growth is inevitable
tommy permalink | categories: beaches, development, marketing, moving, politics, travel, visitors, weatherby tommy @ 8:59 am
For those of you who think growth can just be completely stopped, think about this.
Imagine a January Monday “up there” somewhere - you wake up early, pile on a bunch of clothes, put a parka on over that, and go start the car. Then you grab your snow shovel, create a path for the car, and consider scraping the ice off the windshield. 
Deciding to let the car heater dissolve the ice instead, you head back inside for a cup of cocoa and flip on the TV, where Al Roker is telling you about the clear, bright, cool day in Tampa, with a high of 70.
And you think about BREAKING THE LAW:
(Toledo, OH)
521.01. Removal of snow and ice from walks.
(a) The occupants of each single residential, commercial or industrial property and the owner of any multiple residential, commercial or industrial property or of any unoccupied or unimproved property, abutting upon public walks shall clear the walk of snow, ice, dirt, or any other debris within twenty-four hours after such deposit.
(1952 Code § 7-4-29)
(b) Whoever violates this section is guilty of a minor misdemeanor.
You think about DEATH:
…he passed away today, suffering a critical heart attack while shoveling snow in his driveway.
The Great State of Florida is among the most wonderful locations in the world. The miles of beaches and wintertime weather here have drawn people to visit the area for over a hundred years. Along the way, hoteliers, roadside attractions, and other entrepreneurs have made the place even more enticing, giving the impression to the rest of the world that the entire state is just a big playground. How many of your out-of-state friends wonder if you just hang out at the beach on the days you don’t go to Disney World?
So when those pasty folks up north begin to contemplate a change, it should be no surprise that the SUNSHINE STATE almost always makes the short list of places to go.
Florida’s population increases by more than 1,000 people every day. Natural increase (births minus deaths) account for less than 13% of Florida’s population increase from 1970 to 2000. So net migration (people moving in minus people moving out) is about 872 each day.
But at the very least, sixty-two of those moving here find their way to Hillsborough County. The average household size is around 2.5, so those 62 people are gonna need about 25 households. EVERY DAY. That’s over 9,000 households a year. Traditionally, about half of those are gonna be single family detached homes, so we’re looking at building more than 350 houses a month in Hillsborough County.
So the question is not whether we “want” growth, the question is where do we want to direct our inevitable new neighbors?
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October 29th, 2007 at 11:39 am
I believe we should direct our new neighbors to the Urban Service Area. This is where smart growth should occur. We have 57000 units of housing approved but not yet developed. Will our new neighbors buy into the USA? I don’t know. Maybe they want to live in the rural area. Should we build 500 homes on 100 acres out there? Thats what the building community wants to do. They don’t care about how far a drive workers living there have to make. They don’t care if all along that two lane rural road going out to the 500 new homes has grocery, strip mall, shopping centers, banks, all funneling the additional cars and people out there. They make money…they move on to the next tract. If we ever expect to grow smartly we have to hold the line on sprawl. You pay for the growth, I pay for the growth. I want more transit, I want more alternatives to the auto. Will our new neighbors want that too?
October 29th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Direct our inevitable new neighbors to neighborhoods located below 20 feet-above-sea- level, wherein they will be flushed from the state and this mortal coil during the next big hurricane. Y’all come back now, floaters!
October 29th, 2007 at 11:47 am
To add some perspective on this figure, keep in mind the retiree population, which means a statistically signifcant percentage of the county population dies just as these new transplants are coming in. And you’ll find a fair number of people up north who come down to Florida, try it for a year or two, and leave. Yes, most of them stay, but not all.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Related quote from the Times article on Charlotte:
“City leaders decided early on that keeping uptown alive was a wayto compete with Atlanta. If streets are boarded up, people assume the region is dead, Charlotte’s Republican Mayor Pat McCrory told the Tampa folks. If that means depriving the suburbs of some growth, so be it.
“I call them corridors of crap,” McCrory said of typical suburban strip development.”
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/29/Business/What_s_Charlotte_got_.shtml
October 29th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
i question the oft-repeated cliche or urban-myth that 1000 new people move into fla every day. if this were true, then there would be no real estate slump. where are these supposedly new people living? any real estate agent will tell you that so-called “relo’s” are the best prospects. yet, tampa isn’t getting any relo’s these days. i think the migration has slowed significantly. maybe all 1,000 who arrive today are moving into rental apartmemts. they are not buying houses, of that you can be sure.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Inside the Urban service area! They are welcome in the rural area as well if they follow the comp plan! According to the Planning Commission 80% of the expected growth is accounted for inside the Urban Service Area through 2025! The developers sure don’t want you to know this as scooping up the “low hanging fruit” in the rural area and spreading Brandon like a cancer is far cheaper and easier for them to do. People are finally taking notice and fighting back.
October 29th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Where do we want to direct them?
Um…how about back home?
October 29th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
“Good growth”, not “no growth”, realizing that sometimes good growth means simply not building.
October 30th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Meredith & dreaming - check those links in the post - It’s not a myth, and natural increase (births - deaths) account for only 13%. As mentioned above, there are still at least 870 net that move into the state every day.
I’ve used the last 30 years of census numbers to calculate, so there is a possibility that this year is different, but keep in mind that the housing slump in Florida is not as bad as some places.
Still, once the slump is over the question remains - where do we want them to go?
October 31st, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Tommy:
To avoid sprawling all over the State, we’ll need to embrace density as a good thing, if used in the right location.
Currently Tampa is by and large sub-urban which means single family residential, single story big box retail, and single story strip shopping centers. All this single story stuff takes up a ton of space. Some folks (younger folks, empty nesters) prefer living in a more dense environment because it’s hip, and it’s walkable, and ideal for mass transit, but there are not many local choices for this type of lifestyle outside Channelside, Old Hyde Park Village, and parts of Ybor (and even these areas leave much to be desired).
The denser we can make our existing town and urban centers, the less demand there will be (ideally) to sprawl into the countryside replacing our farms and woodlands. This idea is based on the Transect http://www.upstateforever.org/programs_traMod.html which means that the closer one gets to the center of town the denser it “should” become, and vice versa. Having one, or at the most two, stories everywhere is killing the quality of life of our county by spreading the development over the entire county.
Density in the right place is a very good thing, it’s environmentally smart, and will help us plan for all of the newcomers.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:46 pm
GKR sums it up so well. My only addition is to state that sufficient density will lend strong incentive to mass transit solutions…and as Tommy has so eloquently noted, snow is not an issue so just plain *walking* is a reasonable alternative for at least part of the year.
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Meredith, I agree whole heartedly, but for many in our State “density” is as taboo a word as “taxes”.