Sarasota Livin'

I just found this archive page of audio and text from the Florida Sustainable Communities Network - Sarasota Workshop held in July 1999.

I will be listening to some of the "real audio" clips. (old school audio). Seems the State of Florida website for "florida sustainable communities" stopped being updated in Nov 2000. Five years ago ... HELLO we are not there yet!!!!

Florida communities must focus on Water, Land Use, and Transportation in that order in order to head most directly toward sustainability. This consensus is best summed up in the "bumper sticker code" that evolved as the FSCN summer workshop progressed. It says simply: W1, LU2, Tr3. That means Water first, Land Use second, and Transportation third. This growing realization evolved by overlaying recent South Florida water studies with this year's Land Use and Transportation Study Commission Report. It was this Commission that evolved the first part of the formula as LU1, Tr2, meaning essentially land use decisions should precede and guide transportation decisions.

It's a historic change in perceptions. It means those old-timey days of "cars first" that drove sprawl development for the last half century are rapidly evolving. People want options.

On the first day in Sarasota the visionary presentations of David Crockett and John Lambie, framed Dan Williams' stark picture of water in Florida.Williams paints a hopeful solution to a dire problem, but only if we face the true results of a century of squandering our once-great water wealth. Water must be first in any vision that talks about a Florida future that will be "sustainable" by any definition of that word. It was The League of Women Voters' Dena Leavengood from Tampa who first pronounced the new formula "W1, LU2, Tr3" as the consensus vision that all were now plainly seeing.