Quality of life at issue

There are big disparities in quality of life between South Florida's counties, according to a study by American City Business Journals.

Palm Beach County is among the best areas in Florida for quality of life, Broward County ranks above average and Miami-Dade County falls in the bottom 10 percent of the 3,141 counties that were studied by the parent company of The South Florida Business Journal. The study used 2000 U.S. Census data to measure income, jobs, housing, transportation and education.

Palm Beach County was ranked 334th nationally, which was good enough for third in Florida. Broward County was ranked 1,141st nationally and 24th in Florida. Both counties received high marks for providing top-level jobs, high incomes, new housing and having a large number of college graduates. They were below average in housing affordability, large homes and length of commute.

"I'm not surprised that Broward and Palm Beach fared well in there," said Bruce Keir, president and CEO of Community Bank of Broward in Coral Springs. "If you compare our transportation commutes here with other big major cities, ours is great."

Miami-Dade County was cited for bad traffic, poverty, housing affordability, low homeownership and not enough high school graduates as it ranked 2,831st nationally and 63rd in Florida.

National surveys haven't been kind to Miami-Dade lately. A Forbes magazine study of the best places to do business ranked the county 139th out of 150. Miami was rated the poorest large city in the nation.

Frank Nero, president and CEO of the Beacon Council, has staunchly defended the county by pointing to its influx of residents and tourists as an indication that people enjoy life in Miami-Dade.

"The ranking methodology did not take into account the number of public parks and recreation facilities, cultural arts facilities, or libraries and museums," he said. "There is no consideration for public access to beaches, lakes and rivers. No ranking is provided for number of days with an average temperature of over 60 degrees Fahrenheit."

Nero said the study favored sparsely populated rural areas, such as top-ranked Los Alamos, N.M., and other high-ranked communities in Colorado, Minnesota and Virginia. Among counties with populations of at least 1 million, only Bronx and Kings counties in New York ranked below Miami-Dade.

The white flight

There is a major difference in quality of life between counties in South Florida and it has to do with the migration of middle class, mostly white residents north, said Antonio Jorge, a professor of economics and international relations at Florida International University. Recent studies show some middle class minorities are moving north to Broward and Palm Beach counties, creating a large gap between the rich and the poor in Miami-Dade, he said.

"Some people move up north simply because they don't like an environment where a large percentage of people are immigrating into the community," Jorge said. "Of course, as these people leave the community, it creates an imbalance in the population."

Even though the quality of life might be high in communities like Coral Gables, inner city life is quite different. Miami-Dade is behind other business communities in investment and economic growth because of a negative perception of the area as having high crime and ethnic strife, he said.