The surrogate
It begins with a woman who yearns for a baby and another who is willing and able to give her one. You can imagine the motives of the prospective parents. But what about the woman willing to carry a baby, give birth and then walk away?
Friday Night Rewind It doesn't matter which team you cheer for. We've got video previews of every high school football program in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando County.
Group a gaggle of economic development folks from seven Tampa Bay area counties in a room. How many "visions" of our regional future would emerge?
As amusing and painful as that exercise would prove, a long-long-range planning effort for our metro area has assembled four scenarios of what the greater Tampa Bay area, one far more populated than today's, could look like in 2050.
Forty-two years sounds like a long way off, but any serious plan — like reorganizing our busy roads and bridges, introducing genuine mass transit, redefining the density of affordable area housing, assuring long-term water sources, preserving nature and upgrading job quality, to name but a few — takes a long time. So does paying for it.
On Monday, a forward-thinking group of public and private organizations called One Bay will hold five meetings across the Tampa Bay area to get public input on what our metro area should look like by midcentury. Sure, we want a terrific place to live, work, grow up in and retire to. How do we get there?
"We looked at how we are growing, and the projections are this would not be a very livable place in the future," says area SunTrust Bank chairman Dan Mahurin, who chairs One Bay.
All these look-way-ahead efforts fall under the trendy name of "visioning." More and more states and cities are doing visioning projects — from Envision Utah and Chicago Metropolis to Louisiana Speaks and Southeast Florida 2060.
One Bay is purposely focused on the goals of the greater metro area rather than the wants of individual counties and cities. Its eventual aim is to gain the input of tens of thousands of area residents. Debra Kent Faulk will manage the One Bay outreach campaign through the summer. Meeting times and locations for the five meetings on Monday can be found at www.myonebay.com.
"Florida" and "vision" are words rarely in the same sentence. Guess what? We need an upgrade. It's time to look way ahead and stretch ourselves.
Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com.
. FAST FACTS
Planning for 2050: four futures
Scenario A: Continues current growth patterns to 2050, average commutes would increase, up to 200,000 wetlands/wildlife acres could be hurt and developed land would double in size.
Scenario B: Quadruples space of revitalized properties near city centers, adds more tightly packed housing like townhomes and condominiums, and boosts mass transit as density increases.
Scenario C: Emphasizes walkable communities near mass transit to minimize dependency on automobiles, generous parks and outdoor recreational areas and most preserved open space.
Scenario D: Focuses on preservation of water resources and wildlife habitat, avoids construction in nature-sensitive areas, revitalizes 24,000 acres as new mixed-use communities near downtown cores.
More details at www.myonebay.com
[Last modified: May 31, 2008 04:32 AM]
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