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America's First Eco-City: Doomed From the Start
An anonymous reader writes "Despite backing from the Clinton Climate Initiative, and a $111 million investment from Subway Restaurant mogul Fred DeLuca, a planned city for Central Florida called 'Destiny' was doomed from the start, according to memos retrieved from Florida's Department of Community Affairs. According to state officials, despite a great deal of hype about Destiny, Florida, becoming the first fully sustainable city in the U.S., plans to build the city were rejected almost immediately due to concerns over 'possible urban sprawl, energy inefficient land use patterns, the endangerment of natural resources, and the undermining of agriculture.'"
A lot of things get killed when they get in the way of this industry. Wasn't long ago Florida officials would show up at your house and cut down your citrus trees because of "undermining of agriculture".
You had me at Florida.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I'm good at Sim City. Obviously they hired the wrong guy for the job.
The city should have been domed, then it might not have been doomed. With a domed city nobody can get away, then they have to stay and make it work, and the city isn't doomed.
It is the logic of SciFi, it is the logic of the future.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The batshit insane goverment there killed it because it involved environmentalism.
Magical libertarian thinking knows no bounds.
Based on TFA, it sounds like there were some valid concerns about the project:
Although the data and analysis state that the New City will support multi-modal transportation alternatives, and the scenario analysis assumes the New City will have transit, the policies do not actually require it. Urban sprawl may not be discouraged without clearer and more specific standards.
As written, this policy is vague regarding the actual size of the New City... the policy fails to provide adequate guidelines and standards for the location, suitability, contiguity, and compactness of the developable area, which could result in a scattered, energy inefficient, and sprawling pattern of development in areas which are environmentally unsuitable.
These sound like valid concerns, If it's not in writing, it's not going to happen - any city that's worked with a developer knows that the developer will promise the world "Oh yes, we'll build a park on every street corner and a paved jogging/biking trail around the perimeter of the development, trust us", but when funds run short, the development ends up with a patch of dirt called a "park", and fifty feet of paved trail that goes nowhere.
Plus there was the little financial sideshow:
While Destiny's Pugliese could have gone elsewhere with his plans, it seems a legal plot twist was the final nail in Destiny's coffin: A series of finger-pointing lawsuits between Pugliese and investor Fred DeLuca concluded last October when Pugliese and his business manager Joseph Reamer were charged with money laundering and fraud for using a portion of DeLuca's investment to pay for personal and business projects unrelated to Destiny.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/delray-beach-developer-anthony-pugliese-charged-wi/nSpp7/
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
EPCOT stands for "Experimental Planned Community of Tomorrow." It was supposed to be a town, not a theme park. Funny how these things go.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Valid concerns in Florida are Tea Party oriented; and the president knew it. So why would a government type burn $100M+?
It's like walking by a post and observing a turtle on top of it.
The problem with trying any renewable/conservation experiment in a "real-world" scenario is that almost every angle is now covered by regulation. Green Groups/EPA/Agriculture/Neighborhood Groups/etc, etc. It's getting to the point that the only real way to test theories in a real world scenario is to buy a big Island, build your infrastructure and pay a bunch of people to move there. I think Blofeld may be able to help fund this though.
"Destiny," that's up there with Why, Arizona, or Idiotville, Oregon. I mean, a fully sustainable community blazing a path to the glorious Green future shouldn't have a name that makes you think about putting dollar bills in G strings, mkay?
They allowed politicians to be a part of the process. Politicians know NOTHING about land use, management, etc.. Your city planner is a complete and utter moron when it comes to the job they have, city planning.
None of the homes need to be larger than 850 sq foot. Making a city self sustaining is certainly possible if you do three things.
1 - gather all leaders into one place.
2 - Lock all of them in a big room with no windows.
3 - let scientists and engineers do all the planning based on real data and real designs.
Sadly most people are dumb as a box of rocks and believe they cant be happy without a 5500 sq foot mc mansion and at least 2 acres of Kentucky Bluegrass that requires 10 gallons per square yard a day in water. So eliminate the people as well, at least the dumb ones.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is utterly unsurprising. Intentional communities with "vision" almost always fail. Most 60s communes failed. Many colonies failed, and not just because they were attacked by natives. Modern planned communities do a bit better, mostly because they stick to patterns learned the hard way. They don't have the staying power that "organically grown" cities do. To grow a city you need water, transportation, and people that think it's a good place for a city. Sometimes you can take a marginal place and push it towards becoming a city. Washington DC is such a place. It had the river going for it, but that's about it. It was perfectly miserable when built, and still is; but air conditioning makes it bearable. The determination of the government augmented the river with rail and highway. People wanted to be there because the government was there.
So anyway, it's not surprising that some canned idea of a city put together by "visionaries" attempting to break the mold of urban development failed. That doesn't mean it's not interesting to try though. Think of it as a start-up.
