How Florida Ruined Its City Planning

✵ How Florida Ruined Its City Planning

✵ Today we are going to talk about the sad history of city planning in Florida, and how it ruined the state.

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[ever]

I live in Orlando, and my only real complaint about the area is its SPRAWL. The metro area is so oddly laid out that you pretty much need the interstate or a toll road to get anywhere. It seems to take 30 minutes to drive everywhere, and there are some places that look close on a map but actually take forever to drive to.

[fmsdaman]

After the 2008 crash, homes in Lehigh were so unbelievably cheap that it became basically a cesspool of crime and vandalism with all the abandoned homes. It wasn't unusual for 3 bedroom homes on 1/4 acre of land to sell for $50k or even less. Residents had to put cages around their AC units to avoid them getting stripped apart for scrap by thieves. You can still see some of that kind of thing even today. Lehigh is one of many, though. Deltona, Palm Bay, Spring Hill, Loxahatchee, North Port, Citrus Springs, Cape Coral, etc etc. The list goes on. These pre-planned communities are absolutely everywhere, and they're a shining example of the perpetual racket that is FL real estate.

[miangel]

I often visit these cities because I live in South Florida, and it was peculiar how many abandoned streets were there and how there were so many gridded streets, thank you for finally explaining the reason why it looks like that.

[KC-Mitch]

Haven't watched the video yet, but as a Floridian, I'll say this much:
NIMBYs have a lot of control in Florida. In the center (where I'm from) there's no grid system. This isn't inherently a bad thing, similar to how Europe is built and functions well. But central Florida especially has lakes. Tons and tons of lakes. This causes even the best intentioned city planners to struggle in coherent design. There are roads that cut through residential areas, but if a thru-road crosses through an actual HOA-styled neighborhood, then they either build and enforce speedbumps or they annihilate the road connection altogether.

Many neighborhoods/communities - like Heathrow - do have roads that cross through the area, but are gated and restricted to residents only. Others like Windermere or Belle Isle have to allow open traffic because they are both legal cities (therefore can't simply ban entrance like an HOA), but they also are surrounded by two massive lakes that have a narrow strip of land available to live & drive through. Thus, Belle Isle has speedbumps and Windermere has roundabouts.

Some cities take a better approach at enforcing speeding. Winter Park has a lot of residential thru-roads that are made of brick, which not only looks prettier than asphalt roads, but forces drivers to slow down naturally due to the bumpiness and lack of traction provided by the bricks at speeds over 30mph or so.

This brings me back to the NIMBY point, these neighborhoods and cities create rules and laws that force people to route themselves through corridors that cannot handle the traffic, but lack any alternatives. The irony is, I refer to these NIMBY neighborhoods as yeast cultivations. They literally will self-destruct themselves (yeast ferments sugar into alcohol which after a certain concentration level is reached, will kill them). Many of these communities will force their own drivers onto the main roads, refusing to connect in the back with other "undesirable" neighborhoods and instead, opt to have traffic lights installed at their entrance's intersection. Do this enough times and repeat. Don't believe me, look up Winter Garden Vineland Rd/Ficquette Rd/Reams Rd (yes, the road is a Frankenstein monster of previously established roads) on Google Earth and utilizing the timeline feature, examine the construction of lights. I worked at Disney during the building of 6 of these lights and it added an average of 8 minutes - each way(!) - to my already 30-40 minute commute in roughly 1 year. Why didn't I take another route? What other route?! People in Florida get railroaded into these roads like players in a D&D game run by a bossy and controlling dungeon master, it's so infuriating!

Alright, that's enough incoherence from me. I gotta get back to work.

[VolcanoSquirrel]

Lived in Port Charlotte for a few years. Can confirm the abandoned streets. This is perhaps a separate issue, but compared to VA, NC, and AL that I had lived in previously, Florida cities really seem to dislike trees. I don't know why. You need shade more here than you do up north, but you're less likely to find it. Partially due to less native tall trees, but also because they clear every tree on many new housing developments.

[garrettb.-gtmkm]

Oh, Florida. The further north you go, the further south you go.

