New Urbanism: Urban Solutions 03 — EATING FLORIDA

Seaside

Not far east of Grayton Beach and about 28 miles from Destin on Walton County Highway 30-A is Seaside, a truly remarkable beach resort community. Whether you’re vacationing around Destin, Fort Walton Beach, or Panama City or travelling in the Panhandle on Interstate 10, Seaside, a resort unlike any other in Florida, is well worth the time and effort to visit.

In 1979, architectural enthusiast and developer Robert Davis inherited 80 acres of prime beachfront property with 2,800 lineal feet along the Gulf of Mexico from his grandfather, a prosperous department store magnate. Located in southern Walton County near Seagrove Beach, an existing vacation community which, if I were very charitable, could be described as nondescript, Davis's inheritance was a fairly unprepossessing site over which only a visionary might wax poetic. Except for the terrific beach. Despite the lackluster character of his immediate neighbors in Seagrove, Davis and his wife, Daryl, were convinced the beachfront was so enchanting that selling the undeveloped land behind it for two or three thousand dollars an acre would be a major mistake. With its beautiful oceanfront environment Davis knew the site had enormous market potential. He realized that his inheritance was a near-perfect opportunity to create an exclusive beach-oriented resort development unlike any in Florida.

In an interesting twist, Davis had started his professional career in Washington, D.C., working as an architect on subsidized housing developments. After a few frustrating years of laboring on projects that he thought only served to abuse the poor by isolating them in unmanageable housing he fled the District and wound up in Miami, developing town houses and winning several State design awards in the process.

Mulling over a vague idea about resurrecting the old Florida Cracker style house (also known as Frame Vernacular), he approached the husband-wife architectural and planning team of Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. They had recently parted ways with Arquitectonia, a cutting edge Miami firm they co-founded, and started their own design shop, DPZ. Duany is a self-described Cuban of the “exile” generation and Plater-Zyberk a Polish-American snowbird from the East.

After discussing ways to make his property a demonstration project in how to build a coherent resort community that worked from day one, Davis immediately hired the young team. Believe it or not, his assignment was their very first urban planning project and they had never previously drawn up a Master Plan for a new town. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is hard for this grizzled old planner to swallow, except that, in the end, talent always tells.

The relationship quickly blossomed into a marriage made in Heaven. The design team, Robert and Daryl Davis and Duany and Plater-Zyberk, first toured the region to examine old southern towns to identify workable elements. They then gradually synthesized a design approach based on their observations and DPZ’s research into classic New Towns of the past, especially those created by the famous urban planning pioneers, John Nolan (designer of the Venice, Florida, Master Plan) and Clarence Perry (designer of Radburn, New Jersey).

In a two week long brainstorming session, called a charrette by all of us ever so sophisticated architects and planners, the Davises, DPZ, local officials, and other design consultants sketched out a revolutionary plan. They effectively trashed the conventional wisdom concerning vacation resorts. Their extraordinary plan, when built, became an internationally famous community featured in 1990 by Time as the “Best of the Decade” in design and also was extolled on the pages of U.S. News & World Report, the Atlantic Monthly, People, Travel and Leisure and Smithsonian, among others.

But years before this extraordinary success came the design phase and then the Master Plan. Seaside would be small, totaling 80 acres, about the size of an average regional shopping mall. Its antecedents were unashamedly urban, featuring modest-sized houses on small lots with narrow streets. Wood was the preferred building material for homes and pitched metal roofs became the standard. Small, functional towers were incorporated into many homes so residents could view the ocean and enjoy breezes throughout the day. The development would have no sidewalks, only shoulders of crushed shell so residents could walk barefoot to and from the beach. And, miracle of miracles, the Plan sought to create a sense of community by emphasizing public over private space and by celebrating pedestrians over vehicles, with a compact layout based on a five-minute walking distance from one end of Seaside to the other.