It's interesting that this is the second story about a failed master planned eco-city in Florida this month.
Full disclosure: I work for Nextera Energy. Parent Company of Florida Power & Light which this story references.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
They just need to do what Disney did. Make yourself a city and get jurisdiction over all improvements.
Disney has done a good job at managing growth on their property. Their roads are better than most in Central Fl.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Magical libertarian thinking knows no bounds.
That's rather ironic given the libertarianism is entirely about rationalism, and environmentalism often seems to be about solar panels in perpetual daylight and wind farms in a never-ending breeze. Oh wait, big oil re-wrote the laws of physics just to increase their profits, I forgot.
Okay Destiny Florida was to be built not too far from where I live and pretty close to where I grew up. The nearest town is Yeehaw Junction, Florida. It has two gas stations/convenience stores and an old brothel that is now a bar/restaurant. It is in the middle of nowhere. You have route 60 which, 441, and the Turnpike their but no rail, no commercial airport and no real jobs. It is hot and humid in the summer and is nothing but cattle ranches and citrus groves. It is not a good location at all to build a community except that the land is cheap. It is a at least an hours drive to Kissimmee and people shop for groceries in Okeechobee, FL.
It was a boondoggle from the start. Honestly the ideal way to build something like that would be to get some companies form a team with companies like Google, Apple, Intel, Bank of America, Publix "in florida", and so on to build facilities their for jobs as well as things like banks and grocery stores.
Might I suggest here https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=St+Marie%2C+Mt&data=!1m4!1m3!1d35531!2d-106.5221343!3d48.4125271!4m11!1m10!4m8!1m3!1d56752!2d-80.3896905!3d27.250567!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!17b1
It is an old USAF base that has been shutdown. Most of the buildings are empty so you could start with a lot of existing infrastructure and build from there. You already have an airport that could handle jets and lots of potential for wind power and about average for solar. It is the great plains so it is not the ecologically sensitive as the central florida wetlands and has already been developed as a community than left.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
In this case boy would they have been right. When I first saw the website I just shook my head. What a freaking boondoggle. It would have been in the middle of nowhere Florida. And yes I grew up in Vero Beach, Florida. The current town at that location is called Yeehaw Junction and no I am not kidding. It is the Turnpike exit that you use to get to Vero. No jobs, no infrastructure, no people. A community there would be a classic Florida land scheme. AKA it is "swampland", not really it is central florida grassland. Good for raising cattle but not much else.
Anybody from the area that heard about it would say, wow that is crazy.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Every single thing has an effect on the environment. Should we rip out our volcanoes for their carbon emissions? And kill every fish that shits in the ocean? And what about that whole earth rotation thingy, you know, the one that made the temperature go from 80 degrees every day to 20. We should stop that, because it changes the environment. Oh, and if you killed yourself, you'd decay and change the environment. You'd breed deadly bacteria that could hurt an innocent wolf that tried to eat your corpse.
The goal, believe it or not, is not to preserve the environment in its current state. The goal is to alter the way that we live so that our impact on the environment is one such that our planet will be able to sustain us indefinitely. This doesn't mean nothing will ever change. There are these things called evolution, and plate tectonics, and a whole host of other things that cause our planet to change. Our goal isn't to preserve everything, but to ensure our continued survival with the limited resources we have. So the voluntary human extinction movement seems to be the very opposite of achieving that goal.
It looks like the primary problem was they had all kinds of big ideas, and utterly failed to hire anybody with any land-use planning or large-scale development experience to put them on paper in a language likely to be approved.
Just like computer people have their own language and lingo when dealing with technology, so do government land-use officials when reviewing development plans. If your plans don't cover what they expect them to cover, fail to counter objections the planner is likely to have, etc., your proposed development is probably not going to be approved, no matter how meritorious.
The documentary in question may have given them an unfair shake, but I doubt there would be a thriving Brasilia, if it weren't for the substantial resources of Brazil propping it up. I think that's a caveat that attaches itself to a lot of these projects - they work, but only if they have a large economy to leech off of.
Oh, wait, you're serious.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Australia's capital, Canberra is very effective.
It's a set of concentric circles that can be seen easily from a distance with all the politicians right in the bullseye.
Local liberal central planning trumped by state conservative central planning?
Learn to love Alaska
What did you expect? It's a land development project in South Florida. There's a long, long history of scams in that industry.
Also, the location sucks. From the rather vague map on their web site, it's south of Kissamee and due east of Brandon. There's about here. That's Indian Lake Estates, which, as you can see from the aerials, was supposed to be a large development with 300 city blocks. About 5% of the lots have houses. There's one area where houses were built along small canals, but the canals all dead-end, so there's no flow and they'll stagnate. Here's a street view. Nearby are remnants of other failed developments, a defunct Air Force base, and a a few modest farms.
