Constraint-Based Spatial Planning

INTRODUCTION

Note: this paper was published in the online journal, Practicing Planner, in September 2011. Be warned: If you are not a professional planner, the paper is likely to be boring beyond relief.

Creating spatial plans for local political jurisdictions, business and educational campuses, military installations, or other districts is, by its very nature, a complex endeavor characterized by difficulties and uncertainties. To manage those challenges, planners apply a variety of analytical approaches to the planning process. Some of those approaches were originally created in disciplines related to urban and regional planning. Others came from unrelated fields, such as finance and business, and were modified to address planning needs. In either case, the nature of those analytical efforts is to apply objective, rational procedures to help achieve operational improvements.

As applied to land-based planning, those approaches are characterized by various advantages and disadvantages. The key for practicing urban and regional planners is to evaluate various approaches and choose one that produces results that, in their judgment, most effectively address the contextual needs of the client-community.

Professional planners are familiar with one or more of the following acronyms used to describe analytical techniques that have been applied to many urban planning and community development projects throughout the United States. See Table 1 below.

Table 1: Analytical Techniques Used in Urban Planning

Acronym	Analytical Technique
ABCD	Asset-Based Community Development (Planning)
ASCOT	Assets, Challenges, Opportunities, Threats
PIC	Problems, Issues, Concerns
SWOO	Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Obstacles
SWOT	Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

Most of those planning approaches focus on recognizing and building on strengths, skills, and capacities to overcome the weakness, threats, or needs that are often said to characterize a community or spatial district. Fundamentally, those approaches foster the capacity to see, cultivate, and use asset-based or strength-based characteristics the community may not have known or fully realized it possessed or known how to apply those strength-based factors to its benefit. Those methods are about seeing the world and approaching the planning process from a position of internal strength rather than from one of perceived needs or weaknesses. Those analytical approaches typically focus on and celebrate the community’s (or other geographic district) positive characteristics rather than on what is wrong or what supposedly requires repair or restoration before the community can achieve a higher level of functionality.

I believe those approaches contain significant difficulties that affect the planning process and that may adversely influence potential outcomes. Typically, those approaches ignore or fail to fully recognize and develop the complex interrelationship between constraints and opportunities and the multi-faceted effects of constraint analysis and mitigation on development suitability. In this paper, I present a new constraint-based approach to spatial planning that constitutes an alternative to asset-based, SWOT-based, and needs-based models. Although analysis of constraints has played key roles in business/management and scientific endeavors, to this point it has been applied infrequently to fields related to urban planning.¹

The Constraint-Based Planning Process that is proposed to guide development of spatial plans² as described below is an integrated, problem-solving analytical tool. That Process is summarized diagrammatically below in Figure 1. Please note that this paper focuses only on the first three phases in that Process since the unique aspects of the proposed technique are most fully developed in those segments. Other phases required in that planning process, and illustrated for informational purposes in Figure 1, are not part of this discussion. Those excluded phases are:

• Phase 4 — Basis of Planning/Planning Drivers
• Phase 5 — Development Alternatives
• Phase 6 — Preferred Alternative
• Phase 7 — Land-Based Plan/Implementation Strategy

PHASE 1: SETTING THE STAGE

The materials in this section examine in some detail the three initial planning phases that are critical to Constraint-Based Planning. In order to move forward in creating a land-based plan, a community must first establish an open public involvement effort to ensure the resulting plan incorporates citizen/stakeholder input throughout the planning process. The foundation for that step is best laid in the Request for Proposals issued by the client/community in setting the required performance parameters that will inform the entire planning process.

The next step in the initial phase is to articulate the community’s vision of the future and the mission of the client with respect to that future. That visioning process, in which a clear visualization of the range of possibilities and development of the guiding vision statement will be articulated, constitutes the framework on which the community’s future will be built.

Only then can overall planning process goals that will shape future planning and development scenarios be created. Once those primary goals have been established, the community then must determine how to bridge the gap between current realities and the vision by identifying specific project-related goals that characterize varying stages in the plan. For each of those secondary goals the community then must specify precise and obtainable objectives, tasks, and priorities that can be monitored and evaluated. The five major elements comprising Phase 1 are:

• Public Involvement (Citizens/Stakeholders)
• Vision and Mission Statements
• Overall Planning Process Goals
• Specific Project-Related Goals
• Objectives/Tasks/Priorities

PHASE 2: REALITY CHECK

The second phase involves collecting detailed information on the area’s historical development and analyzing the present situation with respect to existing conditions, issues, and trends. The critical aspect of what I term a “Reality Check” is not to focus most of the planning team’s efforts on data collection but to organize/position relevant data as the launch pad for the analysis component. A web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) is proposed as the key organizational and analytical tool for the Constraint-Based Planning process. That system should be in place and functional prior to the start of the data collection effort.

Each individual data element should be discussed carefully, spatially characterized, and rank ordered with respect to the vision and overall project goals established previously. Those efforts should be part of the public involvement process, with the public fully engaged in each task. Then, the implications of each specific task with respect to its potential effects on the planning process must be documented, mapped, and analyzed. An example would be the effects of one-way traffic flows in a specified area on local traffic operations, site accessibility, connectivity, safety, and neighborhood functionality.

Materials developed in this Phase, which constitute the critical local or regional community characteristics (many principal elements are listed below in Table 2), will become the basis of the work performed in Phases 3 through 7. Please note that the following list is meant to be suggestive of topics to be investigated and is not all-inclusive.

Table 2: Data Gathering/Analysis Elements

Major Element	Sub-Element
Socioeconomics	Demographic Variables
	Income Characteristics
	Crime Rates
Physical Infrastructure/Rights-of-Way	Transportation/Circulation
	Utilities
Social Infrastructure	Education
	Public/Quasi-Public Institutions
	Police/Fire/Emergency Services
Community Facilities and Services	Parks and Recreation
	Public Buildings/Other Public Spaces
	Other Services
Building Conditions (Specified Sub-Districts)
Environmental Features	Open Space
	Water/Wetlands
	Topography/Slope
	Sub-Surface Conditions
	Habitat
	Endangered Species
	Hazardous/Toxic/Radiological Wastes
	Weather/Climate
Housing Characteristics	Public
	Private
	Quasi-Private (subsidized)
Regulatory and Legal Systems	Zoning
	Land Use
	Restrictive Covenants
	Lands with Protected Status
Others (as appropriate)

It is important to note that the participation of community citizens and stakeholders could potentially be more influential in the planning process if their input was empowered by a system that presented easy to understand visual images that showed the nature, location, and extent of each element that affected the plan, beginning with the Reality Check. Implementation of a web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) is a critical element of Constraint-Based Planning for numerous reasons, including its geospatial integration of appropriate data, analytical tools, and powerful visualization/presentation capabilities. But, GIS is much more than an efficient technical tool since it plays a key role in a collaborative citizen/stakeholder involvement effort in which incorporating public feedback in each step of the plan is an integral part of the process.

I believe that a GIS is the most appropriate geospatial mapping tool to accomplish that task because it enables construction of a number of geographical layers that, when overlain, produce a visual representation of areas that show geospatial relationships between and among a variety of data elements and, later in the planning process, constraints to opportunities and the varying potentials of specific areas for future development or growth. As an essential part of the planning process, a GIS map inventory and evaluation of existing natural and man-made development would be prepared in the Reality Check Phase with construction of a geodatabase. Layers contained in that database should include a variety of vector and raster data, such as slope, elevation, environmental elements, surface and subsurface drainage, transportation, structures, utilities, boundaries, and various regulatory data — including land use, zoning, parcel characteristics, building condition, etc. — as well as remotely sensed imagery, data from tabular databases, digitally scanned property records, GPS coordinates, and geo-referenced site or area photographs as appropriate.

Recent desktop applications provide the capability to seamlessly interact with the above types of geographic information as data layers on a 3D globe. Using ArcGIS 3D Analyst 9, Map 3D, and similar software, the consultant can introduce a revolutionary technology that enables citizens/stakeholders to visualize in three dimensions geographic data from a local or global perspective. For example, citizens/stakeholders can see what a proposed 12-story building might look like in a neighborhood with low-rise structures in terms of height above the existing skyline, facades, shadow effects throughout the day, whether views are obstructed, etc. That technique has the ability to stimulate intense public discussion and generate additional development options through the public involvement process.

A GIS links data observations and measurements to specific locations and indicates actual or inferred relationships between data points. A GIS can also pull together different types of data and allow quantitative analysis at whatever scale is specified in the plan, whether large-scale — showing individual sites/parcels — or a smaller scale presenting a district or even the entire cityscape. For example, information on soils, water resources, habitat, and vegetation might be combined in analyses of wildlife habitat needs. That same data set could be used in determining constraints and opportunities for the restoration of damaged ecosystems or for the potential of land to be developed for a variety of urban uses.

