Imagining a New Florida

'A Life of Its Own': Jacksonville's Springfield Neighborhood

 The city's first suburb, Springfield dates to 1869. At about one square mile, with more than 2,000 homes, it is one of the largest historic residential districts in Florida, known for Queen Anne and Prairie-style architecture. Springfield was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. But until revitalization began to take hold around a decade ago, the neighborhood also was known as one to avoid. Grand homes built by Jacksonville's early 20th-century business leaders had grown decrepit; the streets, unsafe. By 1998, only 14% of the district was owner-occupied. Drugs were dealt openly. What's happened since reflects in large part the determination and civic values of residents who invested in the neighborhood. The turnaround began with historic-home aficionados who restored hundred-year-old houses one by one. And now, amid a sour economy, historic Springfield is mending on its own terms. Continue reading 'A Life of Its Own.'

 

St. Joe Land Company stock plunges. Why? 

“The best properties have been sold, many lots were sold to speculators during the boom and when the boom ended, business essentially stopped,” David Einhorn, president of hedge fund Greenlight Capital Inc. said, according to Bloomberg News. “Many developments are ghost towns and little value remains,” he said.

 

Read the full article here.

Suburban Poverty Grows. That's the headline in today's Miami Herald.

Battered by the downturn, America's suburbs are bearing the brunt of poverty among those of working age that has climbed to its highest level in almost a half century, creating strains on dwindling safety-net programs focusing mostly on the inner-city poor.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/07/1861316/suburbs-take-hit-as-us-poverty.html#ixzz11gzwYUIw

A Florida circuit court judged declared that Florida's new growth management law, signed by Gov. Crist in 2009, is unconstitutional because it is an "unfunded mandate." The bill re-wrote Florida's 1986 growth management guideline to allow developers to build new housing developments without expanding surrounding infrastructure such as roads. That cost was transfered to county governments. Read the story here

Are you curious about what the city of Ocala has on the drawing boards, do you have an idea to share or are you thinking of opening a business, developing land or investing in a piece of property? If so, you will soon be able to visit a Community Redevelopment Area Design Studio where there will be information and sketches of new projects, pilot projects and concepts being considered or under way. Read the full article here.

Should local people have a say in their area's development plans. The advocates of Amendment 4 say yes. The Chamber of Commerce and majority of Florida politicians say no. A recent blog commented on this upcoming amendment and mentioned our documentary. You can read the story here.

Somehow, amid a bleak real estate meltdown with shopping centers clinging desperately to tenants, Midtown appears to have caught on, fulfilling a long-desired demand for urban retail. For more than a decade no one could find a suitable place to make it happen, leaving the best shopping meccas a long drive away for residents of central Miami. What makes this area different from other redevelopment plans is that Midtown was started from the blank canvas of an abandoned inner-city railyard.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/14/1776662/midtown-miami-an-everything-in.html#ixzz0wlzsOnnZ

The folks from Slow Home stopped by the station to present an award for our documentary. They also interviewed Joyce and me.

The Wolfsonian–Florida International University Fellowship program in 2010-2011 will highlight the great range of potential research opportunities offered by The Wolfsonian’s collection. For the first time, the program will have a thematic focus—research on the links between design and health in the modern era. Scholars were called upon to consider the ideas of design and health from a broad perspective: “Design” to include a range of practices, such as product design, graphic design, interior design, architecture, and urban planning; and “Health” to include such concerns as personal hygiene and fitness, public health, medicine, body image, and disability.  

"We are very enthusiastic about this shift in the program, and what kinds of synergy may result from the research focusing on one area of inquiry," says Sarah Schleuning, Wolfsonian curator and administrator of the Fellowship program. "We're also pleased that one of the fellows selected by the external review panel, Monica Obniski, was a curatorial intern at The Wolfsonian during the summer of 2004."

 

Since its inception in 1995, The Wolfsonian’s Fellowship program has hosted more than seventy scholars from colleges, universities, and museums in the United States and many foreign countries. Research conducted during the program has contributed to articles, book chapters, museum exhibitions, university courses, and more. With the help of a panel of distinguished external reviewers, The Wolfsonian has selected three fellows, each of whom will be in residence at the museum for three to four weeks.

 

Sarah Louise Schrank (Associate Professor, History, California State University, Long Beach) will conduct research on nudist suburban home design from 1920 to 1960. The theme is one component of a more comprehensive project on alternative health practices, body cultism, and modern urban living in twentieth century America.  She has previously spent time at the museum working with the library's Robert J. Young collection of periodicals, and plans to continue that work to include the collection's holdings of Bernarr Macfadden's Physical Culture magazine and other library items.

The numbingly similar tract homes, endless strip malls and multiple minivans filled with youth soccer players indelibly mark this former Indian mission territory as a Kansas City suburb. Look deeper, and a more nuanced portrait of Johnson County, Kansas emerges: an economic powerhouse that has eclipsed its big-city neighbor in political influence. Read the artcile here.