Revisiting the 1971 MasterPlan

[Metro Jacksonville]

Revisiting the 1971 MasterPlan



The 1971 Plan represents the first real comprehensive attempt to assert planning over the city of Jacksonville since George Simon's original one in 1929.  The Simons Plan was completely executed (as of course it was, since it was backed by the incredibly powerful women of Jacksonville) and implemented shortly after the end of WW2.

Our land use planning system was ahead of its time in Florida, and very realistic (and wholly prescient) growth projections had been conducted in the 1930s through the 40s, which predicted the growth of Arlington and enabled transportation to be in place by the 1960s. (The Matthews Bridge, for example) but the City, like every city in the United States was being subjected to a new Federal force driving the way it developed: The FHA and VA loans which underwrote nearly every new home construction were all but forbidden from building or rehabbing homes in the urban core.

Mayor Burns was the first to notice the drain on the downtown economy, and fear of a dying downtown drove his massive and ambitious downtown redevelopment building program: (the Haydon Burns Library, Friendship Park, The Courthouse, The City Hall) and the rise of Jacksonville's mid century architectural icon, Taylor Hardwick.  But driven by federal money in the form of new housing and road construction, sprawl began to happen, creating county vs city political struggles as well as competing regulations that were strangling business.

Jacksonville reacted by Consolidating its government, and in the political unity that followed, decided to turn to the planning process once again.

This time to reinvigorate downtown.

The resulting plan aimed for the moon.
Read More: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2016-sep-revisiting-the-1971-masterplan