No. of Recommendations: 2
Florida has a much more uniformly distributed population that either of these two states. I'd argue that FL can't hold a candle to the congestion that NY and CA have to deal with, even if that congestion is somewhat localized.
Sure - we don't have anything that remotely compares to the population density of someplace like Manhattan (though our densest urban areas are in Miami-Dade County, not Broward).
But that's the point I was making. At the statewide level, Florida can handle a lot of population growth, because we're not trying to fit all those extra people into Manhattan-like places. Which is part of how we've been able to grow our population to a density that already exceeds the overall density of New York or California without having very many of those pockets of ultra-high density.
So the prediction that Florida will start to have qualitatively different issues as our congestion approaches that of California or New York is just mistaken. It is very difficult and complex to have millions of humans in a very compact space at super high population densities like we see in the densest parts of the NYC and SF and LA metros. One solution to that is to develop sizable public institutions that can deal with those complexities. Another is to simply....not do that. Rather than try to make more Manhattans, you can just keep population densities low and sprawl into areas where space is available.
There are lots of reasons why such development patterns are disliked, of course - and many folks make some very strong arguments in favor of urban planning that fosters very high population densities. But that type of urban form is not inevitable for Florida. We can continue to grow and get more congested as a state, without moving into those types of urban forms, just the same way we exceeded the overall population density of NYS and CA without doing that.
