among the best.
[Slide show] From an historic perspective,
this is Nassau St. If you look at the bottom
of this image, you will see the things we
used to chase Irv Urken about on violations:
a wheel barrow and sidewalk displays and
all sorts of merchandise, mercantile activity
and energy spilling out onto the sidewalk.
As you look up and down the street, you will
note some projecting signs which you have
to go to the Zoning Board to get approval
these days. It takes 3 days and a lot of
potential cost. You might even argue that the
balloon man is the spiritual keeper of messy
vitality along Nassau St. This is what the
evolution of a natural place that grew
organically and incrementally and wasn’t
overly planned. This is the way it is all over
the world. Except that there was a purging
of the Zoning ordinance in 1965 where we
actually removed a lot of things that had
historic precedent. We pointed this out to the
Boro’s Historic Preservation Review
Committee of which I am a member. As is
Jane, here. The way things are today aren’t
necessarily the way they were. Sometimes
we romanticize things and glaze over the
mess of the past. Here are two signs that
were approved as part of a multi-layered
system that we know and accept as planning
today. And we have a vision. We want to
see more of this type of thing along our
streets and sidewalks. We might have an
argument as to whether $800/yr is enough.
But if you talk to a start-up café about costs
and you might hear something different than
what you think as a citizen or a town
official. So if we step back in time, and ask
our forefathers “what would you say about
the system today?” I think they would cringe
and say “What happened??”.
In New Jersey, the planning
process really isn’t one of planning. We do
not have pro-active throughout most
municipalities. It is mostly REACTIVE
REGULATING. It is nobody’s fault how it
got that way. It is sort of a systemic
conspiracy that has resulted in where we are
today. You have to understand first that the
whole system of reactive regulating has a
very slow timeframe. It is multi-layered.
They are lots and lots of redundancies. From
a publication of the Builder’s Association,
they publish all of the permits you need in
NJ. It is in the dozens. People don’t realize
that when we look at the green builders and
the high price of homes, there is tens of
thousands of dollars in layered bureaucracy
to deliver one new residence in NJ. That is
the reality. It is very, very costly and it is
very unpredictable. It is very much the case,
literally anywhere you are in New Jersey,
people that are opposing something are more
motivated. It is easier to get people excited
to come to meetings to stop something than
to support something. So that is where we
are today. Why would anyone want to
undertake anything in this mess we call the
planning and zoning process in New Jersey!
Well, most wouldn’t, they’d rather schedule
months and months of deep root canal work
than do what it takes to pull a permit. I
decided that I have to work outside of New
Jersey because I want to see enough happen
in my lifetime!
It wasn’t always this way. If you go back in
history, this is an image of the great plan of
Chicago. The Chicago Businessmen’s
Association hired Daniel Burnham to create
a bold stroke Master Plan so that they could
take their ‘second-tier’ city and move it
forward in a grand way. The Plan was
possible because in Chicago, in 1893, they
had the World’s Columbian Exposition. It is
the one that occurred after the one in Paris
where the Eiffel Tower was built. There is a
great book on this called Devil in the White
City. It was an important moment in
America because millions of town officials
and citizens were able to go and see a
wonderful planned environment. They saw
that planning, integrated with architecture
made a difference. Frederick Law Olmstead
did the site the site engineering, all the way
down to picking the ducks that would be in
the pond…It was a phenomenal vision of
what should happen there! There is a
civicness and grandeur that influences
people. Most Americans at this time hadn’t
been to Europe. We were at the height of the
industrial revolution. This led to the City
Beautiful movement. This wasn’t the first
planning in America. Admiral Oglethorpe
had laid out plans for Savannah on the ship
on the way over. And then he found a site.
But this was the first, large scale, formal
wave of planning that really had influence
on lots and lots of other communities. It
dovetailed with the political reform
movement…the parks movement…there
were efforts to reform tenement housing.
The designers who laid most of this stuff
were classically-trained. Most of them went
to the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. The
planning reflected that. There was also a
great debate whether these great civic
centers, such as this one in Denver, were
lifeless. A little too grand and bold. But,
happening in parallel to this was a new
process. There was a new legal instrument
called ZONING. Zoning had a very real
reason to come into existence. Because at
the height of the industrial revolution, there
were factories built close to housing. There
was disease because of proximity to poor
industrial practices. People literally died in
the streets. So the issue of separating
noxious factories from where people lived
had absolute, valid, public purpose. In the
1920’s in this city, Euclid, Ohio, there was a
major Supreme Court decision referring to
single use, separating use, putting in zoning
because of the great Euclid Decision. The
Supreme Court said ‘yes’ under the powers
of protecting health, safety and welfare and
morals, we can have zoning. And that got
applied to lots and lots of things. Initially, it
was just about use. I have looked at early
zoning ordinances. It was about separating
factories. You’d have a residents district. It
would allow any kind of residence. And all
of this got applied over time to lots and lots
of things. It helped to eradicate billboards.
It became a matter of public morals, as it
was claimed that people would go out and
fornicate behind billboards! It was a public
purpose to ban them. Somewhere along the
line, we had the Great Depression and we
went off to World War II. Due to a number
of factors, planning got lost in the wings.
We also had a group of modernists,
architects and planners that were chased out
of Europe by Hitler, came and they devised
…”we can’t have this traditional planning
and this classical architecture”. And they
conspired with the zoning folks, and
somewhere after WWII, everybody came
back home and, really, Planning became
Zoning. If you look at the great plans of this
period they look like Zoning maps. It took it
greatest form when we were able to separate
every single use from every other use. This
is Tyson’s Corner, VA. After 50 years of
absolute pure zoning. This place is
absolutely the result of zoning formulas.
Everything is measured. How many cars can
fit on this road. The width it needs to be.
How much parking is here. The density is
perfectly described. If you are down on the
ground, you are sick because it is a horrid
human environment. Today they are going
back now and redeveloping and trying to
create urbanism because they realize when
they achieved full build-out, they had
created nothing that was nice for people.
Here we are back in Princeton. A place that
was not created by planning. As Marvin
Reed often reminds us, it was not created by
zoning. Zoning is more trying to protect and
freeze what we have. It was really a series of
incremental actions. There are some
elements of planning here. Certainly, the
University has undertaken planning over the
years. There a couple of things that occurred
over time. Edgar Palmer made a
contribution. It certainly was a piece of
incremental planning. The largest scale
private piece, here, in town. So we are not a
totally organic place. But we are not a pace
that came out of bold-stroke physical
planning or zoning formulas. As Bob
mentioned earlier, this wonderful public
square with its mix of uses of these
buildings here has been the result of another
incremental planning movement, [Princeton
Future], not the result of a zoning formula!
If we go back to the past again, 100 years
ago. The City Beautiful movement was at its
height. The planning for this community
might have occurred by the University, the
Institute, the Seminary, the Choir College
and Palmer Square and the Merchants of
Princeton. That’s the way things were done.