In their design process, Plater-Zyberk and Duany first defined the public spaces, including buildings, town center, parks, and Route 30A, which constitutes the main highway access. Next came a network of 20-foot wide rectilinear interior roads paved with soft pink bricks dissected by grand diagonal boulevards. Then the open-air gift and clothing market along Route 30A and the narrow alleys and sand walkways that cut through the middle of the blocks. Lastly, came the enchanting natural features — the beach and dunes. The planners eliminated the repetitive block and lot pattern found in many 20th Century New Towns by varying the width, depth, and shapes of the building lots and through imaginative use of diagonal boulevards. The resulting distinctly urban landscape and intimate texture permits a variety of lot locations, orientations, size, and price that most beach resorts develop only after many decades, if at all.

The Seaside landscape exhibits not the cold, geometric formalism of a Master Plan but the warm, user-friendly atmosphere associated with older, well-established communities. Several witty design elements also provide Seaside with a relaxed, devil-may-care atmosphere that never takes itself seriously: colorfully designed pergolas and gazebos, boardwalks over the beach dunes, several architecturally distinctive beach pavilions, and even an old, strictly non-functional, tongue in cheek water tower imported from Virginia (now long gone). High order panache, in my book, though certain architectural snobs who are humor-challenged to the nth degree have taken umbrage over it.

Duany and Plater-Zyberk have relied on a very conventional architectural system to accomplish a most unconventional result: design regulations or performance standards that establish eight building types and a common design vocabulary published in a pictorial-graphic document that even the most obtuse architect might comprehend and follow.

Wood siding painted in bright pastels        White or cream colored trim

Vertical windows                                        Metal roofs, either gable or shed

Screened porches and verandas                Picket fences

Seaside has developed such a reputation for excellence in the design community that architects are eager to have their work seen there. Leon Krier, Scott Merrill, Deborah Burke, Stephen Holl, Carey McWhorter, Tony Atkin, Ernesto Buch, Walter Chatham, Stuart Cohen and Anders Nerim, and Robert Davis and Robert Lamar are only a few whose designs have been constructed in Seaside in a variety of styles — Florida Cracker, Neo-Classical, Victorian, Post-Modern, and even Deconstructivist. Although Seaside has the unmistakable look and feel of a beach community right off the streets of both Cape Cod and antebellum Charleston, it is one Florida resort town that can legitimately be called beautiful, charming, and unique.

So, what’s the bottom line? Why is Seaside so meaningful to professional planners and urban designers AND to the affluent, second home buying crowd? The answer is simple. Duany and Plater-Zyberk have captured the twin ideals of community and individual privacy that characterize small towns while simultaneously excising the evils of boredom and economic stagnation. If you don’t think that’s difficult, take a good look around your subdivision. They have taken the image of the small town and metamorphosed it into a model of functional urban development that is neither alienating nor threatening. Their success at Seaside has generated enormous discussion-debate-argument among the people across the country who are involved in designing and developing urban places. What they’re talking about is the on-the-ground, put-words-into-action meaning of neighborhoods that work. Neighborhoods that are interesting, exciting, user friendly and not out-of-sight expensive. Lucky for all of us, that discussion continues unabated today.

Seaside is so effective that lot prices in the mid- to late-1990s climbed to heights even Davis never dreamed possible. The original, more modest native Florida-style houses remain but, as land prices have rapidly escalated, they have been largely supplanted by larger and much more elaborate and expensive structures. But Davis had eager buyers from Florida and all over the South lining up to be part of the fun.

In the past several years, tourists from Destin and other nearby commercial resorts have discovered Seaside and are visiting in ever increasing numbers, allowing the town’s modest, centrally located retail center to survive. Seaside may not yet be a “real city” by the standards of some critics and hidden agendas, but it certainly is well worth a visit for part of a day, a week, or longer in one of the numerous rental units.

And that point brings us to a number of critical comments. A fair number of professional urban planners, including me, have decidedly mixed thoughts about what Seaside really is and what it actually does. If you take a hard look at Seaside you realize that some things are not as they at first seem. Or, at the very least, are not as they are represented by the resort’s promoters, including Robert Davis and DPZ.

