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

[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.

[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.

[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

[duvaldude08]

It is amazing to read articles like this, and to see Downtown Jacksonville's present state. I think our great consilidation hamred us more than it help in a sense. I think with proper planning, things would have went how they intended.

[PeeJayEss]

I like the picture of the intersection: Who decided everybody should drive into the center of the intersection and just get out and walk around? I'm so curious what's actually going on in that pic.

What's the big building with the park in front? Nice model for the courthouse.

I get that the execution or planning was misguided (maybe a bit of the grass is greener syndrome), but it is refreshing to see such an optimistic outlook for the city. Perhaps with the same optimism (and a better plan), the people of the city could really get behind making things happen.

[thelakelander]

Springfield, as we know of it today, is a streetcar suburb.  Although sparse development was already in the area, significant "dense" growth (the stuff we're burning and demolishing today) didn't take off until after the extension of the streetcar into the area and the Great Fire of 1901.

[fieldafm]

It should be noted, almost 25 years ago to the day is when Herb Peyton began the Deerwood development along Southside Blvd.  The orginal vision included end to end shopping centers that anchored the residential and office/commercial components.

Jacksonville did have a growth management plan in the early 70's(after Gate broke ground on the Deerwood developments), but the City Council decided to not enforce the plan and essentially caved in to the demands of the NEFAR and not enact any impact fees.  This drove large development along Baymeadows and along San Jose South of I-295 towards Julington Creek. 

Development along the Southside was possible because of city policies.  It's what made the agri/rural land the Davis', Skinners, etc owned attractive to sell to developers.

It's time growth management policies favored infill and not continued outward expansion.

Tapestry Park along the Southside is a great example of the kind of dense infill the Mobility Plan seeks to encourage.

[Dashing Dan]

By the time I got here early in 1973, Deerwood was already an upscale enclave.  Southside Blvd was supposed to be upgraded into a 9A-type facility, but the people who already lived along the Southside corridor were able to keep that from happening.

In the early Seventies we were expecting new growth to occur in downtown, Arlington, Orange Park, and out along Beach Blvd.  We were looking for moderate growth in Baymeadows, but hardly any growth in Mandarin, or northwest St. Johns County.  We saw St. Johns Bluff Road as a de facto growth boundary, so we got UNF and the St. Johns Town Center right, but we didn't foresee most of what has occurred at the far end of Butler Blvd.

Given that the Independent Life Building was under construction, we were very confident in the future of downtown.  We were also very hopeful for Riverside, Avondale, and Springfield.  The Navy has turned out to be less of an influence than we thought it would be.  

[peestandingup]

There's nothing wrong with having suburbs. The problem is, a lot of towns (ours included) went WAY overboard & totally threw out their cores. "Why do we need these stinky urban areas for anyways? Suburbs, big highways, cars etc are the way of the future!" was probably the mindset many had. Now those towns are having to basically rebuild everything that once made them unique & real towns. Some more than others (ahem, us again). The smart ones at least kept what they had while still building out & accommodating the suburbanites.

Plus, this article (like many in media at the time) sorta reads like a propaganda piece. If you go back in research, there was a LOT of that kind of stuff flying around. I don't know the motivation of it all, although I'd prob guess it had to do with the auto, oil & building industry.

Here's one from the End Of Suburbia documentary that's pretty funny: http://www.veoh.com/watch/v20073206BFdxe5c6 There was all kinds of shit like this floating around at this time.

[Doctor_K]

That very first aerial photo - is that the intersection of Arlington/Rogero?

[Dashing Dan]

Plus, this article (like many in media at the time) sorta reads like a propaganda piece. If you go back in research, there was a LOT of that kind of stuff flying around. I don't know the motivation of it all, although I'd prob guess it had to do with the auto, oil & building industry.

After WW II the nation's housing and transportation facilities were worn out and inadequate.  As a quick fix, new houses built on raw land made sense, and cars and new roadways were needed in order to make all of that raw land accessible. 

Now that we have plenty of excess housing and relatively adequate transportation capacity, it would be a big mistake to keep on taking the same approach that we took after WW II.