It was a different time. People were happy to
have the business leaders lead the
community. Today we are in a very different
time. There has been a movement to really
recapture great physical planning but try to
do so in an era when it is really a messy
grassroots political time, as the recent
primary campaigns show us. Today we
find, and I am not suggesting that this is
what Princeton should have…I am just
reporting on what is happening in other
places… we have a movement that is
coming out of community involvement and
visioning and some of this wasn’t just
because folks wanted to. Carlos and I had a
chance to work for many years with Tony
Nelessen. It wasn’t that we were trying to be
community activists. We realized that the
only way we were going to get great
planning was to get the community
involved. To create support. To carry
forward in that way. It certainly occurs
more successfully in places other than New
Jersey. It has also been championed by the
Congress in New Urbanism. A group
committed to recapturing traditional town
planning Marv Reed and myself are two of
the founders of the New Jersey chapter. All
of this has fallen under the umbrella of
Smart Growth because it does involve some
level of community outreach, participation.
If we can become pro-active in the
community, you can get people on board
first, instead of opposing it at the end of the
day. These history pictures are all examples
of developer-and-landowner-initiated public
planning processes. I have had a chance to
work in over 100 communities. Community
outreach can occur in many different ways.
The poster was for Mayor Oscar Goodman
in Las Vegas. We have done bilingual,
online interactive surveys to try to foster
support for what he has been pushing.
Downtown Vision Las Vegas. All of this
leads us to a process that can get the
community involved. A story from 20 years
ago. I remember hearing Andres Duany, one
of the leaders of new urbanism, recount
someone asking him: “What would it take to
hire you?” He said “$50,000! But if I have
to get the community involved, it is
$150,000.”
So, here are a couple of things we have
found through experience have worked
successfully.
1. If you are going to get the
community involved, you need
multiple opportunities for input. Not
everyone likes to come to meetings.
Not everyone wants to come to
public forums where they have o
speak out. So, we have used things
like ONLINE SURVEYS that
people could actually participate in
the community planning process 24-
7. From their living room, study or
desk at lunch time. You can’t beat
that for design by democracy.
2. You need a process that builds from
a more personal engagement. You
need public engagement with
workshops. Neighborhood
workshops. Region-wide forums.
You have some of this here. Princeton
Future has done a great deal of this. The
sustainable initiative has begun. The process
really needs to be a listening one. This is
what is often missing. You have to let
people come and get it all out there. You
need a process that is really designed to
address that. People are the local experts.
Lots of times they will identify things. As an
outsider, at best you are a facilitator. This is
an example of something up in Ottawa,
Canada. The surface issues that haven’t been
adequately addressed by someone,
somewhere in the system. A lot of times, it
is some level of government…hasn’t
addressed traffic properly…this properly.
When you get all of these issues out o the
table, it creates a different situation. It helps
conduct the research. By doing this, people
are more likely to agree with the plan if they
helped to define the analysis. They validate
the process. You face the same thing in so
any New Jersey communities: “I am here.
Lock the gate. Throw away the key. I don’t
want anymore people coming from where I
just came from.” One of the tools we use is
to do some historic research. We ask people
“What year was your home built?” If the
answer is is “1950”. Then we say, “So in
1900 if someone had said what you are
saying, where would you be today?” People
then realize that that there has been layer
after layer of additional development. We
have places on Nassau St, where we have
had 3-4 layers of development since it was
an early farmstead. So people have to
understand that communities evolve and
change. They are not static. There is a
reaction that if you want to save something,
you think you want to freeze it. We do
timelines to help peoe understand when
there was change. We liken this to barnraising.
We simple dot exercises in
workshops. Get people on the way in. Here
is your red dot. “What are the places you
like least? What are the problem areas.”
There is a phenomenon I see repeatedly:
“The pipes are broken. Don’t talk about new
appliances.” You have to fix the leaky pipes
first. Lots of times it is related to traffic and
parking. Aesthetics come into play as well.
Then, they identify what should be
preserved and protected. It is ritualistic.
Green dots. It gets people engaged. It is
understandable to a 10-yr old. We can help
people look at possible visions. Get people
engaged in alternative identification.
DOTMOCRACY. Then when you come
with a plan, you can show how you are
actually addressing their problems in a very
tangible way. In Princeton, we tend to talk
about issues in an almost academic way.
This is hands-on and understandable. This is
down at a true grassroots level. Getting the
community involved in defining study area
and scope. This was done by an architect
working for himself in an urban area. This
how a lot of land owners think about their
sites…floating out there I the middle of
nowhere. It is very hard to make the leap to
understand that the community really wants
you to address/help to look at…nobody else
is going to fix that intersection down there.
They want you to address all of these other
issues. Developers are fearful “Now we
have to deal with all of this other stuff!” We
have found in terms of process that that is
great. The broader people define it, the
better it is. When it is just about your site, it
is hard. Creating broader consensus and
more success is the goal. Walk & talk focus
groups. Curbside chats. Working with
neighborhoods. The things neighborhoods
want most is to have the developer come
first and say “Why don’t you walk us around
the neighborhood and show us what is
happening here? Show us what is wrong.
What needs to be fixed..the concerns…”
People want to be treated in a very human
way in this process. Sometimes people don’t
get out and about enough and we bring them
to Palmer Square to show them an 80 year
old time-tested mixed use redevelopment.
Of course most people here forget that the
statue here was erected in honor of a
developer, Edgar Palmer. Bob mentioned
the Plainsboro Village Center. It is a modest
example of something that could easily have
been a strip mall. Parking lots in front of
non-descript one story buildings.
Identifying precedents and prototypes is
helpful.
Community design workshops. The
charrette. Open curtain design with the
community fully involved. It is like highly
volatile rocket fuel. In the right situation it
works wonderfully. It can also blow up a
situation. We had one group call up one day
after a charrette asking “When can we have
‘our’ plan submitted for approval?” There is
a magical moment when the ownership of
the whole project switches. It is like making
sausage. It is very important to get public
agencies involved in the process. Here is a
group with NJ DOT officials. And local
designers have terrific ideas. It’s not about
owning ideas. It’s about leaving your ego at
the door. Princeton has more architects and
planners per square mile than anyplace. All
ideas are good ideas and then things get
eliminated over time. Messy but democratic.
Here is one where we got high school
students involved. It is always hoped that we
reach consensus. The kumbaya moment.
Where somehow things are going to move
forward somehow faster. We have also
found that you need to have continued
opportunities for feedback. Here is one we
got from Gianni Longo, he ran the process
with 5,000 participants at the Javits Center
for the World Trade Center. The plans came
down from the mountain top…but because
they didn’t get the folk involved, they got
rejected. So here are people putting their
comments on little post-its, right onto the
plan. It allows along the way very important
discussions to occur. People are on the team.