Seaside has evolved into what is basically a vacation destination, in effect a large, low-rise hotel sprawling across 80 acres. Very few families (around 40 when I last checked) live there year-round. Which means almost everyone you see walking around the streets in the spring, summer, and early fall are short-term visitors. So forget about opportunities to build a genuine community of inter-connected neighbors chatting across their porches and borrowing sugar or flour to make apple pies or chocolate chip cookies. And, despite all the DPZ hype about reducing the reliance on cars, if you are a year-round resident try finding everything you need at those trendy and upscale little markets in the commercial center. Like groceries. Fat chance, unless you don’t mind paying through the nose or having precious few choices. Yes, a new Publix is only a half-mile or so away on County Highway 395 but try walking that distance while carrying $100 worth of groceries, especially along streets with few sidewalks.

Another problem is despite the attempt to position Seaside and similar New Urbanist communities as alternatives to subdivisions, Seaside is exactly that. A residential subdivision built in what planners call a greenfield — previously undeveloped land. Yes, Seaside is more dense and has more mixed uses than the typical subdivision but it really does not look, act, or feel like the older, traditional city neighborhoods that blossomed in many U.S. cities before WW II or the neighborhoods in Charleston, Savannah, etc., that supposedly inspired DPZ. And that is a critical point since achieving similarity to those older, established neighborhoods is one of the highly touted goals of New Urbanism. Not to mention that today, even after the housing bubble popped, most lots start in the vicinity of a half million dollars, and the asking prices for the larger houses exceed $5 million ($5.2 million as of 5-25-11). And here’s the kicker: a one-bedroom, one-bathroom, 375-square foot house is selling for $925,000. No joke. Sounds exactly like a place where you’ll find lots of middle- and lower-middle income folks.

However, those older, established neighborhoods in Charleston, Savannah, etc. typically grew organically over many decades as a result of intersecting peaks and valleys in demand for many types of uses by various ethnic and social groups. Which is precisely why New York, Boston, Chicago, and New Orleans are characterized by their exciting mix of building types, architectural styles, land uses, etc. that make those cities special places that stimulate both hearts and minds, delighting residents and visitors alike. And that leads me to point out the lack of social diversity in Seaside, a problem for most urban planners and many potential residents, unless, of course, you’re white and affluent and want to keep your community that way. Then, Seaside, which consists overwhelmingly of detached, single-family residences, is your kind of place.

A second interesting question is where are all the institutions in Seaside? Have you ever seen an older, inner-city neighborhood without four or five churches within a few blocks of each other? Or Fire and Police Departments? Or a library? Of which Seaside has none. Where are the very community-building foci that New Urbanism claims to value so highly? Churches, public schools, public service facilities, and even cemeteries. You won’t find them in Seaside. To be honest there is one fairly small inter-faith chapel and one private school. My guess is the land is just too damned expensive for those frivolous uses since they put minimal money into the developer’s pockets.

But, all nay-saying and nit-picking aside, Seaside is enjoyable for what it is. Not for what people claim it should be. After all, it was started in 1980-1981 and has little time to grow into what it could be.

Windsor

If you’re at all like me, you love to fantasize about the perfect Florida resort community. Perfect in the following sense. No traffic congestion. No loud, pushy, obnoxious tourists and their inevitably ill-mannered and bratty kids. Meticulously landscaped polo fields right outside your door. An adjacent, members-only (to exclude riff-raff like you and me) par-72 championship 18-hole golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr., and eight north-south, Har-Tru tennis courts designed by Wimbledon champion Stan Smith, each of which are protected by jasmine-covered privacy walls, of course. Not to mention a private equestrian center with riding trails sculpted into the landscape. Or a fully equipped fitness center. And what about the first-class gun club emphasizing new clay shooting games from Europe with computer-controlled equipment that simulates the excitement of driven game situations on flat terrain and other target-presentations (hey, that last sentence was lifted without much re-write from the below-referenced web site and is almost enough to make discriminating Readers gag). And you couldn’t forget the unspoiled, picturesque beach with its own private club and ever so elegant restaurant and lovely homes that take your breath away. Etc., etc. Who was it that said money can’t buy happiness? Well, maybe it can’t, but it sure can buy one shit-load of creature comforts.