GIS also facilitates the integration of remotely-sensed images, such as collected by Landsat or aerial photography, with data gathered through more traditional techniques, such as census data or field surveys. And it permits extrapolation from limited sample locations to larger areas. Because of its ability to handle complex analyses at varying geographic scales, GIS has become an indispensable tool for land use planners and forms an essential part of constraint-based analysis and the public involvement program.

PHASE 3: CONSTRAINTS/OPPORTUNITIES ANALYSIS

Brief Definitions

A constraint restricts the degree of freedom urban planners, client staff, and citizens/stakeholders have in providing solutions within the setting of a land-based plan. Thus, constraints are limitations that inhibit the way a plan can be developed and implemented. Constraints in the context of urban planning can be economic, environmental (natural and built), financial, infrastructure, legal (regulations and ordinances), political, social, or technical and pertain to project resources, schedule, mutual exclusions, conditional effects of actions, precedence relationships between activities, or other limitations to the system itself.

An opportunity is a suitable condition or combination of suitable conditions or an advantageous, favorable, or suitable circumstance or combination of circumstances and time (schedule) that promotes progress or advancement. Like constraints, opportunities in the context of urban planning can be economic, environmental (natural and built), financial, infrastructure, legal (regulations and ordinances), political, social, or technical and pertain to project resources, schedule, a specified environment, or other limitations to the system itself.

Both constraints and opportunities may be characterized by major type, such as those that are resource-based (environmental) and non-resource-based (socioeconomic or cultural). In this paper I refer to those types respectively as Biogeophysical and Cultural. Typically, Biogeophysical Constraints/Opportunities are physical in nature, such as slope, topography, wetlands and waterways, surface and subsurface conditions, natural and man-made hazards, vegetation zones, wildlife habitat, view sheds, etc. Cultural Constraints/Opportunities include legal, regulatory, policy, institutional, demographic, timing/scheduling, and financial and budgetary concerns, etc.

By their nature, land planning projects are characterized by significant amounts of spatial information. Geographic Information Systems are capable of managing and manipulating large quantities of spatially related information, integrating multiple data layers, and deriving additional information. That evaluation is capable of incorporating such Biogeophysical Constraints as topography, surficial and bedrock geology, groundwater conditions, and historic geologic hazards with such Cultural Constraints as archaeological and historical resources, land use-zoning-site-building restrictions, and urban/suburban land-use data that are categorized according to the types of use and projects planned. Multi-criteria analysis would then be performed to evaluate the suitability of a specified location for each development alternative according to appropriately measured and weighted factors.

Constraints before Opportunities

Information developed in the Reality Check phase of a spatial planning project leads directly to the identification of constraints and opportunities. Please note that the word order in the title of Phase 3 provides a critical clue as to the nature of the analysis. In planning for facilities, sites, or larger geographic areas, constraints — also variously referred to as obstacles, obstructions, weaknesses, disadvantages, restrictions, conflicts, problems, needs, issues, limitations, or challenges — must always be considered before opportunities.

The old adage, Know Your Weaknesses, applies directly to constraints and to spatially-based planning. If strengths or assets were the first order of business and the key focus of analysis, planners and citizens/stakeholders involved in a planning process would start by identifying potentially beneficial situations for development only to find out later that those situations may be limited or adversely influenced by one or more restrictive factors and could not play the role that was initially anticipated.

Dealing with significant constraints encourages and even forces those involved in the planning process to focus on identifying creative, purpose-driven solutions. Few planning professionals or committed citizens/stakeholders are willing to throw their hands up in frustration and leave in place a significant constraint that could adversely affect the outcome of the planning process and the future of the entire community without first expending considerable effort to find appropriate mitigation options.

Consequently, many experienced planners adopt what amounts to a turn-your-weaknesses-into-strengths position: “Show me a constraint and I’ll show you an opportunity.” Thus, even in the act of accepting a constraint, planners may be rewarded with an opportunity. That position is only a seeming paradox because the act of confronting constraints and understanding their salient characteristics can become the very source of creative solutions.

An in-depth understanding of the complex interrelationships between constraints and opportunities is the foundation from which development alternatives are created and on which the resulting plan is based. If those relationships are inadequately addressed at the beginning of the analysis, planners have little chance to recover without extensive back-tracking and re-work.

The primary elements and sub-elements comprising Phase 3 are listed below in Table 3. All three primary elements contain explanatory narrative and multiple GIS map overlays.

Table 3: Constraints/Opportunities Analysis

Primary Element	Sub-Element
Constraints Analysis	Biogeophysical and Cultural Constraints
	Constraints Continuum (Ranking Process)
	Mitigation Strategies (for each identified constraint/sub-constraint)
Opportunities Analysis	Biogeophysical and Cultural Opportunities
	Opportunities Continuum (Ranking Process)
Development Suitability

Constraint-Opportunity Relationships

The following materials elucidate the nature of constraint-opportunity relationships.

Owing to their nature, constraints are limiting factors in whatever environment is under examination, whether biogeophysical, cultural, or varying combinations of both. Therefore, in identifiable ways constraints adversely affect those environments and restrict subsequent opportunities with respect to development and other planning and design-related actions.

Although constraints range from minor to nearly absolute, upon close examination they also may present significant development opportunities. Frequently, constraints can be mitigated in whole or in part so that they can be developed into short- or long-term benefits to the environment in question and thus become development opportunities. For example, if a large rock outcrop poses a major constraint to building or roadway construction, it may form an opportunity for development as a natural resource element that can be integrated into other adjacent landscape features, such as open space, greenways and nature trails, pedestrian walkways and bikeways, physical training trails, or as a visual buffer. Or that outcrop may serve as a platform on which to exhibit large-scale art, such as an exhibit presenting permanent or temporary sculpture. In other words, if constraints are carefully analyzed and their natures and characteristics fully understood, they may be altered or transformed into competitive advantages and opportunities and be fully integrated into the planning process.

Through an in-depth analysis of the nature of each constraint, planners and citizens/stakeholders may be able to creatively transform that adverse condition, turning it into an opportunity to accomplish the desired end in a totally different and previously unforeseen manner. In other words, opportunities may in fact be generated by constraints through a creative planning process. In short, what may initially be seen as a disadvantage may indeed become advantageous.

Constraint Analysis

Organizing the planning process around constraint analysis not only gives planners the freedom to be less cautious and take greater risks, but also, and perhaps most importantly, encourages all those involved in the planning effort to consider cutting edge ideas and themes outside narrow but more traditional approaches. That exploration of a wider and less predictable range of potential solutions is beneficial because it leads planners and citizens/stakeholders outside their comfort zones and into unchartered territory.

Implicit in the constraint analysis is the potential for a specific constraint to be decomposed or deconstructed into component variables, some or all of which may be addressed individually. That deconstruction may result in identification of a series of mitigating techniques that could alter the nature of the sub-constraints or the ways in which they may affect the planning process. Deconstruction and mitigation of individual sub-constraints may also result in such substantial alteration of the parent issue that that constraint may be effectively neutralized or transformed into a previously unrecognized opportunity.

The process of analyzing a constraint may also reveal interrelationships (either previously known or unsuspected) with seemingly dissimilar or unconnected constraints. As a result, a specified mitigation technique may positively affect multiple other constraints. Thus, determining connectivity between or among constraints and subsequent connectivity with regard to mitigation techniques should be a goal of constraint analysis.

Also implicit in the analysis is that not all constraints are equal in terms of potential adverse effects on the planning process if not appropriately mitigated. It should be recognized that certain constraints have major implications and others have adverse effects that range in significance from minor to moderate. That recognition leads to a ranking or weighting along a Constraints Continuum that reflects how individual constraints can potentially affect the vision, goals, and priorities established in Phase 1.

As stated previously, one of the main goals of this planning process is a public involvement effort open to all citizens/stakeholders. Therefore, it is critical that that ranking procedure be conducted as an integral part of the participation effort and that analytical measures of low to moderate complexity are used wherever possible rather than such cutting edge techniques as regression analysis or even neural computing and evolutionary programming that are difficult for most citizens/stakeholders and many planners to understand and use wisely. An initial ranking of constraints — perhaps as simple as using low, moderate, and high values or a more ambitious but easily understandable matrix of four or five variables to which objective scores have been assigned — may be performed by the consultant team working closely with client staff. That initial ranking would then be presented to a workshop of citizens/stakeholders who, in conjunction with the consultant and client staff, would prepare the final ranking of constraints. Because higher points would be awarded to potential development that has fewer constraints and greater opportunities, it is possible to assign priority evaluations for individual projects and areas. How that process actually would function is treated in more detail below in the section on Development Suitability/GIS Analysis.

Consequently, the constraints weighting or ranking process will also reflect the imperative for planners and citizens/stakeholders to address appropriate mitigation strategies, especially for those constraints that have the highest potential for adversely affecting the community’s functioning and its future. Creating innovative and targeted mitigation strategies not only requires application of traditional planning concepts but also innovative or outside-the-box approaches to design and development.

The constraint type (Biogeophysical or Cultural) and its spatial characteristics must also be considered in the ranking process since they may influence various strategies that may be applied to mitigate potentially adverse effects. For example, a seismic hazard zone in a densely populated urban area should be dealt with in a different manner than the same hazard zone located in a sparsely settled district with few buildings and little infrastructure.

