Integrating Agriculture into the Landscape: Other Actions

"Create an ‘exchange program' for environmentally sensitive lands and/or lands in the path of high density development that have good Ag value; ‘trade' them for land with good Ag value in another part of the state that could support Ag activity over a longer period of time."

Investigate changes in development patterns as recommended by the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council in its publications Patterns of Sustainable Development: Towns, Cities, Villages and The Countryside and Suggested Strategy for the Sustainable Settlement of Florida. These development patterns would restore agriculture as an integral part of the landscape. A brief description of this approach is described below:

Suggested Strategy for the Sustainable Settlement of Florida

Under current land development regulations, nearly everything is allowed if you manage to meet or circumvent the regulations, yet little attention is paid in the regulations to how well development fits together or what the life of residents or employees will be like once the development becomes occupied.

Local zoning codes, local land use designations and Florida's own Land Development Regulation Act (Chapter 163 F.S.) contain disincentives to well-planned, high quality, sustainable development and in many cases make such development illegal. What is encouraged by current regulations is an unsustainable form or pattern of development known as "sprawl." This pattern is repeated over and over again across Florida as a result of investors and developers simply following the existing rules.

The rules governing the growth and settlement of Florida need to change. Remember, Florida does not have a growth management act or plan for settlement per se. It only has a land development regulation act which has nothing to do with regional planning or good planning in general. It is simply a series of regulations describing what we do not want in the state (i.e., planning by regulation). It does not provide an overall "game plan" for Florida describing the settlement or development patterns we are in favor of.

Consider the following:

If: sustainable areas of the "countryside" were recognized and identified by Florida to remain free of urbanization and connected by natural or authentic rural corridors.

If: the vast majority of people live within appropriately located villages, towns, or cities made up of clearly defined neighborhoods and special districts;

If: the neighborhood is viewed as the basis and most important unit of planning and community organization (i.e., the standard incremental unit of growth);

If: neighborhoods are viewed and designed (and where necessary retrofitted) as compact, largely self-contained, pedestrian pockets, and generally include the following characteristics:

recognizable centers and edges,

a size of between 40 and 160 acres,

a finely woven network of interconnected streets, detailed for pedestrian use as well as automobiles,

a sufficiently diverse mixture of housing types and affordabilities to accommodate the full range of people needed to build and maintain a complete and real community,

a balance of employment and housing opportunities, and

adequate provision of public and civic uses (e.g., greens, squares, houses of worship, town buildings, etc.).

If: neighborhood schools were the rule for children under age 14 and were viewed as an essential and central organizing feature of communities;

If: sufficient attention were paid to beauty, architecture, and urban design to allow for compact, self-contained, mixed-use neighborhoods, and to assure that people might come to love their neighborhood, and grow roots; and

If: one could live a reasonably good life without the absolute necessity and burden of automobile use and ownership, (which would help to make housing more affordable);

Then: by default most, if not all, of Florida's growth management objectives could be achieved.

To realize this goal the Legislature needs to take the lead and issue a clear directive that a comprehensive growth plan be done to address the State's future settlement patterns and redevelopment of its existing towns, cities and villages. A bold directive is needed to provide support for the State planning and transportation agencies, regional planning councils, water management districts, MPO's and local governments to take aggressive and continuous action in their plans to facilitate redevelopment, development, and infill that is consistent with the vision described above. At the same time, it is critical that less ideal forms of growth be discouraged by a more complete and comprehensive evaluation of true costs.

It is critical that the State Plan make it clear what form and type of development it supports, and provide inducements that will result in action. To date, we have all made it clear what we do not like, but the time has come to deal with the harder job of saying with great clarity what we support.

[There is not complete agreement on this approach. As Tim W. Williams says: "Was this idea taken from a speech by Michael Eisner to Disney board members about ‘Celebration?' Not that the idea is bad, but have you ever seen a farm win in any other system but a free market one (as it relates to land use and value)?"]