'Sense of place' in jeopardy
A threatened commodity in modern Florida

May 6, 2007
By BILL BELLEVILLE
Special to the Orlando Sentinel


I was standing out in Jake Glisson's backyard recently, overlooking the edge of Orange Lake. Jake, now 80, grew up on the other side of that lake near a little bend in a country road called Cross Creek. His nearest neighbor was author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who earned a Pulitzer for her superb depiction of people and place in her Florida-based novel The Yearling.

Jake and I were talking about the endearing worth of individuality -- and why it's a threatened commodity in modern Florida. "Well, . . . everyone in Cross Creek was a character," said Jake. "You had room to spread out, room to be one. If you tried to be a character today in a condominium with walls only six inches thick, well, they'd ask you to leave." As if in affirmation, a pair of Florida sandhill cranes glided overhead, calling in that deep haunting way they do, like a bird from another time.

I've been hearing a lot about "sense of place" lately. Last year I wrote a book about the impacts of sprawl on "community." I tried to quantify personal costs, tried to define what it means to lose a place you care about in your heart. Then, on behalf of the Florida Humanities Council, I traveled the state, fielding questions about it. I visited Bartow and Cedar Key, Lake Wales and High Springs, and dozens of other small towns.

In doing so, I learned some valuable lessons: After being channelized, paved and retrofitted, Florida is finally being recognized for its singularity. The unique natural forces that speciated Florida black bears and cranes have also shaped culture. The relic small towns and villages left are our true icons of "place" -- the heritage that Rawlings and others once celebrated.

Despite our colorful and diverse politics, Floridians are almost uniformly united in their sorrow over loss of community. When development sprawls, it affects ranchers in Polk County, farmers in Umatilla, independent merchants in Bonita Springs. Our relic small towns are all under siege by the same forces that have culturally pureed so much of the rest of Florida.

Now, the authentic place where I've moved to escape the juggernaut of sprawl is in the crosshairs. And the threat in historic downtown Sanford is a sprawl that grows not horizontally -- but vertically.

The city of Sanford has decided to let a deep-pocket developer build four nine-story high-rise towers on a tiny shoal that -- without human intervention -- would still be underwater. Citizens who publicly opposed the disparate new building heights argued modern towers adjacent to the historic district would jeopardize both cultural and architectural scale.

Nearly all of those opposed were residents of the historic district. Nearly all who favored vertical sprawl were builders, Realtors and developers. One proponent said a tall skyline makes you think "something important is happening there." Those concerned Sanford is squandering its retro charm were labeled handwringers who "think the sky is falling."

Step outside of Florida for a moment: In his book Collapse, Professor Jared Diamond says when the interests of the decision-making elite clash with that of the average citizens, those elite "are likely to do things that profit themselves, regardless of whether those actions hurt everybody else." According to attorney Leslie Blackner, president of Florida Hometown Democracy, the power elite in Florida are developers who, working in tandem with elected officials, control land-use politics.

There are solutions. For instance, "New Urbanism" planning that clusters residents and mirrors the mixed use of small towns can work. But it pales when compared with a real-life small town. Indeed, a 2002 study by the University of Florida's Levin School of Law found annual economic activities driven by historic preservation amounted to $4.2 billion statewide.

Nonetheless, the mom and pop restaurants, barbershops, clothing stores and bookshops that still exist inside our relic towns are hanging on for dear life. Schemes to make money overnight will spell their end unless leaders with a sense of context come to their rescue.

"There is an affinity," Rawlings once wrote, "between people and place." When we manipulate place, what will it do to the people who were once shaped by it? Will a retention pond and a high-rise tower inspire and inform the landscape -- or will they isolate us from it?

And when we are surrounded on four sides by Jake Glisson's thin six-inch-thick walls, what kind of characters, ultimately, can we really be?

Bill Belleville is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker specializing in nature and conservation. He lives in Sanford.

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