ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates growth management in Florida by examining its relationship to spatial patterns of economic development in the Atlantic Southeast region between 1982 and 1997. Florida's growth management program came in 1985, when the State Comprehensive Plan and the Growth Management Act (GMA) were adopted, but that was followed by a period of gradual implementation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The GMA does not appear to have had a meaningful impact on the spatial outcome of growth, this may have more to do with ancillary factors, such as infrastructure funding, than the legislation itself. Population and employment growth are jointly determined in Florida, the long-term sustainability of economic development there may depend on policies that preserve the high quality of life that it has to offer. The collocation of people and jobs is fundamental to contemporary regional development, meaning policies that interfere with that process must ultimately be judged counterproductive.
