America's First Eco-City: Doomed From the Start 258
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.'"
Undermining of Agriculture .... (Score:3, Interesting)
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".
Re:EPCOT turned out a little funny, too. (Score:5, Interesting)
EPCOT stands for "Experimental Planned Community of Tomorrow." It was supposed to be a town, not a theme park. Funny how these things go.
If Walt hadn't died, that may have happened. He needed the money from the Magic Kingdom to finance his EPCOT plans, and he died before the MK even opened. After his death, the Walt Disney Company decided that they didn't want to be in the business of building cities. Celebration, FL [wikipedia.org] has some elements of Walt Disney's EPCOT ideas.
Intentional communities usually fail (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
2nd failed Eco City in Florida (Score:4, Interesting)
Full disclosure: I work for Nextera Energy. Parent Company of Florida Power & Light which this story references.
Re:In otherwords (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [google.com]
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.
What a pointless waste of capital... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:In otherwords (Score:4, Interesting)
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.