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Exercise in utility: How region will work in 2050

A workshop featuring Legos delves into the serious issue of making room for millions more.

By JAMES THORNER
Published February 14, 2007

It was a task straight out of a toddler's toy chest: Stack a few thousand Lego blocks on a 6-foot map of the Tampa Bay region.

But the purpose was far from child's play. A group of 20, mostly planners, developers and government officials, were charting, with the precision of a Pentagon war planner, what the Tampa Bay area might look like in about 50 years.

Tuesday's exercise in the Pinellas Park offices of the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council centered on one of the area's toughest challenges: finding room for 3.2-million new residents and 1.5-million new jobs that demographers say will arrive in the region by 2050.

Laid on maps of seven counties, a yellow Lego equaled 6,320 people and a red Lego 3,840 jobs.

Participants laced ribbon among the blocks: Purple for commuter rail lines, blue for new highways. When they finished, the maps looked like aerials of Chicago or Philadelphia.

Jobs and residents were clustered in and around the cores of Tampa and St. Petersburg, but hundreds of Legos fanned out into the greener pastures of Pasco, Hernando and Polk counties. Suburbs were looped by beltways and traversed by trains.

"It was sobering for all of us to see the magnitude we're talking about," said Edward Mierzejewski, head of the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation.

Joked Brian Smith, Pinellas County's planning director: "We've destroyed the future in one fell swoop."

Tuesday's exercise, a planning tool developed by the Urban Land Institute called Reality Check, was a dry run. On May 18, the Planning Council will gather 300 people at the Tampa Convention Center, divide them among 30 maps and ask them to play with Legos again.

Organizers deliberately left county boundaries off the maps. The idea is to think regionally. The Planning Council will ask counties to tack the results from the sessions onto their growth plans.

The Urban Land Institute dubs west-central Florida one of eight emerging "super cities" in the United States. By reaching a half century into the future, organizers hope to ensure growth won't create a super mess.

"It's hard to think five years ahead," mused Betty Carlin of the Tampa Bay Partnership, a regional business recruitment agency. "They're being asked to think 50 years ahead."

[Last modified February 13, 2007, 21:56:35]