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[Adam White]

I mean, why do you think they idiotically named their local university the University of South Florida ? ? ?

I don't follow, RG. Not only is USF (arguably) in south Florida, it was the only state university in southern part of the state when it was opened and named. And I don't think it was named by the City of Tampa.

Perhaps it should've been named USWF - but then again, maybe UNF should've been named UNEF.

I'm not going to argue one way or the other about Tampa having a chip on its shoulder - but if you want to sustain your argument, I think you're going to need better evidence!

The Board of Regents named it USF, not the city of Tampa. I don't even think it was technically in Tampa at that time. However, USF was the fourth state university behind UF, FSU, and FAMU, and was founded only eight years following the founding of FSU in 1948 from the Florida State Women's College. They should have created a naming system similar to North Carolina, Texas, or California, and named it the University of Florida-Tampa (UFT) instead of the directional college names which became tricky after awhile.

I figured it was the board of regents or someone in Tallahassee. I guess if there had been a state university in Miami or thereabouts before this, that one would've ended up being USF.

I like Tampa. Not sure if I prefer it to Jax, but I lived there for six months once upon a time and I really enjoyed it.

[FlaBoy]

Ennis, your history comprehension ain't worth a damn and that Central Florida bias is shining through. Jacksonville was the clear leader. But . . . as I've indicated, please continue. And when Memphis one day gets a magnificent stretch of beach -- when proximity to a beach is the desired locale today of Americans all over much of this nation and warps any discussion about urban cores and their growth, or lack thereof -- we'll have another talk.

Only one problem; when the hell will Memphis be near a beach?

As for Hillsborough and Pinellas -- stop, just stop. They hate each other, they are very distinct urban areas, and only an urban planning slave to numbers wouldn't get that. Much as urban planners keep bitching and moaning about an American preference for distinctly non-dense housing, you see something that is not there and intuit things that are not true.

If you know how to take a step back and think about it, though, the renaissance of St. Pete only serves to prove *my* point about the relative lack of similarity between Jacksonville and Memphis. I suspect this is something Shad Khan has recognized and is the reason why he said he'd prefer to not drive the train on the Shipyards development but if no one else stepped up, he would move forward to do the development right.

Jacksonville was probably the most prominent city in Florida in the late 19th and early 20th century, but at the time Florida was a backwater and Jax wasn't substantially more populous than Pensacola or Key West. Tampa caught up around the same time, and their wider region grew much faster, eventually leapfrogging us. Pinellas and Hillsborough are not "very distinct urban areas", they are nodes of the same metro area with a lot of economic and cultural crossover. It's not rare for people who live in Tampa, St. Pete, Clearwater, Brandon, etc., to work in one of the other communities. Other than being a lot more spread out, it's not notably different than people living in one Jax neighborhood or suburb and working in another.

What does tend to get lost in the folklore narrative is that Jacksonville did not become *less* prominent as other parts of the state grew, except by comparison to those. The reality is that Florida, including Jax, simply became much more prominent on a national scale. 100 years ago, no one would have compared Jax (or Tampa, for that matter) to a Memphis, New Orleans, or Buffalo, but today we're their peers.

Rattler, I do believe there is a lot of division in the Tampa Bay area which has held them back in many ways due to the petty rivalries between Tampa and St. Pete. It all goes back to their secession from Hillsborough back in 1912 due to the lack of roads being built in St. Pete. Pinellas was very proud when they were larger than Hillsborough for that 20-30 year period before the northern suburbs of Tampa emerged in the New Tampa/Lutz area that now pushes into Pasco County (a county which is larger than St. John's, Nassau, and Putnam counties combined to put it into perspective) along with Brandon. The old timers still lack the "unity in the community" but the younger generation really doesn't see much of a difference down there in comparison. If Jax Beach is the same community with the city of Jacksonville, St. Pete is 25 minutes (in the same way) from Tampa, literally separated by water and a bridge.