You can talk about density. Time. Should
we have a streamlined permitting process?
Can we pre-approve things so that we don’t
have to send all of the sign deviations. How
do we get quality? So that the qualityquantity
trade-off comes out of this. I am
going to end with one little case study that I
will hope sets up some of what Carlos will
say.
This is work in another college town:
Mansfield CT where the University of
Connecticut is located. On the town-gown
front, the image on the lower left is what sits
across from the main gate of the university.
It makes it hard to recruit international
researchers. They said: “We need to fix the
town.” The vision we used here is what is
called form-based code. It starts to specify in
a more detailed design way exactly what
should happen as we transform that place.
There are complications, dealing with the
State Dept of Transportation. Lots of
negotiation of things along the way. But it is
not a zoning instrument that is a bunch of
paragraphs and legalese. This is 5 years old,
lower technology. This is the zoning. Using
imagery and a lot of other prescriptions: but
a very different format from the one to
which our zoning has evolved. With that I
will turn it over to Carlos. [Applause].
REGULATION
Carlos Rodriques: Fantastic, Jim. It
couldn’t have been a better introduction for
what I have to say! I work for a group called
the Regional Plan Association, the nation’s
oldest independent planning organization,
founded in 1922. The Regional Plan was
published in 1929, following a process not
unlike the one Jim described for the Chicago
Commercial Club. It was privately funded. It
cost a million dollars. It took 7 years to
develop. It was extremely influential in
shaping the way the region evolved over the
next 30 years. Unfortunately the plan
stopped at the Millstone River. It didn’t
quite reach Princeton. Princeton wasn’t part
of the region yet. Of course it didn’t
anticipate the relocation of the Medical
Center down to Plainsboro so we would
probably have to update it somewhat. So
that is how planning was done back then.
Not any more.
I have some misgivings about powerpoint. 5
years ago when my 11 year old daughter and
my 5 year old son rolled out a powerpoint to
make their case for why we should switch
from cable to satellite tv, I knew we were in
trouble. By the third slide, we had folded of
course and had completely ceded the field.
But the stuff I have to talk about today is
sort of more technical and nitty-gritty and I
think the images would distract from that.
I would like to start by saying that these are
very exciting times to be in planning. And
they are frustrating times. Exciting because,
as you know, the connection between the
way we build our communities and the
major challenge that we face which is global
climate change, has been firmly established.
That link is made more clear by research
that is coming out every day. So planners
who for a long, long time have been saying
“Pay attention to the LAND USE, pay
attention to TRANSPORTATION: LINK
THE TWO TOGETHER. YOU ARE
DOING BAD THINGS TO THE
ENVIRONMENT”…They really have not
had much of a following until now. They are
now feeling vindicated. It is nice to have the
world’s scientific community say: “If we
don’t do something about the land use and
the transportation system, we are in big
trouble.” We’re in big trouble anyway. After
you have changed your light bulbs and
replaced your SUV with a Prius, you are
down to the nitty-gritty of what is going to
define our carbon footprint for the
foreseeable future. And that is the land usetransportation
connection.
[Editor's Note: Transit-Oriented
Development, or TOD, is generally
defined as compact development within
walking distance of train and bus
stations (typically a half-mile radius or
10-minute walk) that contains a mix of
uses, including housing, jobs, shops,
restaurants and entertainment, and is
designed to maximize non-motorized
transportation.With transportation
accounting for the second-largest
household expenditure after housing,
TOD typically allows for reduced car
ownership — and, in turn, for lower
overall costs of living. According to the
American Public Transportation
Association, households that choose
public transit over driving save an
average of $6,251 annually. Half of the
stateʼs 263 transit stations are within
municipalities that have Special
Improvement District Management
Corporations. – NJ Future, July 17,
2008].
So it is very exciting to have planners at the
forefront of discussions worldwide right
now. At the same time, we have a Federal
government that is basically out-to-lunch on
these issues. And will continue to be for the
foreseeable future. We have a State
government that changes the rues every
week. Adding new layers and rolling thing
things back. There is a clear ABSENCE OF
LEADERSHIP from those levels. Now you
can say ‘OK we’re going to have to solve
this on our own down at the local level.’
That is where the rubber hits the road. That
is why we are all here today. But things at
the local level are not all that rosy either!
But things at the local level are things that
we can more easily affect. And these are the
things I want to talk about today.
The Federal government will or will not fix
itself. We hope it will in the next
administration. The Democratic Congress is
talking about all sorts of interesting things in
terms of infrastructure. We’ll see where that
goes. Trenton will or will not fix itself.
Professionally I am involved in that too.
Ultimately, it all comes home to roost here!
If we can fix our own misconceptions, it will
help us to move along. I will talk about what
I see as some disconnects between what we
say collectively and, actually, what we do
and what we have on the books. We have
disconnects between different institutions
involved, between the two governing bodies,
the Planning Board and the two Zoning
Boards…and the actual instruments of
planning: the Master Plan and two sets of
zoning ordinances and so forth.
Let’s start with Zoning. I have been on the
Township Zoning Board for 10 years and
have been Chair for 6 or 7 maybe. I ma not
an expert I the zoning code but I have
certainly looked at it often enough. And for
th purposes of this presentation, I looked
quickly at the Boro Zoning code.
The first observation is that we have a
regional planning board for the two
communities. But we then have two separate
zoning boards with two separate zoning
codes. I am not sure historically why that is
the case. There is unification of the
planning function, but enforcement is left
separate. Maybe we ran out of steam as a
community. The two regulating systems and
the two bodies that interpret and adjudicate
them were never brought together. So we
have two different sets of rules even
though when you cross a municipal
boundary, it is not as if there is a distinction.
Most people don’t even know when they
cross from one to another. The chances are
that that block or that neighborhood were
built at roughly the same time. They
followed the same rules [not zoning]. They
were the rules of the builder back then. But
when you cross that magic line on the street
now and go from the Boro to the Township,
the rules do change. And, us to use an
example from Moore St where I live, if you
are in the Boro, you are in the R3 Zone. If
you cross the street into the Township, you
are in the R8 Zone. It is not ust a difference
of names. They have completely different
parameters. On one side of the street, the
minimum lot size is 7200 SF. On the other
side of the street, it is 8500 SF. On one side,
you have a maximum building height of 3
stories/35 ft. On the other side, you have 30
ft. On one side you have 40% floor-to-area
ratio, on the other you have 30%. To
compound the differences, on one side you
one definition of building height, to the
midpoint of the roof, and on the other, it is
to the ridge of the roof. The bottom line is:
on the Boro side, you can have, by right,
habitable attics. On the Township side, you
can’t. That is the difference. So if I want to
transform my attic into habitable space,
which would mean I don’t have to punch out
into the side or the back. I can do it in the
Boro, but not in the Township. If there is a
significant public policy obective we are
trying to accomplish by this, I don’t know
what it is. If I found this discrepancy on my
street, there are probably others.
