Planning After Mount Laurel: To Gild “the Ghetto” or Disperse It?

When the New Jersey State Supreme Court ruled that every community had an obligation to actively include affordable units in its housing stock, it was taking up the challenge, laid down by the Kerner Commission in 1968, to disperse levels of concentrated poverty that had contributed to the wave of civil disorders plaguing the country. A generation later, despite open housing laws, metropolitan communities remain highly segregated, not the least in New Jersey. A revitalization plan for Camden, where the Mount Laurel affordable housing cases were instigated, has given lip service to regionalizing the recovery effort, a challenge the Ford Foundation has picked up by supporting a number of related efforts aimed at achieving “regional equity.” Such efforts address the state court’s support for “sound planning,” but resistance to integration remains, leaving the outcome of concerted investments in social justice still very much in doubt.