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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Reubin Askew, July 8, 1974. Interview A-0045. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

The challenge of Florida's growth and the need for management

Askew addresses the challenge of Florida's growth and the need for some kind of management.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Reubin Askew, July 8, 1974. Interview A-0045. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

Jack Bass: How do you approach the growth problem in Florida? I mean, do you view it as a problem?
REUBIN ASKEW:
Oh yes, I don't think that there is any question that when you grow a thousand a day, you may label it as an opportunity, as a challenge, but regardless of the semantics, the fact is that it is something that you have to try to come to grips with. And it's not an easy thing, obviously, because of the mobility assured by the United States Constitution. And I think that you see in Oregon an attempt that tried to limit it and it resulted in it growing substantially more. Of course, you don't know if it wouldn't have grown otherwise or whether it called it to everybody's attention and they had more growth than they would otherwise have had, but I see, essentially, trying to assure a better quality of development in such a way to where you simply don't permit a bunch of little crackerboxes all over the state. You know, in big developments, without the proper services, without quality development, with no particular regard to question of sewage, drainage, transportation, all of these things. And now, with the new Environmental and Water Management Act of 1972, see, all of these will come under developments of reasonable impact and they are going to require passing certain guidelines. And we are goig to do our best from the standpoint of really trying to control the type of development that takes place, so that in doing so, we can maybe steer it in the right areas and to try to avoid the greater buildup of density in areas where we already have problems. So, we have some parts of Florida now that are really overly populated and we have some that can stand some growth. And the challenge, to the extent that it's possible, is to try to afford greater flexibility to develop in certain areas, but much, much tighter in other areas. To try to control it this way.