[Virtusstrong]

Virginia native and resident, I did live in Port Saint Lucie, FL. off and on and one thing is for sure they build and will continue to develop any land that is for sale. I’ve never seen building and commercialization, like they do in Florida, it’s like every week and or day some new strip mall is going up or single story concert block homes, or anything that can be built for that matter. I know other states are experiencing population booms and commercialization, but Florida is whole different territory. I moved back to VA but by goli, the one thing I tell people who complain about fast growth here in VA, I say “try Florida” anyone else😭. One thing is for sure people are and have been moving to Florida from all over for decades and they will continue to, I used to consider Florida for retirement, but I like other states for their climate and or tax benefits so I wouldn’t be upset about not retiring in Florida, by the way I’m 23 as of this writing but never too young to plan out.

[SJR_Media_Group]

A couple of things many out of state developers and planners miss when doing projects there... much of State is swamp, lots of sinkholes, there are alligators that love crashing parties and taking dip in your pool, Hurricanes don't suck, they blow, lighting does strike same place more than once, Disney still a big deal there, if you came to watch Space Shuttle launches, you are years too late, Shuttle retired just as is most seniors living there, Golf is close to God, Key West is different than Miami, sharks, snakes, spiders were here first.

[Birdman]

There's also the failed suburban community around southwestern Palm Bay, where there's tons of paved residential streets but almost no houses, like Lehigh Acres but not in a grid format. It's called The Compound or The Grid.

Also I believe Miami was founded by Julia Tuttle, but all across South Florida there are streets named after Flagler (plus Flagler County just south of St. Augustine).

[gars]

I always wonder who thought the mixture of super flat terrain, samey architecture and grids made for an appealing mixture. Netherlands is proof that flat places can be pretty, when you make them walkable with good architecture and no straight roads.

[PETER]

Everything you said is true. Florida’s suburbs are boring, most lack sidewalks and the traffic here is horrific! And with every nook and cranny of the state legislature controlled by Republicans it’s become just another southern Police state…..stifling and oppressive. Can’t wait to move out west upon retirement soon.

[kviper]

You missed the biggest scam of all. The infamous " buy some swamp land in Florida" site, Golden Gate Estates in Naples area.

[heatherwood]

*next project for you: look into Lakeland, halfway between Tampa and Orlando, often where wags say that, if you needed to give the state an enema, this is where you should place the tip. I moved here in 2007 to nurse my ageing parents, and now feel rather stuck in a place where the traffic is horrendous, and because of no city planning prior to 30 years ago, it just gets worse and worse. as a senior citizen, I am happy to stay home near the hearth, however, I still feel somewhat trapped*

[colinclark]

I live in fort Myers and because of the car centric design and absolutely abysmal zoning of cape coral, the traffic here is absolutely unbelievably horrid. Cape Coral with only a residential town with no businesses, and then Fort Myers is where all the jobs are. So naturally everyone that works in Fort Myers, lives in Cape Coral. Around 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. everyday it's a complete gridlock to try to go over the two Bridges to Cape Coral. My usual commute to work is only 15 minutes. But if I have to leave to go home at 4 p.m. my commute is now an 1hr 40 minutes.

[HungryBuilder]

If you ever find yourself in Port Charlotte, I'll give you a tour. I've lived here for 20 years and I am very familiar with the abandoned areas. I even venture out there for photography every now and again.

[AlecOnYoutube]

i've always been wondering why these places are the way they are, as i've always found them strange. its honestly terrible that more and more places are being filled with suburban developments, as they're so unhuman and inconvenient. thank you for covering this topic!

[HigherQualityUploads]

Rather ironic that Florida's boom was partly due to Henry Flagler's involvement in building railroads here. And now we have very few at all. Hopefully Brightline brings passenger rail comes back to Key West someday...

[Sirmenonottwo]

If the country was smarter in the 50's and 60's it could have prevented people moving to Florida swamp land by making more of it national parks and nature reserves.

[FloridaTVDX]

I grew up in Port Charlotte and remember all the empty streets, and how part of Quesada Ave was closed off and unmaintained for lack of development. Everything changed once Veterans Blvd was built in the mid-to-late 90's. Port Charlotte filled in considerably since then.

Eastern North Port, right above Port Charlotte, is still dominated by the empty streets you describe. When I first got my drivers' license I'd explore around there. No stop signs or street names. When I think about street grids running through the woods, I think of North Port.

There's also a community like this in Hendry County, and how could you forget to mention the one in the Everglades? (Collier County)

[spencerallison]

One of my favorite books is Paper Towns by John Green and one of the talking points of the book
is those abandoned settlements. It's really good beyond that though and I just want everyone to be aware of it.