Once constraints are catalogued, analyzed, and their effects on the biogeophysical and cultural environments and the planning process made explicit, opportunities for growth and development can then be identified and examined. Consciously choosing to analyze and understand the nature and specific attributes of constraints before looking at opportunities presents planners with the potential of developing more powerful and productive insights. The effort to resolve those difficulties typically leads to a deeper understanding of the spatial context in which planning is performed.

Role of Mitigation Strategies

Development of the constraint analysis leads to the identification of mitigation strategies and the critical question concerning how constraints are mitigated or turned into opportunities. To put it another way, in an urban planning context the question is whether it is possible to systematize the mitigation or transformation of constraints into opportunities. I believe that systemization is possible and propose the following operational elements to guide that process.

First, each constraint should be identified within the context of a specific category of the Reality Check Phase, such as socioeconomics or physical environment.

Second, the precise nature and relevant spatial and non-spatial characteristics of the constraint must be analyzed and understood. For example, if the constraint is environmental in nature, such as a seismic hazard zone, its key attributes must be established through search of available documents, data, or interviews with recognized authorities. Those attributes should include location, size, geographic extent, event severity (high, medium, and low), event periodicity, past and potential effects on surrounding uses or facilities, and planning implications, etc.

Third, the analysis then must determine if the constraint can be deconstructed into component parts that can be examined separately. That analysis may lead to the identification of sub-constraints, ranging from minor to major, that are subject to mitigation.

The fourth element is to establish the precise manner in which the constraint may affect the planning process and the community’s vision, mission, goals, objectives, and priorities. That step certainly is one of the most important aspects of the analysis. The potential implications of each constraint and sub-constraint must be addressed in specific detail so that a comprehensive range of mitigation strategies that are appropriate with regard to the future can be identified and explored.

Fifth, the various identified mitigation strategies should contain solutions that will accomplish the following:

• Eliminate, transform, alter, buffer, exploit, or block adverse effects of the constraint or otherwise optimize its positive aspects.
• Identify alternative actions that will neutralize or modify the constraint.
• Reduce or eliminate long-term risk and adverse effects for people and property affected by the constraint.
• Meet development needs in a sustainable manner by maintaining the health and integrity of the biogeophysical or cultural environments being considered.

Sixth, it is critical to note that in considering and selecting the most appropriate mitigation strategies, it may be necessary to analyze sequentially the effects of specific individual mitigation strategies on an individual constraint. For example, the first mitigation strategy may buffer one specific type of adverse effect but not others. The second mitigation strategy may reduce several of the risks not mitigated by the first strategy but may not affect additional adverse conditions. Consequently, a range or variety of mitigation strategies should be identified and examined in detail until the maximum positive outcome is obtained. As a result, individual constraints may be moderated or ameliorated by multiple mitigation strategies, not merely one. That point is especially pertinent when the specific constraint being analyzed is complex and may be deconstructed into numerous components, each of which may feature distinctive elements that can be mitigated individually, or when the constraint is related to other constraints.

Mitigation Strategies and Public Involvement

Creation of mitigation strategies is the essential function that connects constraints to opportunities and therefore is a crucial element in the Constraint-Based Planning Process. Conceptualization and discussion of those strategies must take place within the context of the public involvement effort. The precise manner in which that creative procedure occurs should, at minimum, be addressed by consultant teams after receipt of the Request for Proposals in the proposal preparation stage. But, in my opinion, the necessity to integrate those strategies into the public involvement effort is sufficiently critical to be specified by the client in the official scope of work contained in the request for proposals issued to qualified firms.

Naturally, the consultant team should have the experience and expertise to identify and propose mitigation solutions appropriate to individual constraints. However, residents and other local stakeholders know their communities in ways outsiders never can or will, no matter how detailed their experience or expertise. The input of citizens/stakeholders to the creation of mitigation strategies constitutes a significant element that must not be minimized.

Therefore, my strong recommendation is for the constraint mitigation strategy process to occur in citizen involvement workshops led by the consultant team/client staff. Even if no specific mitigation strategies are proposed by citizens/stakeholders in the workshop(s) that have not been identified previously through the efforts of the consultant (which is possible but in my experience more than somewhat unlikely), their participation in that effort creates buy-in that otherwise would be difficult to generate. For that reason alone conducting the mitigation strategy workshop(s) with citizens/stakeholders is a key tool in Constraint-Based Spatial Planning.

Development Suitability/GIS Analysis

One of the main challenges facing urban/regional planners is how to actively engage the public in the land use planning decision-making process. As has been noted previously in this paper, I believe that the public involvement effort begins at the very initial stage of a spatial plan. But, since most members of the public have little training or professional expertise in the minutia of the planning process, the real challenge is to identify and employ techniques that are relatively simple to understand yet have genuine analytical and explanatory power.

Incorporation of GIS as an analytical tool in the planning process allows citizens/stakeholders to quickly access existing conditions, constraints, opportunities, and development suitability maps to determine potential uses for land anywhere in the community. For most citizens/stakeholders, that proposed level of involvement in the planning process provides an unparalleled opportunity to have direct input into their community’s future because geospatial information provides a snapshot of what the community looks like now and, more importantly, what it might look like in the future given certain inputs. Specifically, that information is invaluable in the planning process in assisting planners and the public in determining where new development and re-development can be encouraged or discouraged, or where new services will be needed. By using GIS overlays of varying citizen/stakeholder land use preferences, the locations where those preferences conflict in the present and future can be identified and the nature of the conflicts can be analyzed and mitigated.

If the specific planning project allows the consultant to use a web-based GIS and circulate maps via the Internet, citizens/stakeholders would be able to provide almost instant feedback at every critical stage in the planning process, making it possible to record and publish citizen/stakeholder data online, including positive and negative comments and questions. GIS would then be used to create a number of the highest ranked development scenarios and to generate maps that show citizens/stakeholders what each course of action would look like, where it would be located on the ground, the people and areas it would affect most directly, and how it would help move the community in a positive direction.

GIS scenario analysis can demonstrate the effects of applying different priority levels to specified projects or locations. For example, in certain opportunity areas development priorities ranging from higher to lower may be assigned to economic uses or to mixed use development. Subsequently, those areas can then be assigned a different development priority, such as environmental sustainability. The outcomes of combining those different priority assignments and others would then be included in the public participation effort. Potential conflicts in proposed resource use, for example between specialty agriculture (such as high value flowers in western Maricopa County, Arizona) and encroaching urban or suburban uses (residential/retail/office), can be mapped and described using a GIS system that combines biophysical and socio-economic characteristics for land use evaluation. A multi-criteria evaluation tool can be developed to support decision-making in terms of potential trade-offs between and among different stakeholder interests over time.

A full range of development opportunities should also be identified and mapped in the planning area. Those opportunities may be Biogeophysical or Cultural in nature. Biogeophysical Opportunities may include level ground with soils that are capable of bearing loads or potable quality water in underground aquifers in sufficient quantities for human consumption. Cultural Opportunities may result from local policies or regulations or arise from land use relationships and adjacencies, such as locating aviation-related uses like Fire/Rescue or aircraft maintenance in close proximity to hangers, aprons, taxiways, or runways on an airfield. A key point is that specific conditions that have the potential of becoming beneficial can only be identified and mapped as opportunities suitable for development if the community has or will have in the foreseeable future the capacity (internal resources) to take advantage of those conditions.

Planning-related constraints and opportunities mapped as part of the previous analysis should lead directly to the identification of locations as being suitable, partially suitable, or unsuitable for various types of development. That Development Suitability Map then becomes the foundation for the next phases that guide the land use planning and decision-making process, especially Planning Drivers, Basis of Planning, and Development Alternatives that lead directly to the draft and final spatial plans.

That mapping step involves compiling a list of factors that restrict or encourage future development. Once the list of those factors has been developed, weights need to be assigned to each negative or beneficial limitation. After the factors have been identified and weighted, conducting the analysis is a fairly simple process with the use of GIS software. A layer can be created for each factor. That process builds up a number of separate data layers to produce a visual representation of geographical areas that demonstrate more or less potential for future growth or redevelopment. Each layer can then be assigned a score depending on the degree to which the constraint or opportunity is likely to limit or benefit future development. A final constraints map, which overlays all constraints within the study area, is produced using GIS and a grid-based data model. A final opportunities map should also be produced to show areas with greater or partial opportunity. The combined constraints and opportunities map would then identify areas that have:

• Fewest to greatest constraints that cannot be mitigated
• Fewest to greatest opportunities (ranked primary, secondary, marginal)
• Range of opportunities to constraints (highest to lowest)

Use of GIS in a planning project that applies constraints analysis is an example of “better information resulting in better decisions” by using geospatial data to create maps that help determine whether constraints or opportunities are related spatially and if a separate set of mitigation strategies can be developed for two or more constraints or opportunities that may be geospatially related. Questions critical to the success of the plan — such as is sufficient land available for a given use or how much land is required to buffer a controversial facility from sensitive receptors — can be modeled and the best options identified through GIS and presented through the public participation effort.

