But much of that inventory is now 40 years old and built in the pre-internet days, said James Hughes, a professor of urban planning and policy development at Rutgers University.
“A lot of it was cheaply built. So now we have the aging, obsolete suburban inventory that we have to deal with today,” he said in a 2025 interview.
Other factors such as the Great Recession, as well as the widespread telecommuting born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, hastened the movement of companies back to urban centers, Hughes said.
“A century ago, we had the European waves of immigration that fed our factories, and now our highly educated workforce fills the high-technology jobs of the present and future,” he said. “In many cases, firms treasure their New Jersey employees and don’t want to lose them by moving out of state, so they do keep operations here.”
Samsung is leaving its Englewood Cliffs, NJ headquarters with 1,200 employees headed to Texas. Rutgers Bloustein School professor James Hughes didn’t mince words: “This is a tough deal for New Jersey. New Jersey has to confront this.” Even top schools and transit access “was not enough to keep them.”
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to turn New Jersey into a destination, not just a transit hub,” said Dr. James Hughes.
“New Jersey’s housing production roller coaster has been defined by long-term crests and falls since the 1940s,” James Hughes said. “The increase in construction during the 2020s so far suggests a potential turning point that adds important context to ongoing policy discussions about housing supply in New Jersey.”
“There’s a desire by the powers in Trenton that we at least maintain or stimulate more housing production,” Hughes said. “One of the sources of new housing has been obsolete office buildings. They have the land and utilities in place. It’s higher density housing, but policies like that can be very effective.”
“Altogether, these economic, demographic and geographic factors provide a broader framework for understanding recent housing production trends within the state’s evolving economic and population landscape,” said Hughes.
The Trump administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and crackdown clearly have had an impact, making it “much less attractive to come to the United States,” said Rutgers University Professor James Hughes, who studies the state’s demographic trends
“There is no magical, painless way of making the state more affordable,” he said. “It took us decades and decades to get us into the position we’re in, and it’s going to take a long time to change things.”