It doesn't look like "regulation" was the problem. More like "reality".
Here's one :)
http://libertarianlonghorns.com/2010/12/17/my-little-pony-and-the-perspective-of-the-upper-class/
Although it's a serious libertarian of some type looking at plot flaws in a magical pony show. Meanwhile I'm sure other types quite like the idea of Royalty so long as they get their money from their own serfs and not the libertarian or the libertarian's serfs.
These sound like valid concerns, If it's not in writing, it's not going to happen - any city that's worked with a developer knows that the developer will promise the world "Oh yes, we'll build a park on every street corner and a paved jogging/biking trail around the perimeter of the development, trust us", but when funds run short, the development ends up with a patch of dirt called a "park", and fifty feet of paved trail that goes nowhere.
While true, take a look at the rest of Florida - You want suburban sprawl? They wrote the friggin' book on it. Mile after mile of endless (and currently massively underpopulated) yuppy/retiree housing developments stretching from one coast to the other.
Whether or not Destiny fell short of its goal, I don't see how it could have done any worse than the default situation there. And given the stated intent of that community, even if the developers "glossed over" a few points, their target audience might have enough motivation to fill in some of those gaps.
Of course, that all assumes the whole project doesn't include the standard "the HOA considers solar panels ugly, and demands you water your exactly-2in-grass even in a drought" clause in every deed. It amazes me people still fall for those things. Funny, really, how many people who want to control what their neighbors do, don't realize that it works both ways.
True but Disney also has a high "tax" rate it collects from it's citizens ... err customers.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I don't know the details on this Catholic town trying to ban porn and condoms but honestly I can see arguments either way for whether or not that sort of law/ordinance should be legal to make. On the one hand, this is a planned community with a specific purpose so it only makes sense that that should (within reason) be able to set up any sort of laws they want. If you don't like it, don't move there. On the other hand, letting towns make these sorts of rules could set a bad precedent. What happens if that sort of law gets passed in a much larger town that grew up organically (and thus is full of people who are already established there and didn't sign up to live according to the rules of some group they have no affiliation with?).
Honestly, I don't much care for these sorts of special interest communities anyway. Isolating yourself from society so you can live in your own little echo chamber and never have to hear someone who disagrees with you rarely ends well.
Maybe not everywhere, but the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, etc would disagree, as well as plenty of towns elsewhere. (Also many poor countries.)
They'd also agree too. The population isn't some monolithic ideological bloc.
So...? I don't see how this means it's a desirable adaptation, or better than the alternatives.
You wrote:
Putting cycle paths alone doesn't encourage people out of their cars*, you have to make the car journey less convenient, as is done in the Netherlands, Denmark, etc.
In other words, when people had a choice, they chose cars. That indicates cars are a desirable adaptation in the absence of meddling to the people who actually make the choices.
I see a fundamental inability to grasp the concept of "desirable". Sure, I can meddle in the costs and benefits of choices, to make other choices more desirable. But what is the point of doing so? As far as I can tell, the sole purpose of warping transportation so that bicycles are more desirable is to make quirky towns. There's no real value to it.
I've actually gotten ON the Turnpike there. Yeehaw is there for (ISTM) two reasons: to serve FL-60, which is the cross-state road running east from Tampa (and which extends to Vero Beach as GP mentioned), and to break up what would otherwise be a 90-mile stretch with no exits between Fort Pierce and Kissimmee. Other than that, there's one store there that looks like something the Clampetts grew up with.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
You are using the slippery slope argument. There are already communities like this for native Hawaiians on other groups in the US. Most people don't understand that the separation of church and state in the constitution only applied to the congress and not the states. The original idea is that the states could be vastly different communities. For instance Maryland was Mary's Land! It was a roman catholic colony. Pennsylvania was the Quaker colony and so on. With the populations of states that would be a bad idea today but down at the town level it might be interesting to see. As to you not liking it well you do not have too. I do not like places that have laws telling me what color I can paint my house. The world is full of things we do not like and frankly the idea that everyplace in the US has to be the same everywhere. The trick would be finding the balance where you allow a group to have a place where they are comfortable without say allowing KKK City, and Naziburg. A little dinky town in the middle of nowhere Florida that is home to a Catholic college is harmless. What I find amazing is how many people resent other cultures in the US. If I was to move into a hispanic community I would feel out of place and probably left. If I moved to a Hawaiian community I would always be an outsider more or less. That is just the way of things. I could be friends with members of the community but it would be me that would really have to make the effort to reach out and adapt. If I moved to Ava Maria I also would probably not fit in since I am not Catholic. If I went to a historically black college I might stick out a bit. That is just the way it will be unless you want a completely homogenized culture where all difference must be wiped out.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.