If the perfect Florida resort community is your dream, you’ll find all that and more in an exclusive community of Windsor on Hutchinson Island about eight miles north of Vero Beach situated between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian River. It is an upper-, upper-crust, gated enclave for those who take for granted personal bankers handling their substantial trust funds, bookkeeping services that pay their monthly bills, and lackeys devoted to anticipating their every whim, no matter how ridiculous by the standards of the common folk.

Make no mistake, these are people who never even consider the possibility of bouncing checks two days before payday. Okay, it’s no secret that neither I nor 99.99999 percent of the people who would ever read this page can afford to breathe the rarefied air found in Windsor. But it’s nice to take a peek at how the other ½ percent of the U.S. population lives. And what the heck, if you win one of those mega-million dollar lotteries, who knows what you might be able to afford in terms of a second home by the sea.

Windsor is another marvelous design by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, the architectural-planning Super Stars responsible for Seaside, the beach resort in the Panhandle that so many people find compelling. Sited on about 420 acres and designed for 350 homes, Windsor was conceived as a European-style settlement with its roots firmly planted in early colonial Caribbean times, with narrow streets alternating with wide, heavily planted boulevards. Actually, the concept was somewhat broader-based than that. The three chief architectural elements used by DPZ in their design were 16th Century Spanish designs from the city of St. Augustine, numerous small English Caribbean towns of the 17th Century, and early 18th Century Charleston, South Carolina.

As an aside, landowners in colonial Charleston were taxed on their property’s street frontage. Consequently, people hating to pay taxes then as well as now, the narrow end of the houses and lots almost always fronted on the street while the main rooms, aligned on the building’s long axis, had intimate views of interior courts and gardens, which were surrounded by high masonry walls to keep peasants like us from getting too familiar with the gentry, superior lot they were then and now. That design focus became an essential part of the DPZ block and lot orientation in Windsor. And who said research into old, dusty planning records is a waste of time and effort?

The centerpiece of DPZ’s plan and Windsor’s very heart and soul is the village commons that serves as the gateway into the community and the focus of social and commercial activities. Entry to this commons is via an elegant allee of oaks, perhaps a conscious effort to recall the glory days of the old plantation South (as is so perfectly illustrated by the magnificent Oak Alley plantation in southern Louisiana). To top it off, noted architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen designed four small but very attractive kiosks to help define the entrance. That internally focused commons area, with a village center and a town hall designed by Leon Krier, which is used as a meeting hall and doubles as a non-denominational church, is a typical urban cluster with a tightly gridded street pattern. The cluster is bordered on two sides by the golf course and the polo fields. And yes, that’s fields with an s. As in two polo fields stacked end-to-end. How about that for a most unusual greenbelt? Where else in the world but coastal Florida?

The majority of houses in that urban cluster are quite unlike those found in other American luxury resort communities. DPZ’s plan has pushed these attached, small lot townhouses and detached courtyard or sideyard entrance homes forward until they’re very close to the streets. Entrance into most of Windsor’s very private courtyard and sideyard houses brings the visitor first to a walled, shaded garden courtyard and from there into the main house itself. That pattern creates atmospheres of enormous intimacy and charm. Which is the principal reason the commons are described as “urban” in character, despite the relatively few houses and low density.

Historical house types in the early settlement of St. Augustine served as the basic model for DPZ’s cluster plan. Most of the first homes in Spanish St. Augustine were single-story masonry structures. But in the 17th Century, when the English took over, they built second-story wood additions with tall, narrow windows and wide roofs overhanging the lower story, creating cooler, shaded arcades below. The Windsor residences follow that general pattern, with tall windows deeply recessed into masonry walls, wood balconies cantilevered from above, and lush tropical foliage flowing over garden walls. It’s a lovely touch, indeed. Especially for those privileged few with very deep pockets.