Barrie Royce [Chair, Boro Zoning Board]:
It may be worth noting at this point, that
in the Boro, about 40-50% of all of the
properties, in any zoning area, don’t meet
code.
Carlos Rodriques: I am getting to that. The
fact that there are two sets of rules, two
zoning boards, two zoning codes don’t
generally affect people because generallyspeaking,
you are generally going by one or
the other. They do affect property owners
that straddle the borderline. A case in point
is the Medical Center. I think it was a
significant nuisance factor there. It is just
hard to explain why the rues are so different
from one side of the street to the other. The
answer is that we really haven’t made the
effort to coordinate these things AND to
make them adjust to what is actually there!
The next point has to do with consistency.
The zoning code and the actual conditions
on the ground. A number of years ago, the
Township created a database of all of the
properties in the Township. Lot blockacreage-
zoning district-street address. So for
the first time, it became easy to run a routine
and find out how any properties are nonconforming
as to Lot Size. The database
doesn’t have lot width/lot depth and all of
the other parameters, so we can’t really tell
how many non-conformities there in total. I
asked the zoning staff to run the routine. I
was astonished. In my neighborhood OVER
75% of the lots are non-conforming as to
lot size. Why? Because lot sizes there
typically 8000 SF or less, and the zoning
minimum is 8500 SF! What that means is
that when anyone wants to do anything, you
come before the zoning board. I am happy to
see my neighbors. The zoning board doesn’t
really know why they are there. It is
common for the neighbor to come before us
and simply state that everyone within 200 ft
is non-compliant so it is not a unique
situation. He attorney always asks “Have
you contacted your neighbors?” and “Have
you tried to enlarge your lot so that it no
longer ‘non-conforming?’” The Board then
says: “Here’s your variance. Thank you very
much.”
With respect to the Master Plan. The actual
full Community Master Plan was adopted in
1996. The RPB has updated it every 6 years
with what is known as the Re-Examination
Report which keeps it legal under State
rules. The Re-examination report is a device
which looks at what has changed and raises
questions that need to be addressed. The Re-
Exam is not required to provide the
answers to those questions. So you can
have an increasingly OBSOLETE MASTER
PLAN as long as you keep raising the
relevant questions that somebody has to
answer sometime in the future. The RPB has
done that twice. And the Re-Exam reports
do raise the relevant questions. They just
don’t answer them. So we are left with this
document which is increasingly dated with a
bunch of unanswered questions and NO
REAL SENSE OF WHERE WE ARE
GOING collectively. The document itself is
increasingly dated. I took another pass at it
yesterday in preparation for this. You can
see that it is well-meaning and wellintentioned
and says many of the right
things, but it is the child of a different time
when the emphasis was on the segregation
of land uses….when the emphasis was on
buffering and protecting uses from the
impacts of others. There is a lot of impacts
and protecting fro impacts. Would it surprise
you that the definition of high density
residential in the Master Plan is anything
less than a one half acre lot? I don’t know
about you, but a half acre lot doesn’t seem
like high density to me. My lot isn’t a half
acre. It is a lot smaller than that. I don’t feel
like I live in high density. So, it is a product
of its time. And it really needs to be looked
at again from top to bottom. It is also
apparent to me that there are unresolved
issues within the Master Plan itself that spill
out of the language of the document. I think
there are ambiguities and all sorts of
expressions of the uneasy relationship
between the community and the large
institutions that have their homes here.
There is all sorts of shifting around in the
language. Many of these open questions
need to be discussed. We would be a better
community if we could settle them.
The disconnected relationship between the
Master Plan and the Zoning. One thing the
Master Plan is very strong on is preserving
the special qualities and the unique character
of the Princeton Neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t define the
neighborhoods. We do not have a spatial
definition of what these neighborhoods are.
It does not define their special qualities
and what gives them character. This is
problematic. It is a statement of intent. But it
is not specific enough to be useful. The
zoning we have, the various districts, don’t
seem to me to follow the neighborhoods.
One way to align these two things would be
to say “OK, your zoning district coincides
with the Tree Streets Neighborhood! And
here is a the zoning district that coincides
with the Moore-Jefferson St Neighborhood.”
So we would define these neighborhoods
and align the zoning parameters to them that
are appropriate to the special qualities and
character of each neighborhood. No. That
doesn’t happen. As you can tell from the
discussion of non-conformities, there has
never been an effort to make that happen.
The discussion in the Master Plan about
protecting the neighborhoods is empty.
There has been discussion about ‘What is
destroying the neighborhoods?’The answer
is the MEGAHOUSES. THE MONSTER
HOMES. Both the Boro and Township
Zoning Boards in their annual reports talked
about this issue. It is an issue people care
about. But, how do we address it? And, what
is exactly the issue? How is it different from
one neighborhood to another? We don’t
know. We haven’t done the work yet. A
one-size-fits-all solution won’t take care of
it. It hasn’t and it won’t. This requires a
much deeper level of thinking. It requires
going back into the master plan and really
doing the legwork that will support
distinctions between neighborhoods. I could
define how these neighborhoods ought to be
able to define how each one develops over
time as opposed to just trying to freeze them
into something like the way they are today.
Once the master plan has created that basic
armature, then you can go into zoning ad
fine tune it so that the regulatory mechanism
ensures it. That is one disconnect between
the master plan and the zoning codes.
The other disconnect with the master plan
and the zoning code has to do with our
relationship to transit. The master plan has
statements about promoting transit and what
a good thing it is. It leaves it at that. The
zoning doesn’t promote transit in any
meaningful way. We know that there is
transit service in the community. NJ Transit
has buses. There is the Dinky that takes us to
the Northeast Corridor. It is an enormous
resource. There is a whole host of special
purpose transit. The Institute, the University,
the Choir College, the Seminary, the
Medical Center, ETS, all have their own
shuttles. Everybody is spending resources
getting people around. There is a demand for
these services. It is being met by special
purpose transit. The Greater Mercer TMA
did a study a few years ago that documented
all of this. Unfortunately, there wasn’t
enough money to take it to the next step
which would be to combine all of these
services together! Into a rational transit
network. What would it look like? Would it
work financially? We have a very disjointed
and uncoordinated transit system. This
reflects the need for transit. It also reflects
the fact that we don’t take transit seriously
in this community. The very name we have
for the shuttle that takes us to the NE
Corridor…The Dinky…suggests to me that
this is not for real. This is not a real transit
system! This is a play thing. We don’t have
Land Use policies that would support a real
functioning, viable transit system. That is
very important to recognize. You can not
have transit until you provide the
underpinnings of the Land Use System with
the appropriate densities and the appropriate
locations. Transit doesn’t work. We say we
want transit. We say that we will ride transit.
