The Miami Herald
www.herald.com

Plan together, or we'll strangle on our growth.

January 4, 2001

South Florida's people and environment are inextricably entwined. The more people, the more demands on our air quality, on the ocean, bays, beaches, waterways and the Everglades.

We need a better strategy for living in harmony with the environment and visionary leaders to implement that strategy -- and quickly. As a region, South Florida's four counties face growth projections that could bring almost two million more people in 15 to 20 years. Where will they live? Will there be enough water? What will a million more vehicles do to our roads and air quality?

This is not just one county's challenge. The two-million new residents will spread across the region. Just as the Everglades and coastline know no artificial boundaries, nor do problems brought by rapid growth that is ineptly planned and badly managed. In The Herald's recent Citistates series, writers Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson offered ideas for South Florida to enhance its quality of life while dealing with growth.

They recommend that the four counties recognize their regional similarities, interdependencies and the political and economic advantages of thinking regionally about such issues as growth management and transportation. Only then will leaders adopt broad policies to deal comprehensively with growth's pressures.

There already is a region-wide growth-management policy called Eastward Ho! that promotes rebuilding in older coastal cities, but it is used haphazardly. Its spotty success now depends on actions of individual cities such as West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami Beach -- with vast stretches of neglected urban landscape in between.

West of some of those decaying urban areas are new gated communities rising on the edge of the Everglades as fast as developers can get permits from western cities hungry for increased property-tax bases.

Eastward Ho! has done wonders for some parts of our older cities. But it's still so selectively imposed that developers can ignore areas where poor people and minorities are concentrated. Yet, when gentrification takes off, as in Miami Beach, even those neighborhoods get rebuilt -- to the detriment of long-time residents, since few developers are forced by local governments to include affordable housing in projects, though laws often require it.

A regional strategy, with all cities signed on, should promote -- through cost reductions and other incentives -- more dense, mixed-use development along the entire coastal corridor. It would require affordable housing elements so that poor working families aren't squeezed out.
MASS TRANSIT

What development potential still exists in the western reaches should be tougher to obtain and include payment for actual costs of infrastructure such as sewer lines and roads.

Higher density along the coastal corridor will hasten the day when mass transit be- comes economically viable because riders will demand it. That, in turn, would reduce vehicular traffic simply to get to work, to shop and to play.

These basic principles have succeeded elsewhere because they are achieveable, friendly to people and to the environment. This region's political and civic leadership must learn to apply these principles here -- and soon.