Each of those townhouses has a detached garage with living quarters above that are typically accessed from a mid-block alley or from a pedestrian walkway. The relatively unornamented exterior architectural treatment (featuring plain, solid white walls) of the “urban” Windsor homes gives little indication of the rich character of their well-hidden interior spaces featuring lush sub-tropical gardens with courtyards, pools, fountains, etc. Is it any surprise that most of the people building homes in Windsor have chosen this distinctive and intimate “urban” cluster for the location of their residences?

Every building in Windsor — residential, commercial, and public — is controlled by a strict architectural code, specifying all design elements and materials for each of seven basic building types. Those detailed standards include height, placement on lots, building articulation, lot line relationships, and interior orientation for all structures, including outbuildings, porches, elevations, and topographic changes. The code requires all building plans to be submitted to the Windsor Architectural Review Committee for approval prior to issuance of permits and start of construction. Those guys have to be as tough as nails because individuals with serious money at their disposal are well accustomed to bashing low-level building inspector types around until they get their own way. Or else paying them off with under the table envelopes. And that’s no exaggeration. Can you imagine a building inspector telling someone like Donald Trump or what’s-his-face Rockefeller that he can’t do whatever it is he wants to with his new house? Get real. That poor bastard wouldn’t last a New York minute.

Would it possibly surprise anyone to learn that the developers named the community after their favorite polo park in England? Oh, Winifred, my dear, how utterly charming. Or that the polo fields are modeled after those at the ever so posh Oak Brook Country Club near Chicago? Which was built in the 1930s during the Great Depression, remember those hard economic times?

Now for reality’s wake up call, which is a hard slap in the face for us middle-class dreamers. As of mid-May 2011, lots in Windsor start at $300,000 and rocket upwards to the $3.3 million neighborhood. Whoa. And that’s just for the property. The houses aren’t any more reasonable, starting at a comfortable $1.1 million and shooting straight into the stratosphere at $11.2 million. And that’s in tough economic times.

Implications

Okay, so why am I seeming to waste a lot of time and ink running on about some ethereal urban planning nonsense few real people care about and far fewer can afford? Simple, because thousands and thousands of potential homeowners are lining up to buy homes in New Urbanist developments throughout Florida. Seaside, the first New Urbanist community, was so successful it has become the land development model of choice in coastal Florida and much of the rest of the country. If you don’t believe me take a look at what’s happening throughout the Panhandle and much of the rest of Florida.

Remember those good old boys, Ed Ball and Alfred I. Du Pont? They started the St. Joe Paper Company that became the largest land owner in northern Florida. Well, it’s still around, now known as the St. Joe Company and today it owns nearly 900,000 acres in Florida, keeping its title as the State’s largest private landowner. The majority of St. Joe’s land is concentrated in northwest Florida, between Tallahassee and Walton County. The company owns approximately 40 miles of Gulf of Mexico coastline, another 250 miles of what it calls recreational waterfront, and hundreds of thousands of acres of rural recreational land and timberland. It’s a ten thousand pound gorilla that gets what it wants, when it wants.

Arvida, its homebuilding division, which touts itself as the nation’s premier developer of master planned residential and resort communities, is currently building quite a few communities supposedly based on New Urbanist principles. Arvida’s Water Color community is immediately next door to Seaside. You can’t forget Water Sound in Camp Creek, Palmetto Trace in Panama City Beach, WindMark Beach near Port St. Joe, and River Camp in Mexico Beach. And that’s just part of what Arvida has going. Not to mention what all the other developers in northern Florida hot to jump on the money-making machine called New Urbanism have on the drawing boards. The New Urbanist communities of Rosemary Beach and Alys Beach are also near Seaside. Both are upscale DPZ developments of expensive single-family homes with a modicum of mixed use thrown in to make them look like they are in the New Urbanist camp. Not to mention numerous other communities similar to Seaside are springing up from Seagrove Beach all the way west to Destin.

