Recent feature articles in the New York Times (August 29, 2009) and Orlando Sentinel (August 17, 2009) have highlighted the beginning of the decline of population in Florida. After a century of rapid population growth that provided the mainstay of economic development and dominated state politics, Florida appears to be entering a new era.
It is easy to be fooled into believing that the decline is only temporary and rapid growth will soon resume. For example check any existing population projection for the state or its counties and you will see a steadily upward reaching line out to 2030 and beyond. However all projections are based on past trends and thus inevitably miss the reversals in trends. Instead of looking at projections, take a look at estimates of actual population as they become available. For example, I have graphed the U.S. Census bureau’s population estimates for my home region of Volusia County, Fl.
From U.S. Census estimates. Graph by Bill Ball.
The rapid growth in population in the county in this decade slowed significantly in 2007 and the population actually declined in 2008. Note that this decline happened before the real estate crises and subsequent current recession. It is not hard to imagine what the trend will look like for 2009. It won’t be pretty for an economy driven by cheap, fast residential growth.
Indeed I will make a couple predictions:
- Volusia county will not see a return to rapid population growth, not next year, not the year after, not for the foreseeable future.
- This will create a crisis for the current economic system and policy regime that are built around rapid growth, a crisis that lasts beyond the current recession.
These are daunting prospects in a region whose sole competitive advantage is cheap land and where there is relatively little industry or agriculture, dwindling water resources, no investment in education, and where incomes are well below the national average.
Also, the current political system is not designed to meet a challenge like this. Indeed, the campaigns leading up next fall’s vote on the Hometown Democracy ballot issue will only make the search for common ground on the future of economic growth harder. Both sides are gearing up to paint the issue of construction-led growth as a black-or-white, take-it-or-leave proposition.
Well times of crisis are times of opportunity. The opportunity to redefine the engine of economic growth in the region is presenting itself. Will we take this opportunity?
To do so would require something more than our usual means of conducting the public’s business It would take a widespread, sustained effort of citizens, businesses, nonprofits, and government to find a new, more sustainable basis for economic growth. An effort that could only happen if there is a shared will to work together and the right kind of processes and means to do so. There is no better time that the present to start building that shared will and finding appropriate ways to work together despite differences of opinion.
I have seen examples of how other communities have found the common ground within themselves to take on serious challenges to their future like the economic and political challenge faced by this region. I will share some of these in future posts to this blog.
Further, having acquired some experience in convening community forums on difficult policy issues, I feel it is my civic duty to do the same on this issue. Thus I will be working toward starting a series in Volusia in the coming months. I will post details to this blog as they become available. In the meantime I would be happy to hear from those who appreciate the gravity of the problem but don’t believe they have all the answers and who would like to take part in a community-wide civic dialog on the future of economic growth in the region. I can be reached here through comments or by private e-mail at wball@stetson.edu.
2 Comments
The prospect of stasis or decline in population begs the question of what a sustainable economy will look like in a society that has always held consumption to be the engine of growth.
Must the fewer consume more per capita or is there an alternative to the consumption economy?
Economic growth in Volusia county is a slim prospect, outside of the major moneymakers: medicine, Nascar, and the 3 or so private universities in this county, not much could be done to spur major economic stimulus, short of receiving any government contracts, (in the case of defense contractors like Lockeed Martin and Northrop Grumman in Brevard county who also hold various other contracts dealing with space flight, missile defense and IT) Volusia County has a relatively small industrial base, relying more heavily on the tourist industry, during the holidays, on the race/bike weeks. Volusia County in my opinion will not receive any large population growth anytime soon, unless there is a stable job platform that doesn’t rely on the tourist industry. Though as Dr. Ball was saying, that it will take a community effort to band together and strive for a more stable economic platform, which in a community with heavy aptitude for catering towards visitors, will be incredible hard to switch from taking care of visitors for a outrageous fee but considering that tourist are willing to pay the price for overrated garbage you can acquire elsewhere for a third of the price, because of the easiness the tourist business, it will be hard for the economy to switch cycles without an considerable effort. So till Volusia County can acquire a reliable asset to their economy (much like Brevard County which has defense contractors and the space program), Volusia County will continue to have a lower of standard of living then neighboring counties, because they rely to much on the economy, and if it is bad, tourism is bad, and thus the county economy is bad. If the economy deals a bad hand to Volusia County, it will only hindering population growth, and that growth is a positive for county and city funds. In my mind it is a system that is fundamental flawed, it seems that there is no backup plan incase of hard times in the economy, and that could prove to be a potential flaw in the coming years.
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