Likewise, Florida was completely the sticks until the 1920's land boom. But in 1940, the state was STILL the smallest in the old confederacy in the South. By 1960, it was second largest to Texas. That is mind blowing and shows the incredible emergence of this state on a world wide scale in such a short time (thanks air conditioning). In 1930, Jacksonville was the largest city in the smallest state in the South much like Little Rock, AR, or Jackson, MS, are today. Jacksonville will never catch Hillsborough again, or Orange, or their MSAs, but the whole state of Florida continues to grow and most likely Jacksonville will grow right along with the state, making us a major player into the future. I would surmise our max MSA level will be around 30th ranked in another 50 years, firmly behind Tampa Bay, Orlando, and Miami, and right above Ft. Myers-Naples which continues to boom.

[remc86007]

Jacksonville will never catch Hillsborough again, or Orange, or their MSAs, but the whole state of Florida continues to grow and most likely Jacksonville will grow right along with the state, making us a major player into the future. I would surmise our max MSA level will be around 30th ranked in another 50 years, firmly behind Tampa Bay, Orlando, and Miami, and right above Ft. Myers-Naples which continues to boom.

I disagree with this. Of course nobody knows what the future holds, but I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility that 50 years from now Jacksonville will have a larger MSA than Tampa or Orlando. City populations in the US have grown (and shrunk) very rapidly at times. Just look at Jacksonville from 1960 to 1970, the population increased by 163%. I'm not saying it will happen, just that it could.

[FlaBoy]

Jacksonville will never catch Hillsborough again, or Orange, or their MSAs, but the whole state of Florida continues to grow and most likely Jacksonville will grow right along with the state, making us a major player into the future. I would surmise our max MSA level will be around 30th ranked in another 50 years, firmly behind Tampa Bay, Orlando, and Miami, and right above Ft. Myers-Naples which continues to boom.

I disagree with this. Of course nobody knows what the future holds, but I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility that 50 years from now Jacksonville will have a larger MSA than Tampa or Orlando. City populations in the US have grown (and shrunk) very rapidly at times. Just look at Jacksonville from 1960 to 1970, the population increased by 163%. I'm not saying it will happen, just that it could.

That was due to consolidation though. There have certainly been some big booms. We were talking about Pinellas earlier. They actually saw that type of growth between 1950 and 1960 with their population rising from 159,249 to 374,665 which is a 135% increase. I also think that was not good for Pinellas. Unless they find some immense reserves of natural gas and gold mixed together below us in western Duval like North Dakota was seeing in growth, I don't think we will see numbers like that around here ever again. I believe, right now, Hillsborough by itself is larger than Duval, Nassau, and St. John's Counties put together with plenty of room to grow to its east and south. Pinellas is done growing for the most part however since it is built out.

[thelakelander]

What does tend to get lost in the folklore narrative is that Jacksonville did not become *less* prominent as other parts of the state grew, except by comparison to those. The reality is that Florida, including Jax, simply became much more prominent on a national scale. 100 years ago, no one would have compared Jax (or Tampa, for that matter) to a Memphis, New Orleans, or Buffalo, but today we're their peers.

True, one hundred years ago, our peers would have been places like Tacoma, Erie, Flint and Savannah.  Out of the list of cities in Jax's range back in 1920, a few like Nashville, Salt Lake City, Norfolk, Fort Worth, Kansas City and Oklahoma City have emerged while others like Utica, Canto and Reading have not.

https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab15.txt

Fun fact, in James Weldon Johnson's novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, written in 1912, the narrator describes Jacksonville as a small town, and names Richmond and Nashville as two cities that it doesn't compare to in terms of the "society phase of life" and the community of "educated and well-to-do" African Americans. Today, we're those cities' peer.

JWJ would be correct.  When I first started purposely visiting cities for a planning perspective, I used the link below as a decent source for determining the pre-automobile built density of a city's core:

https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/twps0027.html

A century has passed but it's still pretty damn accurate if you want an idea of what a city feels like today at street level.  Back in the early 20th century, both Richmond and Nashville were significantly larger than Jax, in terms of population, size and density (well Richmond was). 

1910 Census data:

https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab14.txt

Richmond -- 127,628 -- 10 square miles -- 12,763 residents per square mile

Nashville -- 110,364 -- 17.1 square miles -- 6,454 residents per square mile

Jacksonville -- 57,699 -- 9.3 square miles -- 6,204 residents per square mile


If you're looking for urban cores with old school pedestrian scale density, that link is a great starting point to identify some decent urban cores most overlook.  Even today, although we've surpassed Richmond in overall population, Richmond still has a "big city" feel at street level.