But we don’t provide the underlying
conditions that will make transit feasible.
We make fun of our neighbors who have
made a real mess of the planning process for
the Princeton unction Transit Village, up
until Jim got involved. They have been
twisting around looking for a solution, so we
have made fun of them. But we forget that
we have our own transit-rich location here.
We have a stop on the Northeast Corridor.
THE AREA AROUND THE DINKY IS
OUR TRANSIT VILLAGE. Yet there is no
discussion in the master plan about the
zoning required to make that transit stop
really function as a viable transit location.
Right? The zoning is completely
inappropriate. We have ‘educational’
zoning and you have the service district
which calls for things like coal yards and
lumber yards! This used to be one of the
back doors into Princeton. The rail line was
freight as well as passenger. That explains
the zoning that goes back many decades has
those uses located there. There hasn’t been
freight on those lines for a long time. PU
doesn’t use coal in its power plants
anymore. The zoning for that strp between
Alexander Rd and the Dinky right-of-way is
really up for grabs. It should be completely
be re-evaluated. Something very different
could happen there, particularly given its
proximity to the train station. So that is the
second profound disconnect.
There has been a lot of discussion around
the PU Campus Plan and the idea of moving
the Dinky further from the town. The Arts
District idea is cute. It works in Lincoln
Center where you have a town around it and
you have a critical mass that justifies transit
as an actual, functioning way of getting to
and from. I don’t think the Arts District will
put any more riders on the Dinky. And the
rest of the community is going to miss out
on the transit option. I do think these things
can be reconciled. But we need to recognize
that that is a real, live functioning transit
option for this community. It needs to be
treated as such.
The other key. We are in the ‘what if?’ part
of the presentation now. We need to
disengage from the idea that this particular
technology will be there forever. It won’t. It
is totally obsolete. It will be replaced. The
only paradigm that would really make sense
is that you could board the Dinky and go all
the way to New York. If it were a real spur
that could connect into the main line. A oneseat
ride. Absent that option, when you have
to shift modes at the Junction, it doesn’t
make any sense to look at it in its current
technology of heavy rail. If one thinks that
the technology will change, then, you are
forced to completely re-think how you look
at that area. We know that NJ Transit has
been talking about replacing it with Bus
Rapid Transit. I think that that is a silly
idea. Not appropriate technology. I have my
own idea of what the technology ought to
be. But
Mary Ellen Marino: Please what is your
idea? We have taken rails away before. We
have taken lots & lots of rails away.
Carlos Rodrigues: OK. I think that the
appropriate technology for Princeton and
that corridor is the contemporary trolley. It
runs at grade. In the middle of the street, ust
like any other vehicle. It must have the right
scale and so forth. We need to forget about
what is there now. It is causing everybody
troubles. The idea of moving it south is that
you will not have the interruption that the
right-of-way causes. It is impossible from a
regulatory point of view to get new grade
crossings for heavy rail. That is not the case
with other technologies. If the heavy rail is
shelved and that becomes a right-of-way just
like any other right of way, then all sorts of
interesting things can start to happen. If
heavy rail is set aside, the right of way can
move. The leap we need to make is to say
“This is the wrong transit technology for us.
Here.” We need to look at this and imagine a
different type of technology. What could
happen?
On the one hand you look at the transit and
on the other you look at the land use needed
to support it. They must come together. My
own sense is that we should have some sort
of local transit circulator that actually comes
into town and goes all the way to the train
station and actually serves as a local
circulator. Serving West Windsor as well as
Princeton. It links the two communities. And
provides the armature for a complete reconceptualization
of the land use pattern on
both sides. Both communities need to do
their homework.
And, to wrap up quickly. Parking. The Boro
has perfectly adequate parking standards.
The Township does not. The are way out of
whack They are 1950’s standards. Neither
municipality has bicycle parking standards.
When we say we need to encourage other
modes of transportation, but we require too
much car parking and not enough bike
parking. Another disconnect between what
we say and what we do.
Another disconnect. We say we want to
promote pedestrianism. We have been still
coasting on the 19th c structure of the
community which was amenable to walking.
The actual investment in physical
infrastructure to promote walking and biking
is minimal. Negligible. People like to walk.
They want to walk. We have not gone out of
our way to make that a pleasant activity. Just
look at what goes on in front of any one of
our schools. We would rather put our
resources in having school guards control
traffic than in putting the physical
infrastructure in place that will make the
school guards obsolete and encourage kids
to safely walk and bike to school. Again,
another disconnect. Let me stop here.
[Applause]
Robert Geddes: We are now in open
session. Questions may come from all over.
A number of members of the Council of
Princeton Future are here. I’d like to identify
Peter Kann, Marvin Bressler, Susan
Hockaday, Sheldon Sturges. We are all
delighted to have such a discussion today. I
wonder if one of you would be willing to
lead off with some questions.
Marvin Bressler: First, let me express my
admiration for the quality of these two
presentations. [Applause] Having said that,
you will not be surprised by a ‘however’.
The ‘however’ is the use of the term
‘community’. It has taken on an almost
mystic significance. It seems to me, and I’d
like your response, the word ‘community’
has shifting meanings depending on what
the problem is. When the Medical Center
moves to Plainsboro has it moved out of the
Princeton Community, or does Princeton
still have a stake in it? Is traffic clearly a
local problem confined to the geographical
limits of the Boro and the Township? Or, do
we have wider concerns with a greater
network? So, my question is: “When the
term ‘community is used, what do you have
in mind?”
Jim Constantine: When you actually work
with a community, it is interesting to ask
them to define it relative to the issue.
Sometimes it is not what you do. I learned
that a long time ago when we put very
‘plannerly’ circles identifying particular
neighborhoods, and then we went out and
did a specific process. It was a town in the
Northwest. The peole defined their
neighborhoods completely differently.
Relative to those issues, you have to ask
people from an experiential standpoint how
they would define it. It may be very
different relative to transit, hospital and
different things. That changes the lense of
how you look at it.
Barrie Royce: Can I comment on that? On
the basis of the slides of Palmer Square that
you show, it seems to me that that was
somebody with power who could disrupt a
community. [Now, the John-Witherspoon
area]. And just move people who were
occupying space out of the way and build
something that you are now extolling as an
example of good urban architecture. I think
one has to be very careful in doing the sort
of things we think we might want to do to be
sure that that isn’t a recurring problem in a
locality of this sort. The community needs to
be very carefully defined. And LISTENING
to that community needs to be very careful, I
believe.
Jim Constantine: I indicated that Palmer
Square was an example that was an
incremental planning intervention here. But t
was done at a very different time. If you
look at the newspapers when the project was
announced, there was Edgar Palmer’s
statement, the Mayor’s statement and the
University President’s statement.
