Florida offers a logical place to examine the outcome of New Urbanist ideals. It is home to dozens of New Urbanist communities, including the two new urbanism projects considered most famous (Grant 2006), the pioneering New Urbanist community of Seaside, built in the 1980s along the white sand beaches of the Florida panhandle, and the Disney-built town of Celebration, constructed on rural lands not far from Disney World and one of the communities included in the in-depth study. In Florida sprawl and growth management are contentious issues.  Current urbanization is arguably already unsustainable based on water shortages that have appeared in south Florida in recent years. Concerns also exist about the land consumption required for future growth. One study projected that accommodating projected future populations in Florida based upon the continuation of present growth patterns would necessitate conversion of almost 7 million acres of agricultural, natural and other undeveloped lands into urban uses by year 2060; this figure represents a doubling of the amount of land devoted to urban uses in year 2006 (Zwick and Carr 2006).  The area stretching from Miami to Orlando and west to Tampa, which includes the study area for the in-depth portion of this research, is part of one of the seventh-largest “mega-region” in the world, an agglomeration that is home to some 15 million people (Florida 2008).

New Urbanism Communities in Central Florida

Florida study sites, divided equally between the Orlando and Tampa regions, have been visited. These six locations (Figure 1) were the focus of a tour of central Florida new urbanist communities organized by the Florida Suncoast Section of the American Planning Assocation (November 6-8, 2008).  The tour provided a chance to observe the communities on the ground, and to obtain background information, photographs, and other qualitative and quantitative
information. The six central Florida study sites are shown in Table 1 and Figure 1.

Figure 1: Selected New Urbanist Communities in Florida

Table 1: New Urbanist Communities in Central Florida