There are several reasons for why Florida’s cities have been growing at an extraordinarily high rate. With this growth comes both positive and negative effects to the state of Florida.
Florida’s rapid growth rate seems to be due to several things. Among these things are pleasant weather conditions almost year round, the increase of tourism in the state drawing people into the area to work at those tourist jobs, and the desire for people throughout the Midwest and Northeast United States to move to, and live in, Florida upon retirement.
When compared to the weather conditions in the Midwest and the Northeast corridor (Megalopolis), the weather is fantastic, being quite a bit more desirable. Although the summers tend to be hotter, getting into the 90’s or even the 100’s (F.), the winters tend to be quite a bit warmer, being in the 60’s and 70’s compared to the north’s freezing temperatures below the 30’s. Since these winters are milder than northern winters, it tends to attract people who want to get away from the much harsher weather conditions in the north.
Ever since Walt Disney opened up his Walt Disney World and Resort in central Florida, people have been attracted to Florida for tourist reasons. And the Walt Disney Resort was only the first of many tourist destinations that have been created in Florida. These include Sea World, Universal Studios, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Kennedy Space Center, and many other developed tourist destination sites, which draw tourist from all over the world, but especially the Midwest and the Northeast. Add to this the beautiful beaches that Florida has, more miles than anywhere else in the country, and you have an enormous amount of tourists flocking to this state. The need for workers among these tourist destinations has drawn people to Florida to work these sites, which has given rise to the population growth of many cities, or metropolitan areas, in Florida.
The draw of tourists to Florida has caused a need for services to cater to these tourists, including hotels, restaurants, and shopping centers, and the construction of the buildings housing those services, which gives rise to the need for workers to work in the construction industry, and in those service industries. This need for workers in these secondary and tertiary industries dealing with tourism has caused even more population growth in this state, causing those Florida cities to expand even more.
All these people who move to Florida need a place to live, such as a home or apartment, which has caused a housing boom in the state, which requires a need for even more workers to help build the housing communities. And, when there are housing communities, you need all sorts of services that cater to them, including schools, hospitals, landscape services, maintenance services, and the like, which has attracted even more people down to the state to fill those needs.
Add to this the fact that there are a large amount of people, who, upon retirement from a regular job up north in the Snow Belt, leave to come south to the Sun Belt, particularly Florida. This has added to the need for even more housing for these retirees. This has added to the population boom even more.
Another thing to note is that there are some reasons why some businesses from up north have been moving south to the Sunbelt, including Florida. Included in these reasons, besides the better weather conditions, are (1) lower production costs, (2) developments in transportation, communications, and technologies that improve industries, (3) a decrease in cost efficiencies that only the north used to have, such as closeness to material sources and closeness to customer base, and (4) an increasing importance in the amenities that attract people to the south, besides a milder winter, and which include the shopping centers, restaurants, schools, and hospitals that have been developed over the last few decades. The movement of these businesses to the south has increased the population of Florida even more, which has helped to increase the growth of Florida’s metropolitan areas even more.
So, what are the largest metropolitan areas in Florida? These include the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area, the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, the Orlando area, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Pensacola, the Fort Myers-Cape Coral area, and the Lakeland-Winter City area. Of course, there is also a lot of growth in other, more rural, areas of the state that are outside these larger metro area. Included in this would be such areas as The Villages, just south of Ocala, where many people from the north have built second homes in a place that looks like you live in a garden – this area is growing like mad, representative of the explosive growth in population in Florida’s urban areas.
Because of the rapid growth of metropolitan areas in Florida, it has caused a few problems. If the statements in the above paragraphs about what has attracted people to the Sunshine State are the positives, the following would be the negatives. Among these are the fact that these major metropolitan areas are more decentralized than most any other metropolitan area in the country, meaning that business is less likely to occur in central business districts (CBD’s), and more likely to occur in peripheral areas, such as the suburbs. It also means that there has been less planning into the development of these metro areas as they continue to mushroom outward, causing an urban sprawl that paid little attention to traffic patterns, visual unattractiveness, and distance between two points. It means there is more development in outlying countryside, as well as increased traffic congestion due to lack of planning. But, it seems, all good things have their downside, right?