The ability to interactively analyze and quickly view the available geospatial data allows the consultant/client staff to engage in a series of highly informative and productive citizen/stakeholder workshops and discussions throughout the entire planning process and especially during the Development Suitability Analysis. The complex task of creating a spatial plan may be democratized by providing citizens/stakeholders easy access to public data and the means of decision-making through a web-based GIS and also by giving them meaningful and functional roles throughout the planning process.

Finally, use of GIS as a tool to empower meaningful public involvement would largely refute the cynical view that various elite power groups control the land use decision-making process for their own benefit and the exclusion of the affected citizenry and stakeholders who may view themselves as having little political power or clout. Which is another reason to ensure that the Constraints-Opportunities and Development Suitability Analysis process always be entirely open, and that all professional players in the planning process — public officials and agency staff as well as consultants — are knowledgeable and forthright about why and how specific socioeconomic or biogeophysical factors may influence on-the-ground planning decisions.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The proposed Constraint-Based Spatial Planning process is an innovative integration of several traditional elements common to many land-based planning techniques — Public Involvement, Vision/Mission/Goal Setting, and Data Collection-Analysis — with a new focus on Constraints Analysis, Mitigation Strategies, and Development Suitability/GIS Analysis. That new approach involves a critical re-focusing that demands all those involved in the planning process address goals and objectives, problems and solutions, policies, procedures, and evaluation measures in a different way. That new approach encourages planners to engage in the activities presented below in Table 4.

Table 4: Summary — Constraints-Based Planning Process

Major Elements	Sub-Elements
Document the specific nature and relevant characteristics of individual constraints.
Employ GIS to map and analyze existing conditions, land-based constraints, and opportunities
Establish the precise manner in which each constraint may affect the planning process and the community’s vision, mission, goals, objectives, and priorities.
Rank constraints along a continuum that reflects how individual constraints can potentially affect the elements established in initial project phases — vision, mission, etc.
Fully explore the spatial nature of constraint-opportunity relationships and specific ways those relationships may affect the planning process.
Deconstruct constraints into sub-components to facilitate mitigation.
Select mitigation strategies containing solutions that would:	Eliminate, transform, and block adverse effects of each constraint
	Optimize the constraint’s positive aspects and reduce long-term risk and adverse effects for people and property
	Meet development needs in a sustainable manner by maintaining the health and integrity of the biogeophysical or cultural environments being considered.
Provide the following GIS maps in the Development Suitability Analysis:	Constraints that cannot be mitigated
	Primary, secondary, and marginal opportunities
	The range of opportunities to constraints (highest to lowest)

I believe that the planning process proposed in this paper avoids numerous potential pitfalls associated with other approaches by creating a tightly interwoven decision-making fabric comprised of three principal components:

• In-depth public involvement throughout the project that provides multiple opportunities for genuine and meaningful input using a web-based GIS
• In-depth GIS overlay analysis of existing conditions, issues, and trends
• GIS mapping and analytical techniques to help determine the spatial components of constraints, opportunities, mitigation strategies, and development suitability.

The combined result is a powerful collaborative tool that, when applied appropriately, can connect citizens/stakeholders with decision-makers and result in dynamic solutions to complex urban and regional planning challenges. I also firmly believe that, due to its inherent characteristics, appropriate application of constraints analysis is not limited to the field of urban and regional planning. This constraint-based technique may be employed profitably in a wide range of spatially based and other endeavors, such as real estate management, land development, community-based and economic development, transportation project planning, infrastructure planning, natural resource and ecosystem management, recreation planning, and emergency planning, etc.

Endnotes

¹ One professional paper that addresses constraint-based spatial planning, but without discussing the various interrelated components, is that of Ronald Milam and Kendra Breiland, “A New Transportation Planning Paradigm: Constraints-Based Planning in Response to the Continuing Decline in Transportation Funds.” Practicing Planner, September 29, 2009. Jeremy Frank and Ari Jonsson of the NASA Ames Research Center have developed a constraint reasoning technology, “Constraint-based Attribute and Interval Planning (CAIP)” to address real-world problems involving space operations (2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers; 06/14/2002; 16:58; p.1). In The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, (Great Barrington, Massachusetts: North River Press, 3rd edition, 2004), Eliyahu Goldratt, an Israeli physicist who became a well-known specialist in business management science and system dynamics, proposed the Theory of Constraints (TOC), a management technique that is marginally related to the ideas proposed in this paper. In addition, dealing with capacity constraints is a critical element in advanced planning and scheduling (APS), a manufacturing management process in which raw materials and production capacity are optimally allocated to address demand; see Kenn Steger-Jensen and Hans-Henrik Hvolby, “Constraint Based Planning in Advanced Planning and Scheduling Systems.” 8th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising. Rome, Italy, 17-19 June 2002 (accessed February 22, 2011: http://www.ve-forum.org/projects/408/ICE2002/Enterprise%20modelling/16_Steger-Jensen_Hvolby.pdf). Constraint-based scheduling has also become the dominant form of modeling and solving scheduling problems for many complex construction and industrial applications; see: Markus P.J. Fromherz, “Constraint-based Scheduling,” (invited tutorial paper at the American Control Conference, Arlington, VA, June 2001, accessed February 22, 2011: http://www2.parc.com/isl/members/fromherz/publications/cbs-tutorial-local.pdf); also see: Ian Flood, “Foresight Versus Simulation: Construction Planning Using Graphical Constraint-Based Modeling,” Proceedings of the 2010 Winter Simulation Conference, B. Johansson, S. Jain, J. Montoya-Torres, J. Hugan, and E. Yücesan, eds. accessed February 22, 2011, http://www.informs-sim.org/wsc10papers/279.pdf). Complex temporal constraints have also been addressed in a variety of studies in artificial intelligence and operation research/decision theory, for example: Tsamardinos, Ioannis; Vidal, Thierry; Pollack, Martha E.; (2003). “CTP: A New Constraint-Based Formalism for Conditional, Temporal Planning.” Constraints 8 (4): pp. 365-388 and Nareyek, A.; Fourer, R.; Freuder, E. C.; Giunchiglia, E.; Goldman, R. P.; Kautz, H.; Rintanen, J.; and Tate, A. 2005. “Constraints and AI Planning.” IEEE Intelligent Systems, 20(2), pp. 62-72.

² Although Constraint-Based Planning may be applied to any number of spatial projects, for the sake of simplicity in this paper I assume that the project being described is a comprehensive plan prepared for a local political jurisdiction.

³ It is important to realize that the initial Vision/Mission Statement may be revised or amended as a result of feedback from later phases in the planning process.

⁴ A number of the ideas presented in this section were informed by a critical reading of János Kornai, (2007) By Force of Thought: Irregular Memoirs of an Intellectual Journey. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, a work by a noted economist that focuses on opportunities provided by constraints.

⁵ In Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, constraints dictate system performance and if the goal is to increase that performance those constraints must be identified and fully explored.

⁶ Not all cutting edge ideas are productive or beneficial. But, exploration of potential solutions outside more traditional approaches increases the chances of constraints being dealt with in creative ways that may not have been considered under other circumstances.

Permian-Triassic Extinction

            This topic has generated intense research since the late 1980s and early 1990s. Competing conclusions have been reached and lines drawn in the sand, so to speak, concerning the primary event cause ranging from gradualistic environmental change to a catastrophic event, either flood basalt vulcanism or bolide impact. But as recently as 2003 and 2004 several independent research teams have collected and analyzed rocks from the period in question and have come to similar conclusions. The following material attempts to organize and present that rapidly evolving situation.

            The Permian-Triassic extinction event occurred approximately 252 mya at the Permian-Triassic boundary. It was the Earth’s most severe extinction event, marking the dying off of more than 90 percent of all marine species and nearly 80 percent of terrestrial vertebrate species (Author’s Note: No wonder that event is widely known as The Great Dying). Until the last two decades, most geoscientists thought the catastrophe was probably caused by active reconstruction of the Earth’s crustal plates and climatic change during formation of the super continent Pangaea and took quite a few million years to develop. In 1991, however, Asish Basu, a geochemist at the University of Rochester in New York, published the results of research that showed a massive and ancient fissure flow in what are now known as the Siberian Traps dated precisely to that greatest of extinctions 250 mya.

