Open Writing

Florida State is one of stark contrasts. Topographically it is almost featureless; flat, not even undulating for the most part, and barely above sea level. One of the few contour features, Mount Dora, climbs to the dizzying height of 485ft. If the dire predictions of the global warming theorists ever become fact, by the year 2200 or so, most of Florida will be under a couple of feet of water, as it has been at times in the distant past. The water table is so high that if you shovel out a hole it will fill with water in minutes.

So it’s not the State’s natural features that provide the contrasts, but the dramatic differences between its coastline and the hinterlands. Almost the entire 1350 miles of the habitable coastline has been developed, in large part to accommodate vacationers and retirees, and to provide the supporting infrastructure for those people.

Most of the coastal communities are relatively new, with the possible exception of St. Augustine on the northern Atlantic seaboard, which was settled by Spain in 1565. The Spanish, who originally took hold of what is now Florida from the Caloosa Indians, later were happy to hand it over to the English as a “worthless tract of land.” What they meant by that was that they had found no gold there. Little could they have imagined the cost of real estate today; compared with which, the value of gold pales into insignificance.

A matter of a few miles inland, the picture is markedly different. This is the old, authentic Florida, still in the hands of the sugar cane farmers, the cattle ranchers and the citrus growers. To break the monotony, there is an occasional phosphate strip mine. What remains is mostly swamp, the largest of which, given it its tourism name, is “The Everglades.” There are some exceptions to be found in commercially developed inland areas such as Orlando and Lakeland, but these are just blips on the radar screen of the entire State.

The palm trees that are so identified with the coastal regions are not to be found here, nor is there a single Italianate or Spanish style building. No brightly painted stucco and pan-tile roofs for these folk. What houses there are tend towards the traditional “Florida Style”: clap board siding, tin roofs, and the required, wrap-around verandah. So called “mobile homes” are also popular, and cluster together in parks that provide a plot of land and utilities for a modest rental.

I’m not sure when, why or where fantasy started to creep into the architecture and planning of the newer communities. Taking a guess, I would say it began to appear in the sixties along the coast. The “why” of it is less easy to explain. Perhaps it could be attributed to increased European travel by Americans, and even to the troops’ exposure to the Mediterranean style of architecture during World War II and the post war period.

In any event, creating fantasy communities rapidly took hold, fueled no doubt by the construction of Walt Disney World in Orlando, which commenced in 1967. Though primarily in the business of entertainment, Disney also had a hand in residential fantasy communities when they created the town of Celebration in north-central Florida.

If you visit Celebration you have to keep reminding yourself that everything there is contrived. There is a town dock where no boat will ever start or end its journey; the bird songs you hear are coming from hidden loudspeakers in the trees, and the ever-present music is piped to speakers concealed in fiber glass rocks. If you eat in one of the several restaurants, it would be reasonable to expect to see a quartet of Stepford Wives having lunch.

But despite its other-worldly perfection, the residents all take it very seriously and feel privileged to live there, as do the home owners in Holiday, just north of St. Petersburg on the west coast. Holiday is the creation of town planner Andres Duany. Mr. Duany, mentioned in one of my recent columns, has come into prominence recently for his laudable concept of “Mixed Use” communities. However, Holiday has more in common with the sanitized Celebration than with the more work-a-day, “mixed use” towns.

As water-front real estate has been used up, so the developers have been forced further and further inland. Since Florida has an abundance of lakes, these areas were the first to be built up. The community I live in is one such place. About 800 residences out of a planned total of 2400 have been built around a 750 acre lake that was once a gravel pit in a swampy wasteland about 15 miles from the coast.

We have a man-made, white sand beach, fringed with palm trees, and the whole scene, complete with Mediterranean style architecture, could easily be mistaken for a corner of the Italian Riviera. The several “villages” that the community is divided into all have Italian names, as do the streets; and the grand entrance is dominated by a fountain that would not disgrace Rome. Even the local shopping center is radiant with pink, amber and baby-blue stucco.

The lawns are watered and groomed, and there isn’t a weed or a bug in sight. No critters wander here, even though only a mile or so away there are signs warning of Florida Panthers. But they are on the outside, and know better than to encroach on our man-made paradise. When all the manufactured virtuality gets to be too much, I go back for a reality check to my old haunts on Pine Island, where, warts and all, real life is still the daily order of business.

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