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From the Study: South Florida at planning crossroads
By William M. Hartnett, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
FORT LAUDERDALE -- Rapid population growth, seismic demographic shifts and decades of inadequate and uncoordinated planning have led South Florida to a critical crossroads, according to a Florida Atlantic University study presented Monday. With 5.84 million residents as of 2003 and millions more expected in the next 25 years, the seven-county region from Key West to Sebastian faces gridlocked traffic, a housing market distantly out of touch with local wages and an economy with a high number of low-wage service jobs. "We're no longer the South Florida of our grandparents or parents," said Lenore Alpert, senior research associate at FAU's Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions, which produced the report. For one thing, according to the factors measured in the study, South Florida is a far larger region than thought, spanning not just Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, but Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River as well. If economic, social and other challenges are to be solved in this 7,750-square-mile area, municipal and county governments across South Florida must work together and consider the regional good just as they do their own interests, the study concludes. Doing so, however, would be no mean feat. "We're not organized governmentally to govern regionally," said Allan Wallis, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Colorado at Denver and an expert on indicators of regional vitality. The emergence of vast interconnected regions calls for a new method of governing, Wallis said. Failing to collaborate will fragment the region, he said, driving the high-paying jobs and well-educated residents sought by every metropolitan area elsewhere. For all the warning signs described in the report, it also lists several areas in which South Florida has made progress, such as expanding the supply and quality of water through efforts such as the Everglades restoration plan, and attracting a fledgling high tech and biomedical science sector, the crown jewel of which is expected to be The Scripps Research Institute's north Palm Beach County campus. Wallis warned, however, that the enthusiasm for Scripps and the biomedical science industry is reminiscent of the fever for Internet and information technology businesses that defined the period before the tech bubble imploded. "The caution here is, there is no silver bullet" for improving the region's economy, Wallis said. Even under the rosiest scenario, the Scripps deal and future ventures like it will produce only limited regional benefits unless similar investments are made in improving South Florida's elementary and secondary schools, Wallis said. The area also must produce and retain more of its own university-educated technical workforce, he said. |