            In a more recent investigation of the Siberian Traps, geochemists Basu, Stein Jacobsen (Harvard University) and Robyn Hannigan (then at the University of Rochester) concluded that the Siberian flood basalt was generated from super-heated, buoyant rock that rose in a narrow column (mantle plume?) from a depth of 1,800 miles into a gigantic mushroom-shaped mass of hot material just 40 to 50 miles below present-day Siberia. Then, some 250 mya, 12 to 16 percent of that hot rock suddenly melted (probably a result of depressurization or decompression) and broke through fissures in the Earth’s crust, resulting in a vast flood of lava. Terrence M. Gerlach of Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque used one of the Kilauea eruptions as a model and estimated that the Deccan Traps flood basalt injected up to 30 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, six trillion tons of sulfur, and 60 billion tons of halogens (reactive elements such as chlorine and fluorine) into the lower atmosphere over a few hundred years. Since the Deccan and the Siberian Traps were of the same order of magnitude, out-gassing from the Siberian flood basalts would have been more than sufficient to have produced severe and persistent negative effects on plant and animal life, meaning the Permian-Triassic extinction event. For related information, see nuclear/volcanic winter.

            No more than fifteen years ago the Great Dying was assumed by most paleontologists to have been a gradual reduction in species that occurred over several million years, which was consistent with environmental and climatic changes associated with the lava flows from the Siberian Traps. But, today it is commonly accepted that at the very most the event lasted considerably less than a million years, which, geologically speaking, is a very brief period of time.

            Research in South Africa by paleontologist Peter Ward and colleagues directly bears on the length of the extinction. Ward discovered the Permian-Triassic catastrophe had stripped the Earth of many rooted plants, triggering environmental conditions that resulted in severe erosion. From that specific time period sedimentary rocks throughout South Africa’s Karoo Basin show that large rivers that had previously been meandering became braided, with multiple channels as they suddenly became chocked with sediments. The cemented deposits from those braided streams showed that they resembled streams in areas devastated by the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens or in areas logged by clear-cutting techniques. Ward’s research found that the rock record indicated rivers had changed from meandering to braided within 50,000 years, then returned to normal meandering courses in another 50,000 to 100,000 years, for a maximum of 150,000 years, which is considerably shorter than several million years. However, in an article in Science published in early 2005, Ward and co-authors used chemical, biological, and magnetic evidence to correlate sedimentary layers in the Karoo Basin of South Africa to similar layers in China that previous research had tied to marine extinction at the end of the Permian. Over seven years, they collected 126 reptile or amphibian skulls from a nearly 1,000-foot thick section of exposed Karoo Basin sediment deposits dating from the time of the extinction and found two patterns. The first showed gradual extinction over about 10 million years leading up to the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods. The second pattern was a sharp increase in extinction rate at the boundary that then lasted another 5 million years. Evidence from the Karoo Basin is consistent with a mass extinction resulting from catastrophic ecosystem changes over a long time scale, not with catastrophic changes associated with an impact. The scientists stated that they found nothing in the Karoo sediments that would indicate a meteorite struck the Earth around the time of the extinction, although they looked specifically for impact clays or material ejected from a crater.

            However, other recent research has come to the conclusion that the die-off was rapid. Geoscientists at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History published a 2000 study in Science in which marine rocks from China revealed the Permian-Triassic extinction happened in less than 160,000 years. And in the July 2000 issue of the journal Geology, a study of sea-floor rocks now exposed in the Austrian Alps concluded the extinction happened in less than 60,000 years and perhaps in less than 8,000 years. In addition, recent evidence has been found that links that extinction with the effects of a large bolide impact or massive outpouring of lava from the Siberian Traps or a combination of both. A team of scientists led by Asish Basu (who we met earlier), found dozens of unusual mineral grains from rock samples collected from Graphite Peak, Antarctica, that they believe are tiny fragments of a meteorite 4.56 billion years old that crashed into Earth 250 mya. The researchers also found bits of nearly pure metallic iron in the Antarctic rock that were indicative of being formed by extreme heat, such as that in a severe meteorite impact. The particles resembled those reported by Kunio Kaiho of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, from the P-T boundary in Meishan, China, that formed as condensates from a large bolide impact cloud. The very fact that those grains had not deteriorated from weathering meant they must have been buried quickly under sedimentary deposits, another indication of a major impact. A third controversial impact marker was also discovered at Graphite Peak, Antarctica, by Luann Becker, a geo-scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Robert Poredea of the University of Rochester. That marker consisted of clusters of carbon atoms called buckyballs, materials that are seldom produced in quantity as part of any known terrestrial process except bolide impact.

            In May 2004, Luann Becker and others in her team published an article in the journal, Science, that presented extensive evidence of a 125-mile-wide crater, called Bedout, off the northwestern coast of Australia. Their data included seismic imaging, gravity data and the identification of melt rocks and impact breccias from drill cores. During their recent related research in Antarctica, Becker and her colleagues also found meteoric fragments in a thin claystone breccia layer that indicated an end-Permian event. The breccia in both Antarctica and Australia contained impact debris and evidence of shock metamorphism in a layer of sediment that formed at end-Permian time that matched up with what is called the Great Dying, a period when the Earth was configured as Pangaea and Panthalassa. Whether that specific bolide was responsible for the mass extinction is still up in the air, so to speak, especially since a number of geophysicists, specifically R. D. Müller et al., have determined that the Bedout features failed to pass nearly all unequivocal criteria for impact crater recognition. (R. D. Müller et al., 2005. Geophysical evaluation of the enigmatic Bedout basement high, offshore northwestern Australia Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 237, 264-284).

            Author’s Note: In summary, many scientists believe the cause of the mass die-off included atmospheric and climatic changes initiated by the enormous out-gassing from the Siberian Traps. Others credit a huge comet or asteroid that hit the Earth at or around the Permian-Triassic boundary. Organisms throughout the world, regardless of habitat, suffered similar rates of extinction, suggesting that the cause of the event was global not local and that the change was sudden and not gradual. Although many theories have been presented for the cause of the extinction, including plate tectonics, a major impact event, a supernova, and extreme volcanism (flood basalts), no single cause or combination of causes is universally accepted. Many scientists think that the impact of a large bolide could trigger an undersea release of methane that would rob the oceans of oxygen and also trigger massive eruptions from volcanic fissures, specifically the Siberian Traps, which would then pour out lethal levels of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide.

            Although Becker documented ways in which the Chicxulub cores were very similar to the Bedout cores, the scientific jury has just begun to examine and critically discuss the evidence. And research has only started that is intended to shed light on whether the bolide impact and the Siberian Traps fissure flows were related events. The debate between scientists who support the bolide impact mechanism and those supporting the Siberian Traps mechanism continues. Perhaps both groups will be proven partially right and partially wrong in that those events may have been causally related and functioned together to cause the extinction. Consequently, the Permian-Triassic extinction continues to be another of life’s wonderful mysteries. Keep your eyes on the literature over the next few years and you may find how the mystery is resolved.

Mass Extinction: Ordovician-Silurian, Devonian, and Guadalupian

The geologic record documents at least six catastrophic events that brought much of the Earth’s existing life to relatively sudden and untimely ends.

Ordovician-Silurian Extinction

            The first mass extinction occurred 440-450 mya at the Ordovician-Silurian transition. At least two extinction events occurred and together are ranked by many scientists as the second or third largest of the five major extinctions in Earth’s history in terms of percentage of genera that disappeared from the geologic record. Twenty-seven percent of all families and 57 percent of all genera became extinct. The event eliminated many brachiopods and conodonts, which were marine animals with tiny, complex, specialized conical teeth-like structures that appeared long before land animals, fish, or animals with backbones that are now one of the most important biostratigraphic indices available in Paleozoic and Triassic strata. It severely reduced the number of trilobite species and was probably triggered by a major drop in temperature and CO₂ levels, ice sheet formation, and lowering of the ocean level, which combined to adversely affect marine and terrestrial lifeforms. Several scientists have theorized that the leading extinction cause may have been the gradual movement of Gondwana into the South Polar Region and consequent disruption of ocean currents.

Devonian Extinction

            The second extinction event, with effects similar to the first, took place during the late Devonian, about 364 mya in the transition from the late Devonian to the Carboniferous period, and also was probably due to similar causes: decreased temperatures and sea reliction. About 50 percent of all species disappeared. At this time no significant controversy has been generated among geoscientists concerning those events since so little is known of the geological or climatological processes that led to the extinctions.

            Contrary to other mass extinctions, the Devonian event was not sudden; evidence suggests that the extinctions took place in pulses over a period that ranged from about three million to fifteen million years, which is why many paleontologists do not include it as an “event,” since it consisted not only of many independent extinction pulses but perhaps also a multitude of causes including bolide impacts, global anoxia (widespread dissolved oxygen shortages), plate tectonics, sea level changes, global climatic change (cooling rather than warming), and the expansion of terrestrial plants (causing mass extinctions in the tropical oceans). Definitive reasons for the late Devonian extinctions have yet to be demonstrated.

