Richard K. Rein

At a time when the shrill voices of partisan national politics have driven me to turn the channel to coverage of minor league baseball and golf matches, I have been pleasantly surprised at the nonpartisan nature of most discussions regarding economic revitalization of downtowns, affordable housing, parking, traffic congestion, and other issues facing today’s metropolitan centers. It’s a wonderful respite. So I was alarmed by Christopher F. Rufo’s assertion in an August 22 Wall Street Journal op ed that “new left urbanists” are trying to make local governments “rebuild the urban environment” to “set right society’s socioeconomic, racial and moral deficiencies.”

That contention didn’t match my experience reporting and writing about urban issues over the past two years. I have encountered numerous proposals that seem less leftist and more like fiscal conservatism as once practiced by old-fashioned, reasonable Republicans. Congestion pricing for automobile traffic and higher parking meter fees in intensely used neighborhoods sound to me like lessons in supply and demand. Easing zoning rules so that a developer can build housing with no minimum number of parking spaces is an opportunity for entrepreneurial risk-taking: If the developer misjudges the market, he will pay.

Two heroes of the “new urbanism” are former mayors Joe Riley of Charleston, SC, and Mick Cornett of Oklahoma City. You could read thousands of words about the accomplishments of either man before you discovered his political affiliation. As urbanist Richard Florida wrote in the foreword to Cornett’s book, The Next American City, “Local leadership really does defy party. . . . When I meet a national politician, it is immediately clear which side of the political divide they’re on. But when I travel to cities across the United States, I am amazed I can never tell who is a Democrat and who is a Republican.”> Read More …

An update has finally been posted in the case of the 26-year-old employee of a Princeton-based marketing firm who was found murdered in her apartment after going home for lunch on June 10. Police have charged a co-worker, Kenneth C. Saal, 30, of Lindenwold, NJ, with the murder.

Carolyn Byington, a graduate of Lafayette College, had worked at the Engine Group at 902 Carnegie Center in the Princeton-Route 1 corridor. The August 21 arrest for first degree murder was announced by Plainsboro police and the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office. Details on the accused killer’s alleged activities on the afternoon of the murder were reported by NJ.com.

A LinkedIn account for Kenneth Saal described him as a “staff accountant” at Engine Group, “with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in fixed assets, data analysis, account reconciliation, accounting, and intercompany accounts. Strong accounting professional with a masters focused in business administration from Monmouth University.” A 2011 graduate of Pace University’s Lubin School of Business, according to the LinkedIn profile, Saal previously worked at the Mercadien Group in Hamilton Township and at Valeant Pharmaceuticals in Bridgewater, before joining Engine Group in July, 2016.

ReinReports.com took notice of the case in a post filed July 30 as an indication of an emerging “news desert,” even in the relatively affluent central New Jersey community. Whereas 20 years ago journalists from several different news organizations might have pursued leads at the victim’s company, or knocked on doors of neighboring apartments to determine if anyone had heard anything suspicious that day, coverage now was limited mostly to the conveyance of official police reports. Understaffed and overworked, news organizations do their best. And less dramatic stories, like zoning and planning board matters, go largely uncovered.

One day in June, a 26-year-old woman working for a marketing and advertising firm in the prestigious Carnegie Center in the Princeton-Route 1 business corridor went home for lunch at her nearby apartment. She never returned. Her colleagues, alarmed at her absence, called police. They discovered the woman’s body at about 6 p.m. She had been murdered. According to news stories, some neighbors may have heard muffled screams coming from the apartment that afternoon. But no neighbors called the police.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the murder of a young white woman in an affluent community would have caused a flood of media coverage. The unconfirmed reports that neighbors heard something but reported nothing would have invoked the infamous killing of Kitty Genovese in Kew Gardens, Queens, in 1964, while neighbors watched silently. Today in central New Jersey you would have expected a reporter to go door to door in the apartment complex, asking everyone who heard what and when.

But in the case of Carolyn Byington, a 26-year-old Lafayette College graduate from Basking Ridge, NJ, found murdered June 10 in her apartment in the Hunters Glen section of Plainsboro, NJ, there was no flood of media coverage. In fact, after the initial reports of her death the news dried up. Her hometown paper, the West Windsor-Plainsboro News, did issue a follow up on June 28, noting that local police and the county prosecutor had enlisted the help of federal law enforcement agencies, as well, in their investigation. Even then the authorities declined to reveal the manner in which the victim had been killed.

Beyond that, there was not a peep – at least nothing found in a recent Google search – regarding the murder.

Why not? Possibly the police have asked reporters not to dig too much because the digging might compromise the investigation. More likely it’s because the media in central New Jersey is understaffed, overworked, short on resources, and more than willing to settle for stories that are handed to them by local governing bodies and police departments. Here in relatively affluent central New Jersey, as well as in many other places around the country, we are living in a “news desert,” roughly akin to the “food deserts” created when the last supermarket closes up in an urban neighborhood.> Read More …

It shouldn’t be a news story when someone leaves his house in a suburb, jumps on a train to Manhattan, walks to a meeting on the upper East Side, and then returns to the suburb, all on the appointed schedule of the train company.

I did just that a few weeks ago, traveling from my home in Princeton, New Jersey, to an interview at the Cosmopolitan Club on East 66^TH Street with an acquaintance of the late urbanist William H. Whyte, the subject of a biography I’m writing. And I did so in the aftermath of weeks, months, and even years of horrendous news about NJ Transit, the tracks it travels on, the 108-year-old tunnels it uses to get under the Hudson River, and the overcrowded Penn Station where it makes its final stop.

Just a few months before my train commute, I heard a presentation by Tom Wright, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, painting a grim picture of the beleaguered NJ Transit and the “precarious” condition of the tunnels. NJTV just reported that in the past four years NJ Transit and Amtrak trains have been stuck a total of 1,800 hours in the tunnels and on the nearby Portal Bridge. If you have an iota of claustrophobia in your psyche, Wright’s description of the 108-year-old tunnels – undulating up and down in the slime below the Hudson River — will give you the creeps.

In addition to the tunnels and the ongoing problems on the Northeast Corridor, commuters in Princeton had a more basic problem: The connecting line from Princeton to Princeton Junction had been shut down for nearly half a year so that NJ Transit could concentrate its resources on installation of a mandated safety equipment system. By the time I was ready to head into the city the “Dinky” line, as it is known, was back in service.

With the only alternative a bus to the Port Authority or a drive into the city, I decided to take my chances with the train. It was a wise choice, with an unexpected bonus at the end — a perfect example of why even occasional commuters such as myself should appreciate the July 22 announcement by the governors of New Jersey and New York to move ahead with a project (despite continued resistance from the Trump administration) to replace the tunnels, drawing on money not just from rail commuters but from all taxpayers.> Read More …