Ralph McLaughlin, Marlon Boarnet, Department of Planning, Policy, and Design, University of California, Irvine, , Irvine, CA, USA, John Carruthers, Mundy Associates LLC, Seattle, WA, USA
Growth Management and the Spatial Outcome of Regional Development in Florida, 1982 - 1997 (assigned to theme
This paper evaluates growth management in Florida by using a land use based regional adjustment model to project equilibrium densities of people and jobs county-by-county in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee in 1987, 1992, and 1997. The density forecasts, which express the direction/s in which the space economy was pushing land use change in the region during the preceding five-year timeframes, are compared to actual outcomes as an ex post method of identifying the impacts of state policy. The analysis is motivated by three specific research questions: How do actual outcomes compare to those projected by regional adjustment models? Is there evidence of incremental change over the three five-year segments that can be attributed to policy differences? And, finally, what do the results imply about the effectiveness of Florida’s growth management program? The findings suggest that Florida’s (1985) Growth Management Act has helped to bring growth patterns in line with equilibrium tendencies by evening out place-to-place differences in local regulatory activity. Finally, because population and employment growth are jointly determined in the Atlantic Southeast, the long-term sustainability of economic development in Florida may depend on policies that preserve it’s desirability as a place to live.
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