Barrie Royce: Bulldozing. We can’t do that
anymore.
Jim Constantine: Absolutely not.
Barrie Royce: Good.
Sheldon Sturges: We are in an age of
grassroots.
Robert Geddes: Marvin, may I answer your
question another way. There are social
communities, political communities,
economic communities. Jim brought Daniel
Burnham to the table. He was a leader of an
approach you would call civic
monumentalism. The community which was
very much in support of that was an
economic community whose work was
supported by the Commercial Club of
Chicago. What the produced was, of course,
was monumental landscapes, buildings and
transportation and land use systems.
Chicago is very much the beneficiary of the
validity of that vision. Now, 100 years later,
the Commercial Club of Chicago has
produced another plan for essentially the
same purpose, that is a plan for the
metropolitan area of Chicago. If you
compare the Burnham Plan of 100 years ago
to the one now, it is very interesting. The
Burnham Plan starts out with landscape and
buildings, the current plan starts out with
education, childcare, health, and so forth ad
eds up with buildings and landscape. In
other words, it took the elements of the
Burnham Plan and reversed them. And, yet,
the same community proposed to do it. I
think there is a lesson in that. It looks a lot
more like what we are concerned with here.
Anne Neumann: I too want to say what an
excellent presentation it was. I have a
question for Jim in particular. I’d like to
pose a question and give 2 quick examples.
You were very eloquent o the subject of
community input into development. Very
much like the process that Princeton Future
has run. But, how does the community know
that its input is going to be reflected in the
output? In the actual development? My
first example, is when our Boro Council
discussed the zoning for Merwick, initially,
without any community use or
consideration. And, one of the gentlemen
here today said he thought he had given
input at the wrong places. Let’s say he came
to Princeton Future charrettes and said what
he would like to see at Merwick. Evidently,
going before Boro Council was a different
place to do that. That started as a failure. It
looked as if the community was going to
fail. Then two of the 5 Boro Council
members who had not recused themselves
voted for a delay for community-based
reasons. And another voted for a delay
because of something a little bit extraneous.
So that turned into a success in my view.
The second is the University plan for the
Arts & Transit district. They feel…they
would say that they have given the
community a great deal of input. The
community has picked up on the movement
of the Dinky as something to rally around
which seems to be symbolic of a much
larger problem with the Arts & Transit
district. Some of which Carlos addressed
very well, I thought. The university is giving
us a little bit of help with the jitney and I
think they are trying to make us feel that we
have been successful in our input into their
plans. Yet, I feel that that is a failure for the
community. Thank you.
Robert Geddes: Anne, please pose your
point as a question.
Anne Neumann: When the community
gives input, as you describe the long process
of giving input…What guarantee does the
community have that its input will be
reflected in the output, in the actual
development?
Jim Constantine: In my experience, if the
input is strong and clear and transparent,
you’ll be able to follow it very clearly. You
may be referencing situations where the
input wasn’t strong and transparent enough.
Anne Neumann: I can hardly imagine
anything stronger than the community
reaction to moving the Dinky. Yet, surely, if
the University moves ahead the Dinky will
move.
Carlos Rodriques: You don’t want me to
comment on this.
Audience: Please do [applause]
Linda Sipprelle: I do want to thank you
very much for the two presentations. I have
a question. How can the Boro residents,
which follows along the previous question.
Have their voices heard? I am referring to
the Boro’s negotiations with Nassau HKT.
As far as know, there has been no charrette.
There are myriads of problems, the leaking
garage and the financial discrepancies.
Many citizens have voiced their concerns
about proceeding with this proposal. So far,
we have no positive response to our
concerns from the Boro. I wonder if you
would please comment on that.
Robert Geddes: The kind of question you
pose between the kind of activities that
Carlos and Jim have been talking about and
the responsibility of government. That really
is the general issue. It is a democracy. A
representative democracy. Our
representatives are elected. So, it is the
relationship between participatory
democracy on the one hand and
representative democracy on the other.
Having said that, it would be a good term
paper.
Sheldon Sturges: I’d just like to make one
comment. Princeton Future did hold 100
meetings on the subject of the design of that
square and the development of the Tulane
parking lot. We held workshop charrettes.
We hired an urban design professional to
turn the community’s conversation into a
financially-sound development plan. The
input and the output of those proceedings is
on the website [www.princetonfuture.org].
The discussions occurred in 2001-2 and
carried on until the Boro voted its resolution
in August 2003. Many of us were involved. I
think the design, including the economic
feasibility study, was carefully vetted. We
raised a lot of money to do it. There was a
lot of good work done. We negotiated with
the Mayor and the developer. Boro Council
listened responsively.
David Goldfarb: I’d like to address a
couple of things. The state law allows for a
regional planning board, I believe. Princeton
has the only one in the State of New Jersey.
State law does not allow for regional zoning
process, or regional zoning ordinances,
although there is nothing preventing the 2
Princetons from coordinating their zoning
ordinances. The point I would like to
address is the reason behind the high
number of non-conforming uses. As a
resident of Charlton St. in a house that
doesn’t comply in any respect to its zoning,
with the possible exception of height. The
goal of zoning ordinances is to create the
lowest common denominator where it is
reasonable to assume that if people build as
of right, the neighbors will not be overly
concerned. We tried several years ago to
revisit our zoning ordinances. We had a
great deal of difficulty figuring out where
that should be. I think it is close. I think
there is one instance where a developer
came in and built as of right on Quarry St. It
should have gone to the Zoning Board. I
think those of you who have been there
know what I am talking about.
Barrie Royce: You mean the duplex? The
Malibu Beach house? It is entirely as of
right.
David Goldfarb: Yes. That is what I mean.
Even though a very large percentage of R4
is non-compliant, that house was built as of
right. You might argue that we should have
set the barrier even lower so that that would
have come before the Zoning Board and the
neighbors, then, would have had a chance to
provide their input.
Barrie Royce: What do you think the
Zoning Board should have done? The FAR
is fine. You don’t like the look of it?
David Goldfarb: My point, and I am not
making it well enough, if every home in the
Boro were non-compliant, and everybody
had to come before the Zoning Board, that
house would have had to come before the
Zoning Board. So one could argue that even
though a very large percentage of R4 is noncompliant,
we should make a higher
percentage non-compliant so that
development projects like that would have
come before the zoning board and the
neighbors could have provided their input.
Of course, we are open to the suggestion
that we should liberalize our zoning so that
people would have a greater opportunity to
invest in their homes and make the town
look better. We have to find away to do it
without the unintended consequences of
homes such as the one on Quarry St. That is
a challenge, quite frankly, that we have not
been up to. So we are left with the status
quo, where a very high percentage of the
projects come before the zoning board. We
appreciate the work the zoning board does in
gathering community input and influencing
the developers to make the project more
acceptable to the neighborhood.