What happened is that the design of Seaside by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberg literally exploded in the urban planning and design communities and quickly became a well-articulated movement. Today, the ideas developed by Duany and Plater-Zyberg and others go by various names: New Urbanism, Traditional Neighborhood Development, and Neo-Traditional Communities. The main idea behind what we’ll simply call New Urbanism is to try and recapture some of the character and community that existed in the older, traditional city neighborhoods that developed prior to WW II. New Urbanist communities are generally pedestrian-oriented, high-density, mixed-use neighborhoods with narrow streets and a wide variety of housing types and socioeconomic classes. Those types of developments also feature a variety of land uses and mix residential, retail, and often office uses in the same areas rather than segregating them.

Many positive urban characteristics result from that type of land development. The higher densities, mixed-uses, and pedestrian orientation help to reduce automobile reliance. That’s an essential point we can’t gloss over. As a result of their designs, New Urbanist developments consume considerably less land than traditional developments because they accommodate the same population in a smaller area. Which is already a critical variable in a State where developable land is becoming a relatively scarce commodity, most critically in south and central Florida. If innovative urban planning and design can improve the quality of life, increase housing densities, and also decrease demand for land and water resources, surely those techniques must be part of the new development tool kit.

The inclusion of Seaside and Windsor in this blog was neither a frivolous gesture nor one that was made without considerable reflection. I believe most Americans do not know what professionally innovative urban planning and architecture can accomplish in terms of creating enjoyable and livable places that also conserve land. Most of us, and that includes me as well, live in some tired variation of the standard, cookie-cutter suburb of curvilinear streets, fairly large lots on which squat architecturally undistinguished houses — and that’s being charitable — set back from the property lines, bordered by highways without sidewalks or lights connecting one subdivision and strip mall to the next. We have come to regard that pattern as normal and as the only one available. Seaside and Windsor are two real world examples of exciting alternatives to that suburban sprawl model.

That said, we have to take a critical look at what limiting characteristics those and most other Florida New Urbanist communities have in common. First, they are almost all built on greenfields, which, if you drink the New Urbanist Kool-Aid, is a Corky No-No. Building on greenfields isolated from a functioning urban center is how you build those nasty suburbs the New Urbanists are always bitching and pissing and moaning about, with their noses held collectively in the air while sniffing disdainfully as if trying to identify who tracked the dog shit all over the new white carpet. Second, real mixed use, socioeconomically diverse, and dense New Urbanist communities are scarce, at least in Florida. We’re talking up-market, whitebread, single-family vacation burbs, brother, where commercial-retail, office-warehouse, light industrial employment centers or social diversity are seldom found. Drive through Seaside, Rosemary Beach, or Alys Beach and compare them to genuine cities like Pensacola, Apalachicola, Savannah, or Charleston. Save yourself the trouble; they don’t compare. They are pretty, second-home, relatively low-density, vacation “hotels” spread out over many acres. Third, practically all of Florida’s New Urbanist communities are vehicle-oriented in the sense that no mass transit of any type is available to residents or visitors and none will be in the foreseeable future.

Actually, the problem is not so much with well intentioned and skilled New Urbanist planners or architects but with developers, government, and the public. I’m certain New Urbanist designers would rather work on something more socially redeeming than another upscale vacation community like Alys Beach. But where are the developers for those projects? Designing traditional neighborhoods in an existing city is difficult for many reasons. For one, in most cities what we’re talking about is flat out against existing regulations. Meaning it’s currently illegal. Plus, who owns/controls large swaths of deteriorated urban neighborhoods and is willing to risk a true fortune in an untested experiment? No one I know. Here’s a better question:  where exactly is the demand for that type of dense, mixed use, diverse, in-fill development?

Developers are entrepreneurs who respond to or in rare cases anticipate market demand. They are in that business to make a profit on their investment. Which is the way it must be. They are not the problem. Nor is local government, though they frequently share the blame by being so reluctant to change or to envision a new future beyond what is on the ground today.

It’s time to finger the culprits, the people directly responsible for destroying Florida’s urban and natural environments. That’s easy. Just read the classic comics. As Pogo said with amazing perspicacity as he regarded our polluted environment:

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Walt Kelly, original Earth Day poster, 1971.

