An Apocalyptic Hellscape
A letter from a Tampa resident to The Tampa Bay Times.
The letter below is a powerful statement of the need to prioritize the quality of life over uncontrolled development. These sentiments reflect the values of many West Melbourne citizens, as expressed person-to-person and in many venues. The relevance to the Doherty Drive Extension project should be self-evident. Rewilding is very difficult, but the city can easily save greenspace by disapproving this project.
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FLORIDA IS ON ITS WAY TO BEING AN ‘APOCALYPTIC HELLSCAPE’
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TIME FOR SOME ‘REWILDING’
I came to Tampa Bay in 1998 for a lot of the same reasons other people moved here — the beauty and the laidback lifestyle. Now that that’s mostly gone, I’m ready to leave my beloved Orlando ... I mean Tampa ...for good. Florida is an eternal paradox. People want to move and live here because of the climate and the landscape, but the more people move here, the more infrastructure and development is needed, and the less beauty there is to enjoy. Just recently, the University of South Florida put a 700 acre forest preserve up for development.
Unless Floridians realize that the patchy greenspaces that still exist in and around our towns and cities are more than just another development opportunity, another tax generating smoke shop or storage facility, or another gated community, we will have created an apocalyptic hellscape, a manicured parody of Florida. These remaining greenspaces are the lungs that make our cities livable. Someone is going to have to explain to future generations why we thought it was better to pave and develop a living breathing ecosystem, so we could have another WaWa and a convenient place to get a fresh sandwich. There is only one solution. I call it “undevelopment.” In Europe, they call it call it “re-wilding.” Before we re-wild Florida, we have to undevelop parts of the city and return it to greenspace.
In Tampa the solution is not designating more city parks, although I’m not against them. Such seemingly good-natured gestures often give license for more aggressive development elsewhere. Since no one is going to stop the insatiable desire for development in Tampa or Florida, why don’t we make the developers responsible for undeveloping an equal amount of currently developed space and return it to green space? Tampa has plenty of candidates for spaces that are inefficiently developed. Parking lots alone account for an absurd amount of acreage. We’re driving less, going to retailers less, attending church less, and ready to embrace autonomous vehicles, so it’s time to start digging up these carpets of hot black tar and replace them with friendly plants and trees, whole ecosystems that do nothing except make our air cleaner, our planet cooler, our property values rise, and our citizens happy.
Take one last look at that orange grove you pass every day, that small farm, that “empty” lot with the For Sale sign — the execution warrant of green space. But it’s not gone forever. If Miami is any indication, or St. Petersburg, or South Tampa, ocean levels will continue to rise, flooding will intrude on our most exclusive neighborhoods and Florida will learn one way or another that re-wilding, undevelopment, or whatever you want to call it, is coming whether we want it or not.
Jeffrey Rubinstein, Tampa