Because its density rivaled cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and St. Louis back in the day, it's still loaded with great urban bones for a Sunbelt city.  Every city is unique in its own way and if I were a Richmond advocate, I'd be promoting and marketing its core in the same manner that Charleston and Savannah have done in recent decades.  It's got a "sense of place" that rapidly growing Sunbelt sprawlers will never have, no matter how big they get.

He describes Jacksonville as a comparatively tolerant place for African-Americans and gets a good job in a cigar factory, where "the color line is not drawn". It's where the narrator is finally able to get his bearings and learn his heritage. This more or less reflects how JWJ himself felt about the city before it turned into a "one hundred percent cracker town" by the 1930s.

http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/64/the-autobiography-of-an-ex-colored-man/1152/chapter-5/

I've always felt this period of Jacksonville's history is one long lost and forgotten.  I'm still shocked by the amount of exposure Northeast Florida had in DC's new African-American museum.  Like it would be to Richmond's benefit to work with it's early 20th century pedestrian scale urban landscape, it would be to Jacksonville's economic benefit to expose its cultural contributions from the Reconstruction era and salvage/work with what's left of the remaining neighborhoods and building stock still standing before we lose more of it permanently. 

[thelakelander]

I disagree with this. Of course nobody knows what the future holds, but I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility that 50 years from now Jacksonville will have a larger MSA than Tampa or Orlando. City populations in the US have grown (and shrunk) very rapidly at times. Just look at Jacksonville from 1960 to 1970, the population increased by 163%. I'm not saying it will happen, just that it could.

I doubt NE Florida ever catches the Central Florida metros in our lifetimes.  If anything, you're going to end up seeing the entire corridor (excluding the Green Swamp) fill in as Sarasota/Bradenton (702k MSA population), Lakeland (602k MSA population) and Deltona/Daytona (495k MSA population) continue to grow and connect with their larger neighbors.

[thelakelander]

Rattler, I do believe there is a lot of division in the Tampa Bay area which has held them back in many ways due to the petty rivalries between Tampa and St. Pete. It all goes back to their secession from Hillsborough back in 1912 due to the lack of roads being built in St. Pete. Pinellas was very proud when they were larger than Hillsborough for that 20-30 year period before the northern suburbs of Tampa emerged in the New Tampa/Lutz area that now pushes into Pasco County (a county which is larger than St. John's, Nassau, and Putnam counties combined to put it into perspective) along with Brandon. The old timers still lack the "unity in the community" but the younger generation really doesn't see much of a difference down there in comparison.

Being only 85 miles east, I think Orlando's growth helped pull the Bay area, kicking and screaming, to work together more as a region.  I remember growing up in Polk County, it's 17 municipalities would fit each other to annex or extend water/sewer lines to unincorporated plots of land marked for new development.  The weird shape of the cities in the map below, pretty much explains the annexation grabs of the 1990s:


Take note of the fingers stretching out from Winter Haven and Lake Wales to get their piece of the pie of a mall and surrounding development sprouting up between them in 1996.  The rush to gobble up as much "turf" along the I-4/Polk Parkway corridor has also resulted in some interesting annexations by Lakeland and Auburndale.


Realizing regions have better overall economic success when their communities work together, Polk has gone on to become a major logistics hub, taking advantage of it's centralized location to go head-to-head with Tampa and Orlando despite them both being significantly larger.  Now cities compete more on quality-of-life enhancements to separate themselves from their adjacent neighbors as opposed to coming to blows over who's going to land the next Amazon fulfillment center or Fortune 500 company. A part of me believes the negative side of Jax's consolidation is that it really has no nearby competitor to challenge it to step up its game, when it comes to quality-of-life.

