Florida May Double in Population By 2060; Can Sustainable Development Be Achieved?

This year has seen a sharp decline in the Florida mortgage loan demand, as well as home sales throughout the Sunshine State. But if you believe a recent study, this slow year represents merely a blip in Florida’s inevitable population surge.

If current trends continue, the Florida population will double by 2060, as most of its wildlife habitats will become fragmented or paved over and the state’s agricultural sector will be largely finished, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported earlier this week.

That scenario comes from studies released Wednesday by 1,000 Friends of Florida, an advocacy group that speaks out on growth, housing and environmental issues.

“It’s a pretty frightening look at the future,” said Tim Jackson, an Orlando housing market expert and the organization’s vice president.

Several sponsors with real estate and development connections — as well as a prominent land conservation foundation — paid for the research by the University of Florida and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Yet 1,000 Friends of Florida emphasized that they were not allowed to edit or censor findings.

Those findings depict a Florida that keeps growing as it has in recent years until its population has doubled to 36 million. Even as Florida mortgage expenses have gone through the roof in recent years, there’s no sign of a mass exodus from the Sunshine State.

On the contrary, in fact.

As far as the Southwest Florida housing market is concerned, most counties from Tampa Bay over to the Everglades would be entirely built out if these projections come to fruition.

In fact, Manatee County could be built out decades earlier, by 2040. Only Sarasota County — if it retains its urban growth boundary and persuades developers to build villages of clustered housing instead of large-lot suburbs east of I-75 — would have sizable tracts of rural land, much of which is already in public ownership.

The east coast will have long become densely packed, from Jacksonville all the way down to the Keys — causing a migration into what is now Florida’s rural interior. The Panhandle and the Big Bend would be the only region of the state to retain a big amount of open space.

These chilling forecasts are based on record-breaking construction patterns during the recent real estate boom, local home builders say, although they note that the market for new homes has slowed considerably.

Over-regulation, high impact fees and zoning restrictions are what send developers who don’t want to build million-dollar homes out of the coastal cities and into Florida’s rural interior to find affordable land, builders contend.

Indeed, sustainable development is an enormous concern in Florida. There must be ways of balancing needed housing and economic growth with vital preservation of natural resources and quality of life.