The problem is us, meaning the larger American society because we still collectively insist on things that are harmful to our own best interests and that of the environment. We are comfortable in sprawling suburbs that eat sensitive environments like the Green Swamp or the Everglades or simply name whatever ecosystem you like that’s fallen under the urban development hammer.

The real bottom line is to convince developers, local (and state) governments, and the public that the combination of creative planning and architecture with developers who have verve and courage can result in denser, mixed use, diverse places that are attractive, livable, distinctive and sustainable. And not just for the moneyed few in vacation communities situated adjacent to beaches.

The message is simple. Sound urban design can work to the advantage of the environment by creating higher density, mixed use, diverse, increased connectivity, pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented communities that minimize land and water consumption. That’s critical because that message transcends the affluent specifics of Seaside, Windsor, and places like Rosemary Beach and Alys Beach and opens the opportunity of building livable neighborhoods in existing Florida cities and throughout the United States to a much boarder audience.

The last thing I want to leave you Gentle Readers with is a not so simple observation. Like Coral Gables, the communities of Seaside and Windsor have all come from ideas generated by a few enlightened private land owners, not from frequently apathetic public sector planners who work for local political jurisdictions. And certainly not from Florida regulatory agencies that have for many decades covered themselves in ignominy.

Although the contributions of enlightened developers have had major significance in Florida’s past and present urban development they can not and will not be the principal factor in determining land use densities across the State. Enlightened land owners are uncommon anywhere in the United States and in Florida constitute an endangered species. Therefore, history and common sense demonstrate that any movement advocating a sustainable environment that depends on the benevolence of developers, no matter how enlightened some seem, is doomed. Far more effective means are needed if our goal is to have environmentally sustainable urban development.

The big unknown is if the State (followed by local political jurisdictions) will stand up against the enormous sums thrown about by fat-cat powerbrokers to grease the political process and keep their subservient politicians in office. Will the State finally take a stand and be counted in the struggle to protect the environment for future generations by instituting truly effective State-wide growth controls and sustainability requirements (rather than the joke that is the current “growth control” legislation)? If the past is prologue to the future, then the answer to that enormous unknown is never.

But we have the records of New Urbanism and the Cross Florida Barge Canal to use as sticks with which to beat the politicians. Higher residential densities in smart growth communities have generated high consumer demand and can make serious money for owners of those developments. Seaside and Windsor and many others have proven the validity of that equation. All we need to do is to adapt those concepts to more reasonably priced communities and to build in multiple stories and introduce more mixed uses to further increase densities, diversity, connectivity, and create additional opportunities for urban places that are filled with excitement and vitality.

New urbanism, smart growth, and sustainability can make important differences for Florida’s future especially if those ideas are combined with the activism of environmentalists like Marjorie Carr. But they have to be tied into a State-wide, effective system of growth controls for them to work. Problem is, given the status quo that will be a terribly difficult, uphill struggle, just like fighting the Cross Florida Barge Canal was in the 1960s and 1970s.

Finding State or Federal representatives who would dare to oppose the economic interests of the powerbrokers or their bastardized conceptions of what constitutes a sustainable environment will be a struggle worthy of Diogenes the Cynic, whose daylight quest with a lantern “for an honest man” was probably the most powerful statement in history of a person’s contempt for his culture. The only sustainability concern that is real for Florida powerbrokers is to keep money flowing into their pockets. They will do almost anything to keep that specific “sustainability” pipeline open. That’s no exaggeration. The power elite want everyone to remember the famous equation:

Money talks and bullshit walks.

The fat-cat powerbrokers have the money and they’re talking — meaning, defining what it means to be sustainable and controlling the State land regulatory process. The environmentalists, New Urbanists, and smart growth planners have relatively little money and thus, according to the equation, are full of bullshit. So they’re walking — meaning, playing the outside game.

The only way to wipe out that disturbing analogy is by creating a new reality, a powerful paradigm that combines New Urbanism with genuine environmental values and whole-system sustainability; a paradigm not dictated by the “Money Talks” crowd and their bend-over, easy-virtue politicians now in office.

The big question remains: Can that vision become reality? My best answer is a tentative MAYBE. Stay tuned.