

The Big Picture: Human Landscapes in SW Florida - ojbyrne
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/09/human_landscapes_in_sw_florida.html

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harshpotatoes
This is kinda a big issue in SW florida at the moment. The big picture
showcases a lot of these empty homes in the area, but some of the cities in
the area continue to sell development permits to developers, who continue to
build more empty houses, which sort of ruins the landscape. Why do developers
continue to build when there are so many empty homes? Who knows, maybe people
are really vain and want to buy a house/condo which wasn't foreclosed on, or
maybe the houses/condos are just built in a bad spot. In any case, a hot topic
in the south.

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etm117
My gut feeling is they keep building because otherwise they go out of
business. If they can open a development and slowly build a few houses (and
get them sold) then they can continue to build out the development.

Based on those pictures and your comment, I would prefer that Florida re-issue
licenses to contractors to continue building on sites that were half built
before money ran out. This minimizes the continued over-development and keeps
small communities from being stuck with a large HOA bill for the entire
community when only 1/4 of the houses are sold.

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dennisgorelik
1) This is such a good collection of photos and many comments are pretty
insightful too. 2) It was interesting to get familiar with arguments of anti-
sprawl crowd. 3) I personally don't see any danger in the sprawl. Quite the
opposite -- it's scary how quickly abandoned development turns into jungle in
Southern Florida. 4) It was pretty insightful to learn that real-estate
boom/bust cycle is very typical for Southern Florida. Could it make sense to
buy a home there now while the prices are close to the bottom?

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brc
It's interesting to see failed developments that have never gone anywhere. My
first instinct is to say : start re-using these instead of building new ones.
But then the reason they failed is because nobody wanted to live there, for
whatever reason. Those reasons are probably still there, so any attempt to
make them 'work' is doomed to failure. Best to just let it be. Eventually the
two or three occupants will move on and then nature can reclaim the land.

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cma
Most of the layouts with water almost look like Peano/Hilbert type curves
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-filling_curve>

