The Future They Foresaw, 1967. Suburbs, Office Parks

[Metro Jacksonville]

The Future They Foresaw, 1967.  Suburbs, Office Parks



In the Fall of 1967, shortly after the passage of the Act of Consolidation, the following article was printed in Jacksonville Magazine.

Jacksonville Magazine was (and is) the official publication of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce and was the undisputed leader in community opinion of the times.

The essay is by John C. Gould and it outlines the expectations and planning mindset of the early Consolidated City.  It was part of a series of articles advocating Planning initiated by its brilliant and surprising editor Eve Heany.

At times prescient, and at times tragically flawed, it set the DNA for the previous 50 years of planning and redevelopment strategy.

Join us as we parse where these plans were right and where they were wrong.

Full Article
http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2009-jul-the-future-they-foresaw-1967-suburbs-office-parks

[stephendare]

You know its odd to think that our sprawl was planned.

I always wondered what motivations would cause a city to demassify, and here is the reason, stated simply and in easy to understand fashion.

They were trying to solve safety issues.  Smog, lack of sanitary facilities, and traffic fatalities because of the children living in homes in the urban core.

Their solution:

There's even a strong possibility that at least part of Jacksonville's growth will be in entirely new communities located beyond the current leading edge of development.  Here, the aim would be to provide for total community living in a protected environment and traffic generators would be determined in advance to provide maximum convenience to shoppers and employees and minimum conflict with nearby residential areas.

Residential Sections would, in turn, be developed along the neighborhood principle with quiet, gently curving streets designed to discourage heavy volumes of pass through traffic.  A high level of community services---schools parks, recreation, facilities, libraries and health centers---would be part of the original construction.  Frequently scheduled minibuses, possibly on their own rights of way, would serve all community facilities and connect all neighborhoods with the downtown shopping district.

[tufsu1]

Guess what...Springfiled was once a suburb, same with Riverside, Avondale, and San Marco.

There is nothing wrong with new development, especially when its planned properly....not everyone wants to live in an urban environment.

I grew up in a planned new town built "in the middle of nowhere" between Baltimore and Washington...it was the perfect balance of urbanity and nature...of course today, its only 30 minutes by car from either city and the community itself has almost 100,000 people.

[stephendare]

Springfield was never a suburb in the modern sense, actually.  It was a neigborhood built out from an existing downtown, directly adjacent to the central business district. 

I think its fine if not everyone wants to live in an urban environment.  Except that they have a tendency to want the urban environment to pay for their lifestyles.

[tufsu1]

Stephen...just because it was connected to the downtown doesn't man it wasn't a suburb.

The first suburbs in most U.S. cities were places reached by streetcar....before that time, everything was pretty much within walking distance.

[stephendare]

maybe so.  But its still apples and oranges.  The costs are a full geometric order different.

[stjr]

Well, he was off on a few things of note:

• The Cross Florida Barge Canal was canceled midway in the early 70's by President Nixon and never completed.  It's legacy is the Rodman Dam, great for bass fishing.
  
  Tourism really has not blossomed in Jax to the extent he implied and most Orlando visitors pass right through us, or around us via I-295, like ships passing in the night.  Being a convention city hasn't materialized either.  Needless to say, Jax not only didn't promote its historic points of interest, it destroyed and built over many of them.
  
  It took more like 40 years to approach a million people, not 20 years, and a good number of those are in the surrounding counties, not Duval.
  
  Globalization and consolidation of industry and business has created some turbulence in further achieving the vision outlined.  The port has benefited but finance (banking, insurance, mortgage banking HQ's) has been hurt.
  
  He didn't count on the corrosive effects of the ongoing "good 'ol boy" network of developers and builders corrupting the planning process and giving us development that wasn't nearly as ideal as he envisioned.
  
  Jax continues its decades long tradition (and one followed by most of Florida) of under-investing in education thus preventing the creation of a Silicon Valley, Route 128, or Research Triangle in the area to attract all those "brains" that were to raise local income levels.
  

To the good, we landed the PGA, Mayo, UF-Shands, Fidelity, Mitsui, and kept the Navy (minus Cecil and our aircraft carriers!), CSX, Blue Cross, Winn-Dixie (downsized), and distribution/logistics.  With the exception of medicine, steady population growth, and sports tourism, I don't think, economically, we have advanced nearly as much in 40 years versus his predictions.  I chalk this up to Jax's failure to progressively vision and professionally execute on all cylinders.

He, unfortunately, was correct in predicting urban sprawl and ex-suburban communities such as Oakleaf and Nocatee.

[heights unknown]

All of their plannings, expectations, yearnings, etc. didn't happen.  It appears that everything was in place, ready, but the motivation, spirit, and smart planning just didn't happen; it appears that the wrong people were put into City leadership at the wrong time.  In reading this article I can somewhat understand why demolishing buildings instead of renovating them happened which resulted in the myriad of parking lots within downtown and the urban core which was the "mode" in the 70's, 80's and 90's.

Effective, smart government and leadership is sorely required in order to turn Jacksonville's huge past mistakes around, and, it will take a long long time before there are correct and fast cures for the past ills.  Most of us in this forum will probably be pushing up daisies before we see Jacksonville finally blossom into the City that she should be and should have been.

Heights Unknown