Guadalupian Extinction

            Large-scale extinction event that occurred in the middle Permian around 260 mya that devastated marine life around the world, resulting in a 50 percent extinction in marine genus. Prior to the mid-1990s very little research had been done on this Permian extinction event because it closely preceded the great end-Permian mass extinction peak and for many decades was considered to be part of that larger event. One reason for the prior difficulty in separating these two extinctions was that the duration between them was very short, about eight million years, when compared with durations between the big five mass extinctions, between 41 to 145 million years. Only in 1994 did two research teams  independently identify a separate mass extinction late in the Guadalupian Stage of the Middle Permian followed by a phase of radiation and recovery prior to the end-Permian extinction event. The Guadalupian extinction is best known from evidence provided from shallow marine, equatorial carbonate environments and was particularly severe for brachiopods, corals, echinoderms — blastoids, crinoids, echinoids — foraminifera (especially fusulinids), and reef-forming sponges.
              Researchers led by Paul Wignall of the University of Leeds reported in the journal Science in May 2009 that the Guadalupian Mass Extinction was preceded by massive eruptions in the Emeishan geological province of southwestern China. Since the eruptions occurred in a shallow sea the researchers were able to study both the volcanic rock and the overlying layer of sedimentary carbonates containing fossilized marine life, making it possible to compare dates and directly monitor the relative timing of extinction and volcanism in the same locations. According to Wignall and his colleagues, between the layers of igneous rock are limestone deposits with fossilized evidence of widespread extinction. The injection of hot lava from the volcanoes into the sea would have produced massive cloud formations that likely spread around the world, cooling the planet and producing acid rain. For over half a million years the eruptions discharged about 120,000 cubic miles of lava, killing more than half of the life on Earth and leaving lava deposits 655 feet deep in some locations. Although the evidence discovered by Wignall is not proof of cause-and-effect, the researchers concluded that their study provided solid evidence potentially linking the mass extinction and eruption.

What Does the Future Hold? And Which Future Is That? — EATING THE EVERGLADES

              In 2001, President George W. Bush visited Everglades National Park with his Florida Governor brother, Jeb, and let us foolish optimists know exactly what an uphill struggle it will be to restore the Everglades when he said, “We must meet the demands of growth, but without harming the very things that give Florida and the Everglades their beauty.”[1] Double-speak at its finest. The applause, laughter, and raucous whistles you hear in the background must be from a cynical but appreciative George Orwell. When our elected leaders set goals that are mutually irreconcilable, unrealistic, and certain to fail we know what the future holds. And it’s very ugly. But that’s not the end of the travesty. On January 9, 2002, George W. and Jeb got together again and signed a Federal-State of Florida agreement that is widely known as the Agreement between the Bushes.[2] Perhaps the most significant provision of that Agreement is quoted below:

WHEREAS, in recognition of this interest [in restoration flows largely from the substantial Federal resources in the ecosystem, including Everglades National Park and other National Parks], the Congress established that the overarching objective of the Plan is the restoration, preservation, and protection of the South Florida Ecosystem, while providing for other water-related needs of the region, including water supply and flood protection . . .

            Since the subject of this discussion is located in Florida I shouldn’t continue the commentary or criticism without allowing the State to weigh in with its two cents worth. After all, State legislators passed specific laws that supposedly ensure the Everglades will be restored. Let’s take a look at Florida’s Everglades Forever Act, which declares:

It is the intent of the Legislature to pursue comprehensive and innovative solutions to issues of water quality, water quantity, hydroperiod, and invasion of exotic species which face the Everglades ecosystem. The Legislature recognizes that the Everglades ecosystem must be restored both in terms of water quality and water quantity and must be preserved and protected in a manner that is long-term and comprehensive. The Legislature further recognizes that the EAA [Everglades Agricultural Area] and adjacent areas provide a base for an agricultural industry, which in turn provides important products, jobs, and income regionally and nationally. It is the intent of the Legislature to preserve natural values in the Everglades while also maintaining the quality of life for all residents of south Florida, including those in agriculture, and to minimize the impact on south Florida jobs, including agricultural, tourism, and natural resource-related jobs, all of which contribute to a robust regional economy.[3]

            Hey, everything above reads great, doesn’t it? The Federal and State Governments assert in plain English that they want the Everglades restored, right? So, why the harsh criticism about double-speak? Shouldn’t we be fair and give the process a chance before slamming it?

            Although the issue is in itself complex, the problem I have with the position of both governments can be posed in simple terms: how do you restore the Everglades’ historical hydroperiod, water quality, water quantity, and flow dynamics while keeping agriculture, tourism, and natural resource jobs (meaning environmentally destructive activities like limestone mining), not to mention water supply and flood protection for all urban and suburban settlements that now dominate south Florida (meaning places like Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties) going full tilt at the very same time? Remember the previous objections to the Corps and the SFWMD claiming that the Kissimmee River was being restored to its former glories at the same time as the cattle ranchers’ lands were protected from flooding? It’s like demanding that our prospective spouses simultaneously must be innocent virgins and also highly experienced sexual athletes. Those goals are mutually exclusive and irreconcilable. Period. That’s why the harsh words.

            Today, the only reason that agribusinesses dominate the EAA and urban settlement covers all south Florida, except for the remaining central core of wetlands and the EAA, is that the historical River of Grass was drastically altered by the Corps of Engineers’ water management techniques at the express order of the U.S. Congress. The south Florida wetlands were drained and dried out intentionally so that those modern human landscapes could be created. As a direct result of decades of drainage and water management, those very wetlands cannot be restored to what they were previously if all those socio-cultural “improvements” remain in place and even are expected to grow at the same break-neck pace as they are now. No matter what anyone says, you can’t do both simultaneously or even sequentially. You can only do one. So, if you keep agriculture in the EAA, flood control everywhere from Palm Beach south to Homestead, and limestone mining west of Miami, which at this point are political givens, the Everglades simply can never be restored other than on the most superficial, meaningless basis. Never, never, never.

            Remember the following words and then apply them to the above State legislation and the nonsense in the Agreement between the Bushes: Im-Possible. If you’re thinking “Everglades restoration” you better be focused on bare minimalism at the very most. And even minimalist restoration may be far too ambitious if you had been thinking about restoring the Everglades to an approximation of its former natural wonders. If we sit back and accept the logic in the Agreement between the Bushes and Florida’s Everglades Forever Act, you should start thinking the polar opposite of restoration. Which is the steady, continued, and certain destruction of the Everglades and the Big Cypress Swamp and all other central and south Florida wetlands while the powerbrokers relax in their exclusive country clubs, smoke expensive cigars, drink the finest single malts, and mock environmental values as their bulldozers continue to devour the wetlands while political re-election campaign committees revel in one fat powerbroker contribution after another. Ka-ching, ka-ching — that’s the sound of the American political system doing what it does best.

            More than a kernel of truth resides in the oft-quoted saying that developers are only giving people what they want. But don’t tell me that argument deserves serious attention. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the role of responsible government to step in and establish restraints when citizens take actions that will prove detrimental to the country’s or the State’s present and future well-being? Hello? Anyone remember 1999 through 2008 when Wall Street banks and investment firms and the role Washington politicians played in drastically reducing the authority of government regulators so those companies could rake in more and more millions as they raped their clients and consumers as well? Take a good look at what’s happening in Florida. Intentionally inept environmental regulations equal natural system destruction. Period. Just don’t tell me that that is inadvertent or unanticipated or unintended.

            Tell me this, dear Readers. If we didn’t have Federal clean air and clean water regulations does anyone but die-hard reactionaries believe industries would have voluntarily spent hundreds of millions to cut pollution? Get real. If we had been smart enough to structure tax credits intelligently it might have happened. But we weren’t and it didn’t. The sad truth is sometimes government’s most important function is to protect us from ourselves. From our basic thoughtlessness, indifference, stupidity, and unbridled avarice. But no government in Florida history has proved itself a responsible environmental steward. The future is not overly promising if that characteristic remains unchanged and Florida keeps tumbling asshole over elbow toward social, economic, and environmental chaos, which is the path the State is on today. That potential reality is hanging out there for all but the willfully blind, the indifferent, or the greed-obsessed to see. As in too many other states, laws passed in the bright sunshine at the behest of the politically connected powerbrokers are merely window dressing to appease their critics as the total urban warfare that is sprawl continues to enrich them and their fat-cat political cronies.

            The problem is that the very nature of Florida politics militates against the possibility of the State changing its stripes, environmentally speaking. So, if the State government has no interest in preventing its well-connected citizens from destroying the very land that sustains them, perhaps the Federal government will have to assume that role. Fat chance, the pessimists say. Not with agribusinesses, mining companies, and land developers so cozy and warm, cuddling in the core of the Republican nest. Just ain’t gonna happen. Better invest in some political campaign futures like the Big Three powerbrokers if you want real returns on your money. Those fat old boys really know how to get Congress to pipeline the goodies straight into their pockets. That’s because their marches on Washington are made with fully loaded grease guns.

            The bleak and remorseless prognosis many cynical observers see for south Florida is a product of the explosive growth the State has experienced and, even now after the housing bubble imploded, is unwilling to control. That particular future is nothing more than wall-to-wall subdivisions connected by one architecturally meritless retail strip center after another. In that future the River of Grass is gone. The Big Cypress is but a lingering memory. Or perhaps it survives as the name of yet another bustling regional shopping mall, maybe something on the order of The Grand Galleria at Big Cypress. Is that the legacy we want to leave our grandchildren and their grandchildren? An even more unsettling thought is that what we have done and will do with our environmental stewardship in Florida speaks to the future of our entire nation.

