Great Analysis of Florida Development Culture–What Went Wrong and Who Pays The Price

…the land use policies and politics of the late, great boom originated in South Florida, where an earlier generation of entrepreneurs had figured out the components of scalable housing developments that characterize the built landscape: condominiums on the ocean front and platted subdivisions in the ring suburbs. Although the conclusions of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, issued last week, are unsurprising– namely that the crisis was avoidable– the mainstream media continues to avoid the closer analysis of what I describe as the Growth Machine: the network of local real estate speculators, lobbyists, mortgage and title companies, engineers, and politicians who facilitated first the massive overdevelopment of South Florida and then its inevitable collapse.

via EYE ON MIAMI.