[thelakelander]

That was due to consolidation though. There have certainly been some big booms. We were talking about Pinellas earlier. They actually saw that type of growth between 1950 and 1960 with their population rising from 159,249 to 374,665 which is a 135% increase. I also think that was not good for Pinellas. Unless they find some immense reserves of natural gas and gold mixed together below us in western Duval like North Dakota was seeing in growth, I don't think we will see numbers like that around here ever again. I believe, right now, Hillsborough by itself is larger than Duval, Nassau, and St. John's Counties put together with plenty of room to grow to its east and south. Pinellas is done growing for the most part however since it is built out.

As the Lakeland and Sarasota/Bradenton areas continue to growh and phosphate continues to move south, I expect Hillsborough's growth to push east of I-75 and the Brandon area.  However, I find Pinellas to have the most interesting future. Built out since the 1970s, it literally has no option but to encourage infill redevelopment and higher densities. That realization has literally changed St. Petersburg's vibe since the early 1990s.

[remc86007]

Haha, FlaBoy, you are right, consolidation didn't occur to me when I was looking at the numbers. About Pinellas, I remember laughing a month or two ago when I read that more people are dying there than being born.

The Tampa Metro is much older than Orlando and Jax. Also, I wonder what will happen when the original owners of cookie-cutter houses in sprawling Florida developments start to die out en masse? It's easy to find buyers for new construction, but what about a 40 year old, cheaply made house with no character that used to be in a good school district and is a 10+ minute drive from the front of the development?

[thelakelander]

Haha, FlaBoy, you are right, consolidation didn't occur to me when I was looking at the numbers. About Pinellas, I remember laughing a month or two ago when I read that more people are dying there than being born.

St. Petersburg used to be known as God's Waiting Room, due to the large retiree population that Pinellas used to be known for.  Since it's been built out for decades, I suspect more people have been dying than being born there for quit a while.  Whatever growth is happening there now is coming from infill, redevelopment and new people moving in.

The Tampa Metro is much older than Orlando and Jax.

Jax is a few decades older than Tampa. Tampa's development took off once the railroad and cigar industry came to town in the 1880s. By the turn of the century, the Tampa and Jax areas were pretty much the same size.  The areas south of us really took off after the 1920s Florida land boom and suburban sprawl after WWII.

Also, I wonder what will happen when the original owners of cookie-cutter houses in sprawling Florida developments start to die out en masse? It's easy to find buyers for new construction, but what about a 40 year old, cheaply made house with no character that used to be in a good school district and is a 10+ minute drive from the front of the development?

You can see this all across the country.  In Jax, your examples would be Arlington, Cedar Hills and Englewood.  It's hard to predict the future but I would not be surprised to one day see 1950s era ranch style neighborhoods, like these, become valued because of their housing stock.  If that happens, it would be the same development pattern that older neighborhoods like Springfield have gone through.  I think we'll have more trouble with 1980s/1990s style "one way in/out" subdivisions that line aging congested sprawling corridors like Blanding.

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

Also, I wonder what will happen when the original owners of cookie-cutter houses in sprawling Florida developments start to die out en masse? It's easy to find buyers for new construction, but what about a 40 year old, cheaply made house with no character that used to be in a good school district and is a 10+ minute drive from the front of the development?

You can see this all across the country.  In Jax, your examples would be Arlington, Cedar Hills and Englewood.  It's hard to predict the future but I would not be surprised to one day see 1950s era ranch style neighborhoods, like these, become valued because of their housing stock.  If that happens, it would be the same development pattern that older neighborhoods like Springfield have gone through.  I think we'll have more trouble with 1980s/1990s style "one way in/out" subdivisions that line aging congested sprawling corridors like Blanding.

I would suggest starting at Eagle Landing and driving out of the subdivision down Argyle Forest Blvd. towards Blanding.  It's like a time tunnel.  The trees get older and larger, the houses get smaller and more unkempt.  Even the commercial downsizes from massive outdoor mall, to a Publix based shopping center to strip malls and then back to the the start again at the Blanding Publix.

[FlaBoy]

That was due to consolidation though. There have certainly been some big booms. We were talking about Pinellas earlier. They actually saw that type of growth between 1950 and 1960 with their population rising from 159,249 to 374,665 which is a 135% increase. I also think that was not good for Pinellas. Unless they find some immense reserves of natural gas and gold mixed together below us in western Duval like North Dakota was seeing in growth, I don't think we will see numbers like that around here ever again. I believe, right now, Hillsborough by itself is larger than Duval, Nassau, and St. John's Counties put together with plenty of room to grow to its east and south. Pinellas is done growing for the most part however since it is built out.