            Unless major changes arise in the way we understand and discharge our environmental responsibilities, I’m happy to say that I will be dead before the eyes of our nation witness the full-scale destruction that today seems so inevitable. What real chance is there for a future that holds out the hope of hundreds of millions of Americans living in balance with the environment? It’s a tough question, one that all too few leaders in south Florida are willing to address. The best answer to that is another question. Do voters appreciate the role that munificent and unending political campaign contributions play in the creation of legislation and in controlling the actions of regulatory agencies?

            The reason why the remaining natural and partially natural environments in Florida seem doomed to savage alteration and eventual destruction lies in the critically flawed nature of Florida politics, and that includes Democrats and Republicans alike. There’s no significant difference between those guys, regardless of party affiliation. And don’t forget the greed principle so beloved by developers and businessmen that they would disinter their mothers in order to be able to sell the land and make a tidy profit. Land to them is only dirt; its intrinsic ecological value has no meaning. Just dirt that can be sold at the highest price the market will bear. Dirt whose only role in life is to be transformed into nothing less than gross profits and thus into fat.

In a world some scholars have characterized as a fusion of the sacred and the profane, for powerbrokers and their fat-cat politicians only the profane counts and is to be exploited to the max. Therefore, the Everglades, Big Cypress, Loxahatchee Slough, and the Green Swamp are regarded simply as financial opportunities to develop more subdivisions, strip centers, lime rock mining pits, muckland sugarcane farms, orange groves, grazing land, and bio-medical research campuses. More-more-more is the goal because that’s the only way powerbrokers and their pet politicians will continue getting fatter. And that’s the sorry truth.

            It’s not high-energy physics we’re talking about. Just follow the money. Watch the shell carefully and you will discern the hand-off from developers, mining firms, and agricultural interests to the politicians’ election campaigns. It’s a flawed system we tolerate because we lack the collective will and the courage to change it. I mean, who’s getting hurt here? The Everglades? The Big Cypress? Who gives a rat’s ass anyway? I got my air conditioned subdivision house and a pick-up truck and SUV in my two-car garage with the bass boat sitting in the side yard. What the hell do I care about some stinking swamp? You know, I ain’t never seen a gator that could generate jobs or electricity.

            The truth is that coming generations are the ones that will suffer, not us so much. As a nation we have been shitting in our nest for two hundred years and sooner or later society will be forced to pay the price. Regardless of what Republicans and others connected to the powerbrokers like to claim, our actions have environmental costs and consequences. They can be postponed for a time but they can’t be wished away or ignored, no matter what people like Julian Simon and his see-no-environmental-evil followers say. After all, if you don’t think past civilizations disappeared when they destroyed their environments, you probably know little about the Mayans, Easter Island, or Angkor Wat. Listen to Jared Diamond, writing in Harper’s Magazine in 2003:

One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse. Few people, however, least of all our politicians, realize that a primary cause of the collapse of those societies has been the destruction of the environmental resources on which they depended.

            Please tell me, why is it that profit and greed have been able to dictate our environmental heritage? I can only hope-pray-trust that people make an effort to understand the relationship between campaign contributions and political accessibility. In our country, political accessibility rules. And the surest way to get accessibility is through large and regular campaign contributions to politicians of both parties. Fat businessmen of all varieties have a natural desire to surround themselves with fat politicians. Remember the great line Shakespeare put in Julius Caesar’s mouth? “Let me have men about me that are fat.” All I can say is that old Julius would feel perfectly at home in the Florida political crowd. Porkers all getting fat by eating the Everglades. Burrrrp.

Implications

            Despite loud trumpeting and elaborate smokescreens to the contrary, the State of Florida has no effective growth management tools to regulate or limit the heavy population in-migration to Florida as a State or to its magnetic coastal regions. Nor are there effective tools to mitigate the adverse environmental effects generated by that migration. Why? Because the State lacks both the will and a reason to create and implement tools that work. As a general observation, land use and environmental planning can never succeed where back-room political deals have created and continue to maintain a tilted playing field. That’s been the harsh political reality of Florida for well more than a hundred years and that’s why the State has no interest in effective environmental or growth management legislation. No matter what intentional misrepresentations flow out of the Governor’s mansion.

             The developers’ environmental feeding frenzy, consuming ever more “dirt” to satisfy the demands of increasing numbers of people, has a set of inevitable but easily foreseeable consequences. If you open your eyes. But only if, and that’s a big if, people want to see what their future holds. Even if it’s through a glass darkly. We either face those consequences now or for future Florida generations it will be too late. In the real world, no possibility exists that the demands of south Florida growth can be met while protecting an extraordinarily fragile resource that is required to sustain that growth. No matter what President George W. Bush and Governor Jeb Bush were so fond of saying without the slightest hint of insincerity or hypocrisy.

            Truth is, no way can two 180° opposed land use variables be maximized simultaneously. Period. End of story. In the case of south Florida, an irresistible force has met a very fragile object and we are witnessing the inevitable crunch. The Everglades is dying and has been dying for almost a hundred years. No mistake. As it must given political reality and our lack of collective will to change that situation. For Florida powerbrokers to thrive and grow fatter, the Everglades must be destroyed. The real problem is that we seem frozen in the headlights of a speeding eighteen wheeler, absolutely powerless to move. As much as it deeply hurts to write this, if the above growth scenario written by agribusinesses, developers, and the mining guys in cahoots with the fat-cat politicians continues to dominate the Sunshine State, my advice is to hurry and see what’s left of the once natural and beautiful Florida landscapes. Before they disappear completely. Or before they are so altered as to be totally unrecognizable for the treasures they once were.

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[1] Quoted in Michael Grunwald, “Growing Pains in Southwest Florida – More Development Pushes Everglades to the Edge,” Washington Post, June 25, 2002.

[2] Available on the internet: http://exchange.law.miami.edu/everglades/010902_Comp_Ever_Restoration_Plan_Benefits_Agreement.htm

[3] 2000 Florida Statutes, Title XXVIII, Natural Resources; Conservation, Reclamation, and Use; Chapter 373, Water Resources 373.4592, Everglades Improvement and Management.

Creation of the Immokalee Landscape — EATING THE EVERGLADES

Travelers who take State Route 29 from the Tamiami Trail north toward Corkscrew Swamp  first drive through Copeland. That tiny settlement used to be an old lumber town but today is the headquarters of the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. If those intrepid travelers continue north they might miss, if they blink too often, a string of micro-villages: Jerome, Deep Lake, Rock Island, and Miles City. Wide, oily patches on the road, each and every one without a great deal to recommend them. Other than those small settlements, cleared, open farms, ranch land, and pine plantations border the east side of the well-maintained two-lane highway for most of the journey. Most people are surprised to learn that all the land from the Tamiami Trail north to Immokalee was formerly cypress wetlands before forest clearing, drainage, grazing, agriculture, and fires destroyed the natural landscape.

Immokalee is high on my list of Florida places to talk about for a powerful reason. Like Marco Island, it represents the real-world nightmare that grew out of the vision of Hamilton Disston, Henry Flagler, Barron Gift Collier Senior, Ed Ball, and numerous other Florida developers. When people challenge me, demanding to know what’s wrong with establishing farms and ranches in the Everglades-Big Cypress Basin, I ask them if they’ve ever visited Immokalee. Typically, the answer is negative. So I tell them to visit and take a good look at the surrounding countryside along Route 29. When they drive into Immokalee, all they’ll see are planted pinelands and cleared land in ranches and farms. They won’t see many indications of a landscape that’s remotely natural. Most people who live, work, or travel through the surrounding area have little idea that it was and remains part of the Big Cypress Swamp.

The landscape around Immokalee was transformed from what was to what you see today through a series of steps that were sometimes discrete and separated in time and other times were intentionally sequential. Small-scale commercial harvesting of timber in what then was Lee County began in the latter part of the 19th Century and continued through the 1960s, growing in intensity and areal extent every year until it became a huge business. For decades, more than 150 railcars loaded with baldcypress logs were hauled out each month. Since each railcar held between 60,000 and 80,000 pounds, think about how many baldcypress trees had to be logged to fill an average of nearly 2,000 railcars each year. And then think about what that destruction had to do to what had been a natural landscape almost totally untouched by previous human use.

By about 1900, because of the extensive timber harvest and land clearing, cattle grazing had become the primary agricultural activity in that part of southwest Florida and continued as such for many decades. Pastures were created on freshly drained land from which the marketable baldcypress had been removed by ever increasing and ever profitable logging operations.

The completion of the Tamiami Trail-U.S. Route 41 and various drainage canals dug by order of Barron Gift Collier Senior in 1928 brought high-value commercial vegetable production, especially tomatoes, to the newly-named Collier County. Those agricultural operations were followed in the 1960s by citrus crops and pine plantations and, at various key locations, by human settlement. It was that gradual transformation of natural habitat to logged-over land to drained pastures to field crops to citrus trees and pine plantations and finally to urban/suburban real estate that in Barron Gift Senior’s eyes looked like a harvest of gold that kept on giving. And that’s the Immokalee Landscape.