Barrie Royce: I think it is very important
that we understand what zoning boards do.
We do not, in general, try to interfere with
the artistic expression of homeowners. We
just try to insure that the structure they have
put on the site is complying with a series of
ordinances which are legal documents. If the
structures do not comply, we try to see
whether the smallish discrepancies between
what the owner wishes and what the law
permits can be justified on the basis of a
series of criteria. The Zoning Board is a
much more legal activity than it is one that
deals with opinion. We hear what people
have to say because that is a necessary thing
to do. That helps us to decide on the
magnitude of the discrepancy and how we
evaluate it. I think that if you have the
Zoning Board interfering with aesthetics,
you are going to get pyramids built all over
the place. That is not what you want.
___: I want to ask a little bit more about the
replacement trolley for the Dinky. Will it be
electrical power or gasoline powered.
Carlos Rodriques: You are assuming that I
have thought this thing all of the way
through.
____: We will listen to whatever you have
given thought to.
Carlos Rodriques: I don’t know. Beyond
the scale and the general technology, I
haven’t taken it any further.
Barrie Royce: Nuclear electricity.
Robert Geddes: I think that Carlos has
distracted us from his argument. He was
making an argument for relating land use
and transportation. Heavy rail, what he used
to call a Stalinist method of transportation,
with a fixed point origin and destination
doesn’t do that. There are flexible means of
transportation now evolving that we ought to
be aware of. That’s the basic point. I do
think that we are in a time where we are
going to have all sorts of new vehicles.
Scooters. Smart Cars. You can not change
the fact that we have transportation systems.
I often think that if someone were going to
come back from Mars, he would think that
there two species o Earth: one covered with
leather, and the other covered with steel.
Also think that those of you who think that
bicycles are going to solve the problem are
just plain wrong. We have had a bike system
here for ages. Charlie Agle, who the planner
when I arrived here, got a bicycle path
system built. There is now a bike path in
front of my old home. To my knowledge,
three people have used it in the last year. I
think we are going to find new systems.
They will probably come from Harley
Davison and Vespa. There will be lots and
lots of different kinds of transportation
systems. There might be something in the
notion of pods which you can have. You
would then go down to a certain spot, you
would then be linked together and you
would then get into Penn Station, say good
bye to your pod and go off. The future will
be very different from the past. We have to
get away from the notion of a really
outmoded transportation system.
Q & A
___: OK. I am going to ask a related
question because we have recenty adopted
something called a jitney. This is a bus that
travels in a loop around town, picking up
people. It is a free bus. When I traveled in
Central America, many years ago, there are
2 different characteristics of the jitneys
there. First of all, they are all privately
owned. Secondly, they took people from the
outlying villages into the city where they’d
go to work. They took them back in the
evening. They did it for a fee and they
delivered people directly to their homes. The
jitney doesn’t do this. It is like the yellow
bicycles. This is not an attempt to solve that
problem. It is just something to throw
money at.
Jim Constantine: Maybe the heart of the
whole circulation issue is that we have’t
gone out and clarified enough from the end
user. Start with…I lived in the Boro for over
5 years without a car because I decided to
test the planners theory about what it like to
live in a pedestrian-oriented/transit-oriented
community. If you actually do something
like that, you have an entirely different
perspective than if you use your car like a
well-worn pair of slippers you put on every
morning and scoot about town. I watched
the Free-B go down the street the other
morning and there was not one person in it
at 8:30. Part of it might be that it is not
yellow like those bicycles. You can’t see it.
The graphics on it are very easy to miss.
Carlos Rodriques: One thing I would add
and ever transit person will tell you this.
Every time you are required to shift mode,
you get a tremendous drop-off in ridership.
So the idea that I am going to take the jitney
to the Dinky and the Dinky to the Main Line
is a real problem. Especially, if each ride is
7 minutes or so.
___: And it is even worse if you have to
walk 10 minutes to get to the loop bus.
Jim Constantine: The modes must be
smooth. The Dinky often isn’t waiting for
you when you get off the train. It creates
frustration. Stepping back to the user’s
standpoint. The people we want to use the
system. It is somebody we want to shed a
car. Where has there been a complete userdriven
re-thinking of movement? We talk
about it as policy, but we haven’t done it.
Robert Geddes: The answer is the car. It
gives freedom. It gives us privacy. It gives
all sorts of benefits. We have never really
demanded that the cars be better. Tata in
India is building a vehicle that is likely to be
a transforming thing. For $2,000. BMW
started out as a motor cycle company. The
Smart Car is not a very smart car. It doesn’t
get good mileage. But it does make possible
2 people to travel together which a bicycle
has a lot of trouble doing. But the Smart Car
could be the basis. It is really not much
bigger than I am right here. It would be the
depth of brilliance to ignore cars.
Chip Crider: It is probably time to bring
this forward. For some strange reason, I
started thinking about the transportation
problem a year ago March when Marvin
Reed started saying “Don’t move the Dinky
an inch. Leave it where it is!” I live on Bank
St and I was toying with this as an
intellectual game. The Dinky is, as Carlos
said, antiquated. It is the wrong size. It is the
wrong tool for the job. It doesn’t go where
people want to go. I have always lived on
that side of town and I have watched 10,000
people shlep down University Place. I am an
engineer. I started to try to figure how to get
the Dinky downtown. I figured that out but I
couldn’t expand it further and any
transportation system needs to be
expandable. The problem is that it is just
too big. I realized that if we went to a
smaller type train, it could turn quicker and
be more nimble. It could change form
underground to grade level more quickly. I
was able to map out a right-of-way through
most of the town almost completely on
University or public land that only needs a
couple of properties to be purchased and a
couple of easements to be obtained. It is
what might be called the last mile of public
transit in Princeton, and that is what is
missing. If public transit is going to work
and if people are going to take it, and if we
are going to get them to NOT have that
second car, it has got to go when they want
to go. It has got to go where they want to
go. It has to go 24/7. It’s gotta be snappy
and inviting. That is all there is to it! People
have to say: “It is just not worth having that
car!” In looking through the trains, there are
half-a-dozen companies working on
something called PERSONAL RAPID
TRANSIT. These are small 2-4 person
vehicles. They run on demand. You punch
in where you are going and it takes you
there. It turns out you can get the capacity,
or more, than you can get from conventional
systems. I like talking with Carlos. But his
vision of trolleys breaks down because of
the following: The State and County
projections are that by 2020, traffic in
Princeton will increase by 55%. What that
means is that the times we need it the most,
all of the trolleys, jitneys, shuttles, whatever
you want to call them: ever single one of
them is going to be stuck. THE ONLY
THING THAT WILL FUNCTION IS
SOMETHING THAT FUNCTIONS ON
AN INDEPENDENT RIGHT-OF-WAY. If
gas continues to go, it will drive people to
rapid transit sooner. We need to do some
sort of system that does the last mile. I have
tried to talk to some of the local politicians,
but I have not gotten much help. But I
believe in friends in low places, and I know
people in the Boro’s Engineering
Department and got something pt together
and realized that the only way to get this to
happen is to have the University do it as
part of the Arts and Transit Village. Bob
Durkee set up a meeting with all of the
appropriate people. They have heard my
ideas. They are mulling them over.
