ABSTRACT
Spreading over the landscape of Florida, the economy is organized by many networks. Florida is covered with a dense network of roads, railroads, airports, boat channels, bikeways, and walkways—the means for transportation. The wealth stored in highways is much greater than would be inferred from the money spent in building and maintaining the highways. Transportation has had major impacts on environmental systems because of the displaced land, rerouted water flows, blocked movements of wildlife, air pollution from exhaust gases, and piles of old cars. International trade is a major part of Florida, especially through Miami, which is an international city to which much of South and Central America converges. In planning for the future, environmentalists may need to make more energy evaluations of transportation alternatives to see which have the best net benefit. Long-term storage of information is required for an economy to be competitive.
