By Jennifer Kohlhepp, Staff Writer
Walkable communities where people can live, work, eat and play, like what’s planned for Princeton Forrestal Village, are the wave of the future, according to James W. Hughes.
The Historical Society of Princeton hosted Mr. Hughes, distinguished professor and dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, at the Nassau Club on Wednesday evening. He discussed the topics in his most recent book, “New Jersey’s Postsuburban Economy,” which was co-authored with Joseph J. Seneca, Rutgers University professor of economics, and based on the nearly three-decade-long Rutgers Regional Report series.
In a presentation titled, “New Jersey’s Postsuburban Economy and Demography,” Dean Hughes pointed to New Jersey’s long history of adapting to a changing economic climate from the rural agricultural and natural resource based economy and lifestyle of the 17th century to today’s postindustrial, suburban-dominated, automobile-dependent economy. He said the state is on the brink of yet another transformation, this one driven by a new technology and an internet-based global economy.
“New Jersey is in the midst of a period of economic and demographic transformation,” Dean Hughes said.
In the 1980s, New Jersey underwent an office building boon and there were many white-collar jobs in information processing and record keeping. However, as the 80s progressed into the 2000s, black rotary phones, typewriters and paper filing systems were transformed by the advent of desktop computers, microprocessors, spreadsheet programs, Internet access and mobile information technology, according to Dean Hughes.
“This era is still in its infancy but it has transformed the nature of white-collar work,” he said.
There’s also a new demographic paradigm, according to Dean Hughes. The baby boom, the most suburban-centric generation in history, now confronts retirement and represents the workforce and development values of the past. “When it reached its peak, tract house suburbia oozed across New Jersey,” Dean Hughes said pointing to pictures of what he called “McMansions” and “Starter Castles.”
In the baby boomers’ stead, their children, what he called echo boomers/millennials, are rapidly becoming today’s critical workforce dynamic.
“Now in their twenties and early thirties, they are a tech-savvy collaborative generation wanting to live in higher-density, nonsuburban activity environments and do not, in general, find suburban employment and one-dimensional insular office campuses particularly attractive,” Dean Hughes said.
The most talented and highly skilled of these are known as the digerati, he said, and because of their labor market skills, they have even stronger work, location, and lifestyle preferences and impacts. Their perspective on the world is quite different from that of their baby boom parents, according to Dean Hughes.
The echo boomers/millenials and digerati are transforming corporate America. A new corporate urbanism is supplanting insulated and isolated suburban office campuses, leaving the once leading-edge suburban office agglomerations of the 1980s aging and, in many cases, obsolete, according to Dean Hughes.
“What is the future of these stranded assets?” Dean Hughes asked. “Can we re-purpose and transform sterile office parks and campuses into interactive full-life spaces?”
The advances in information technology, particularly mobile information technology, and the forces of globalization are fostering innovative, collaborative, and clustered live–work–play urban environments, according to Dean Hughes.
“Some of these will evolve organically but we have to be able to re-purpose to build multifunctional living spaces with a host of activities,” he said.
All of these changes suggest that the leading role of demographically driven suburban-centric regional economic growth now represent the 20th century past. While the data are only now reflecting the impact of these changes, a consistent picture is emerging. Whether these trends will endure in the long run remains to be seen, according to Dean Hughes.
New Jersey is just starting to adapt to the rapidly advancing mobile technology that is the new normal, he said.
“There are more profound changes on the horizon,” Dean Hughes said. “Fasten your seatbelts. A wild ride lies ahead of us.”