Everything the University with regard to
planning is deep secret. They haven’t said
‘no’. I believe it is possible to get this first
link in to get the new Dinky in as part of the
Arts Campus expansion..I call it
SPURTS..Speedy Princeton Urban Rapid
Transit System. Once we have that in, there
is a big report issued last year by the NJ
Transit Report of last year presented to Gov
Corzine in 2007. Every reason for PRT in
Princeton is here. Concentrated areas of
ridership. Separation. Congestion. We need
to do something like this. It is possible to do
this. We have to act. Maybe working outside
of the system is the better way to go.
[Applause]
Carlos Rodriques: Obviously, Chip and I
are working towards the same general
direction. RPA has a board member who is a
big Personal Rapid Transit supporter. Yes. I
think it should be looked into on the same
basis as other systems. We need to find the
right system. If that is the right system. Fine.
I don’t think it is. But, if the studies show
that it is, I am perfectly happy to go with it. I
will say that the State’s projections are not
something I necessarily put a lot of faith
into. It is sort of like looking at your teen
age son’s feet and projecting the size of the
shoe they will be wearing as an adult, if all
you do is look at between the age of 10 &
15. The same rate of growth doesn’t
continue forever. At some point, it sort of
stops. We should be considering
alternatives. As a planner, I am not
convinced that PRT allows you to get the
transportation and the land use to work
together as they should. My bias is
something that really feeds on a seamless
connection between land use and
transportation. I think PRT is more of a fluid
kind of an option.
Kevin Wilkes: If I could just follow up on
what I think my colleague David was
driving at. The problem is not that the house
on Quarry St should have appeared before
the zoning board. The problem is that the
zoning in that neighborhood ALLOWS that
to be an as-of-right condition. What is
wrong with the house is not what it looks
like. What is wrong with the house is that
it doesn’t have a front porch like every
other house on that street. It doesn’t have
a side driveway like every other house on
that street. It doesn’t have a garage for one
car in the backyard like every other house on
that street. It has a front yard filled with
paving and parking and garage doors. This is
not characteristic of the Witherspoon-
Jackson Neighborhood. If you look at the
difference between that house and the one
that Hendricks Davis built for himself on
John St, you will see the difference between
developer-driven avarice and the pride of a
homeowner rebuilding his homestead. Just a
comment.
What I want to ask you both: Given the
problem with public planning. Given that
our Planning Board doesn’t actually plan.
It is really a misnomer. They handle
paperwork about applications that shuffle
in and out in a sequence of isolated spot
approvals. How can we as a
community…How can the politicians lead
citizens in collective design planning. In
these community design workshops you
mention, could you site for us a strategy
how, we, here, in Princeton Township and
Princeton Boro could pursue these goals? …
Jim Constantine: First, I fairness to the
Planning Board, what started out as Blue
Ribbon Planning Commissions 100 years
ago in Chicago has evolved into regulatory
boards. It is not just a Princeton issue. It is
across NJ. It is literally across the nation,
although there are certain pockets, in the
Pacific NW where they try to plan more in a
grassroots manner. Nobody is doing
anything wrong here. We are part of the
same system as everybody else. Carlos & I
have worked together for 13-14 years. We
worked on a project a few years ago where
we were advising the town officials as well
as a developer in a major re-development
project. We said “We really think what you
need to do is to reach out to the
community.” They said “No. No. Let’s do
one more meeting and trot out the same
plan.” Finally a citizens-for-responsibledevelopment
type group emerged. Basically,
they came to the master plan and forced in
that there should be public visioning
sessions. Public participation for this
particular project. Low and behold, it
became built into the master plan. We did
the first session and the developer and town
officials turned around and said “My God,
not only did we not lose our shirt, the project
moved forward 6 months”. We did 3 more
rounds. So part of it is just making a policy
decision, if that is what you need to do. IT
IS NOT HARD. I want to make one
comment about the zoning and nonconformity
issues. I have had some
experience with regulatory reform. My most
telling experience was trying to move into
Princeton 20 years ago. I had to go in for a
use variance. Barrie wasn’t there. It really
woke me up because I had my own skin in
the game. We have ‘crutched on it”. We just
throw everything into zoning. We are
discussing whole neighborhoods living in
non-conforming situations. And that we are
saying: “Let’s just send everybody to the
zoning board for everything.” IT IS
SYMPTOMATIC OF AN ABSOLUTELY
BROKEN SYSTEM. During the break,
Wanda and I were talking about taking a
look at the whole system. Revisiting zoning
and changing standards are difficult. One
mayor said to me once, “I want to eliminate
all of these nickel & dime things that are
coming before the planning board. I don’t
want someone coming in for one parking
space or because the sign is one inch too
big.” We left everything the same and took
everything that had been glommed on for
decades and moved them to become ‘design
criteria’. Then, we empowered the zoning
officer to grant waivers. The municipal
attorney said we are going to make the
zoning officer check in with the chair of the
planning or zoning board when what was
formerly a variance became a waiver. We
empowered the ability…what used to be
felonies/trial by jury, and allowed some
plea-bargaining in the back room and
criteria for some negotiation. The whole
system works better. In 1990-1, Marvin, as
Mayor, came to the Historic Preservation
Review Committee, and said that we needed
to figure out a way to move things faster. So
we decided to allow the chair to go and
approve signs and awnings. At the
beginning of every meeting, we have a
report on the waivers. We are a better board
because we don’t have to deal with all of the
nickel and dime things. If we applied it to
zoning the same way: simplification,
streamlining. Allowing for decisions to pass
down. But provide some cover. At HPRC,
we can flag something if it is an issue.
Kevin Wilkes: Jim, who should pay for the
public visioning process in Princeton?
Jim Constantine: Most of the situations I
have been involved with are privately
funded because the developer/land owner
wants the process to move forward. We have
a broken state planning system. It is wellintended.
Carlos used to work at the Office
for Smart Growth. We have a mess with
affordable housing.
Carlos Rodriques: There is no formula for
how to best do things. In some towns, it is
the planning board, in some towns it is the
parking authority, or the redevelopment, or
an economic development agency that is
really driving the bus. I know that we will be
discussing these various formats in a later
session of Princeton Future on September
20. What is always necessary is that you
have an agency, whether it is a public, semipublic
or private agency that is driving the
process. It can be | | |