Author’s Note: The same transformation of sensitive natural landscapes to highly altered states has occurred in throughout Florida. On November 21, 2004, an article written by Gregg Fields and Nathalie Gouillou in the Miami Herald detailed the rise of Homestead from the ashes of Hurricane Andrew. One specific sentence that caught my eye was: “Thousands of rooftops are sprouting from former agricultural fields.” And what were those fields in their previous life? The Everglades. Homestead was growing so fast in the 1990s and early 2000s that planners expected the City’s population, currently 33,000, to double in the next seven years. And all those new rooftops would be sprouting from where? From agricultural fields that were part of the Everglades and were drained and developed from 1915 through the 1920s by Henry M. Flagler’s Model Land Company. If you Readers have environmental consciences and deeply held concerns for our collective future you won’t forget that the lesson of the Immokalee Landscape applies throughout the Sunshine State and not just to southwest Florida.

But there’s more. Even though Barron Gift Collier Senior is long dead and buried, his legacy lives on in the form of various corporations and business enterprises that are actively involved in southwest Florida land development. It shouldn’t surprise perceptive Readers that several of the Collier business ventures own a considerable amount of land around Immokalee. Or that those firms are working hard to bring economic development to the area and therefore funnel more and larger profits into their pockets. Eating the Everglades has become a well-established Collier tradition. The genuinely big surprise is that Thomas Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza, former owner of the Detroit Tigers, and a very wealthy fellow indeed, is also involved in that process. As is Ave Maria University, the very first new Catholic university to be built in the United States for 40 years.

Monaghan, the University, and Barron Collier Companies have formed an unlikely but powerful joint venture to develop a large chunk of land (as large as 5,000 acres and maybe many times larger) five short miles south of Immokalee. Monaghan has given the University an enormous pile of money ($240 million to establish the University and another $300 million for an endowment program for the future) to get the project off the ground. Barron Collier Companies, recognizing an angel when it sees one (albeit a financial one in this case), immediately jumped on the bandwagon and donated 750 acres to the school. Naturally, it and allied Collier-family companies own most of the land around the University and expect to make a real killing by developing those properties for single-family homes and strip centers amidst golf courses on as many as 5,000 additional acres. Hey, no sense turning your nose up at a sweet deal, right? Even if the damned Papists are involved. (Author’s Note: Relax, Sister Mary Josepha. Born and reared Catholic, I attended and graduated Catholic schools from elementary through graduate school so don’t think I’m being more than just a tad sarcastic here.) And remember, we’re talking about rural southwest Florida, in the midst of Cracker heaven, where hard-shell Baptists are at the top of the religious pecking order and Catholics have been, well, tolerated at the very best, especially since most of the lowly Hispanic migrant farm workers are of that faith.

But, all kinds of things change when a 10,000 pound gorilla named Monaghan armed with hundreds of millions of dollars comes to the dance. Which is when tolerance suddenly becomes the magic word. You bet, podna. Say. How do they do that sign of the cross thing?

More critical changes are on the plate for the Immokalee area. In mid-June 2004 Governor Jeb Bush approved two special taxing districts that would directly affect the creation of Ave Maria University and its nearby town. Bush’s signature meant that Barron Collier Companies now has the power to build and maintain community services for Ave Maria University and the town that one day is expected to have an estimated 20,000 residents. That taxing district consists of about 10,000 acres. And Collier Enterprises can begin protecting land west of the Ave Maria District in an area that now will be known as the Big Cypress Stewardship District, which has slightly less than 22,000 acres. (Author’s Note: The Big Cypress Stewardship District? Did anyone miss the blatant hypocrisy of the name? Stewardship, indeed.) The two Districts are allowed to construct and maintain roadways, traffic signals, street lighting, bridges, sewage treatment systems, and even water-landscape plantings. They also are able to finance projects from revenue bonds and levy property taxes on residents within the Districts to pay for future growth and to provide public safety services. However, the Districts cannot exercise police power or planning and zoning, which remain in the hands of the County. That may give some people a sense of confidence but only if they close their eyes and pretend they’re not in southwestern Florida or in a county known as Collier. Named of course after none other than Barron Gift Collier Senior.

With Monaghan’s mega-millions and the various Collier companies land development expertise and political power behind it, the University expected that its first phase of 950 acres would be completed by 2006. Eventually the University and the adjacent town it is planning to build may have as many as 20,000 residents and occupy as many as 4,300 acres. Once completed, the town will also have 1,800-acres of parks and lakes as well as hotels and office and retail space. Not to mention hundreds of single-family homes ranging from $200,000 to $500,000 plus. Hey, it could easily happen. Right in the heart of the former agricultural fields that in a previous life had been Big Cypress wetlands.

Speaking of former wetlands, the University and the town are located at the edge of Camp Keais Strand, a critical flow-way connecting the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge and Big Cypress National Preserve in the south with the Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed project to the north. But the real beauty of the Immokalee Landscape and the genius of Barron Gift Senior is that its transformation from natural area to cultural landscape is so complete that if conservation groups try to raise the issue of environmental degradation, spokespersons for the joint venture can hold up their hands in righteous indignation and wide-eyed innocence and claim not to know anything about sensitive ecosystems. Hey, look around, Joe-Bob. All you see are cattle ranches, tomato farms, and pine plantations. Not wetlands. Man, what the hell’s wrong with them stupid-ass tree-huggers? What wetlands they looking at?

What indeed, is what the Corps of Engineers asked and, having found no adequate answer by its civil engineering and water management standards, issued all necessary permits in April 2005 to enable the project to move forward.

Implications

The Immokalee Landscape is what will happen to all of south Florida if environmentalists are tossed into the trash pile as irresponsible naysayers. What you see around Immokalee is the sterile humanscape that is waiting in the wings to replace what remains of the complex land-water nexus that is the Big Cypress and the western Everglades. Creating the Immokalee Landscape we have today required the complete transformation of a natural environment into a cultural artifact. What’s highly ironic is that all the ditching, drainage, and diking activities in the area to get rid of excess water have so lowered the groundwater table that farmers around Immokalee now are forced to irrigate their crops to obtain the requisite yields. So much for the ability of chuckleheaded civil engineers, water managers, and land developers to understand, much less control, that complex environment.

By the way, who do you suppose owns much of the agricultural and grazing lands around Immokalee? Go ahead, you’re allowed to take a wild-ass guess. The Immokalee Ranch Partnership, owned at least in part by the Barron Collier Company and Collier Enterprises, is a cow/calf operation on more than 70,000 acres located primarily in Collier County. And not too far away is Silver Strand Farms, with 5,000 acres producing tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers and sod, and Silver Strand Groves, with 15,000 acres that annually produce five million boxes of oranges. Barron Gift Collier Senior and his peculiar brand of environmental stewardship live on and on and on. A Gift that keeps on giving. You have to remember that that man had a great deal of respect for the land he and his companies managed. Right. Respect. And also remember how that word is spelled: P-R-O-F-I-T-S. Shades of Henry Flagler and Ed Ball.

For the moment, despite all the development that is waiting anxiously in the wings, Immokalee is still a rough frontier-type town populated largely by farm workers, ethnic and racial minorities, and rural poor. Home of the Immokalee Regional Raceway (a drag strip), it is best known today for cowboy bars where Tony Lama facials and body massages are common events on testosterone-heavy Saturday nights. If your fantasy life includes wanting to see a typical Florida farming-ranching town without frills or fancy extras, you can do it in Immokalee if you hurry. You can also have lunch, gas up the car, fill the coolers with ice, stretch your legs, and maybe attend church on Sunday if you are so inclined. But for all its rough, working-class charm, Immokalee is not on my list of places to live, work, or even visit for more than an hour or so. My suggestion is to take a long, hard look at the area that forms the Immokalee Landscape as you drive through. It’s Hamilton Disston’s, Ed Ball’s, and Barron Gift Collier Senior’s dreams of Florida come true. I hope it isn’t yours. Want my advice? Take a quick look, gas up and haul your sorry ass out of town.

Let’s end this chapter with a couple assumptions. First, assume that Barron Gift Senior hadn’t suffered the financial reversals of the real estate boom and bust 1920s and the hammer blows of the Great Depression. Second, assume he had proceeded with all his plans to tame the hostile wilderness infested by gators and snakes, which, of course, he respected a great deal. If those assumptions were fact instead of fiction, what today would most of Collier County and the Big Cypress Swamp look like? The answer is right in front of our eyes. The Immokalee Landscape and the Naples metropolitan area would stretch all the way across south Florida to merge with heavily urbanized Miami-Dade County. The natural systems we call the Big Cypress and the Everglades would be but faint memories enshrined perhaps in the names of office parks or another university in the State system, thanks to the fat-cat politicians whose election campaign chests have been filled for decades by their powerbroker buddies. And how appropriate would that be?