As the Lakeland and Sarasota/Bradenton areas continue to growh and phosphate continues to move south, I expect Hillsborough's growth to push east of I-75 and the Brandon area.  However, I find Pinellas to have the most interesting future. Built out since the 1970s, it literally has no option but to encourage infill redevelopment and higher densities. That realization has literally changed St. Petersburg's vibe since the early 1990s.

Well, I think that is a little early. Pinellas wasn't really built out until around 2000. North Pinellas in Palm Harbor, East Lake, and Oldsmar was still seeing development throughout the 1990's. In about 2000, you started to see that development move up to Trinity in Pasco. This development was not as dense though as the previous small retirement homes that clutter the peninsula today. In 2002, downtown St. Pete was as dead as downtown Jacksonville is today. I remember going down there and there being vagrants everywhere walking up to me. Baywalk was brand new almost and was dead in 2002. Channelside did much much better back then. The first time I really remember the momentum in the city was about 2006. You could feel things kind of changing at the height of the boom, not unlike Jax back then. The big difference was St. Pete's momentum continued even through the Great Recession.

They also did a great job with Beach and Central with the new retail built and the natural beauty downtown St. Pete offers. It took those strips to reinvigorate much of St. Pete's restaurant and bar scene. By 2010, the whole city's feel had changed down there. It really was that quick a turnaround. 2002 there was nothing. 2010, the restaurant and nigh life scenes were great. Baywalk was still struggling but it was around that time that Bill Edwards bought it and started to redo it. They did all of this with very few professionals working downtown since Gateway has most of the jobs in the actual city of St. Pete. Most of the growth has been in downtown St. Pete but also a lot of suburban type apartment complexes in Gateway and a lot of new condo towers on the beach in places like Sand Key.

[Jim]

Barring major changes, Duval county population should pass Pinellas county between 2020 and 2025.  I don't foresee Duval passing any others anytime soon.

[Tacachale]

Barring major changes, Duval county population should pass Pinellas county between 2020 and 2025.  I don't foresee Duval passing any others anytime soon.

Yes, most growth in TB has been elsewhere. As said above, Pinellas is largely built out now and increasingly expensive, and it seems unlikely that tens of thousands of new homes will be built there with cheaper land elsewhere. It seems more likely that property values will continue rising across Pinellas as the demand continues.

[RattlerGator]

I really don't want to insult y'all [any more than I already have  ;-)  ] but you're being incredibly dense.

No, Tampa could *not* be reasonably thought of as South Florida in the 1950s -- or didn't y'all notice that nugget in the self-serving USF fansite article? "The Cabinet was flooded with protests from legislators, county and city officials on the East Coast saying Tampa was not in South Florida." Hmmmmm. Really now? You don't say!?!

So . . . do y'all even read? Where do you think those "East Coast" legislators and government officials were from? South Florida, perhaps? Why in the hell would some publication identify them as "East Coast" officials when no damn body in Florida identified people from the protesting region that way?

So, hell no -- Tampa could *not* arguably be said to be in South Florida at that time, and real South Floridians made that obvious point very clear.

And hell no, this wasn't decided in Tallahassee. Who the hell do you think the Governor, the Attorney General, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction were listening to when deciding on that name? Tampa people, dammit, jealously trying to claim something that was not theirs to claim. In 1960 Dade County was our largest county by far, more than twice as large as the 2nd largest county -- which happened to be Duval, Ennis. Duval.

If you think about my overall point you'll see the truth of my assertion by simply asking one simple question: why would the third public institution for white folks in this state be placed in Tampa . . . when the population center of the state was already way down in Miami? Hell, Broward was damn near as large as Hillsborough and Palm Beach was already more than half as large. No damn body was confused about where South Florida was located, and populated.

Don't be dense, now. We could talk a bit further about the racial / Yankee context applicable in this competition that y'all seem a bit ignorant of (did you know UF is the largest Jewish university in the nation? Because of South Florida?) but, do preach on Ennis.