Whither South Florida?
Old New Yorkers don’t die, they move to Florida. If you’ve seen any episodes of Seinfeld where Jerry goes to visit his parents, you have an idea of the development outside Ft. Lauderdale where my grandmother lives. Sixty years ago, when my grandmother was my age, this land was a swampy outpost of the South. Rapacious developers saw cheap land and warm winters and they built houses to suck up the generous pensions of the Greatest Generation. They drained the swamp into canals and man-made lakes, leaving land dry enough to support useless little front lawns of distinctly hard Floridian grass and roads and sidewalks. They created towns with names that evoked, alternatively, easy-living and Southern charm, such as Plantation, where my grandmother lives, and Sun Rise, the next town over.
When my grandmother moved here, more than 30 years ago, her development, Lauderdale West, 20 miles inland from the beach, was at the far edge of civilization. Today, it is surrounded by strip malls and office parks. Initially Lauderdale West was populated entirely by Jewish retirees from the New York metropolitan area. Gentiles have moved in, with their ungapatchka Christmas decorations, which look even more ridiculous in the baking Florida sun. There are even African-Americans and Caribbean immigrants. People have taken in their children and grandchildren, and not everyone is elderly anymore. Small Toyotas and Nissans now outnumber big Buicks and Cadillacs along the arterial roads and cul de sacs.
But still you see elements of an old New York culture that does not exist in most of New York anymore. The supermarket carries pastrami and rye bread and plenty of seltzer. Listen to the conversations at the pool and “saw,” is pronounced “sore,” and Yiddish grammar rules. “I don’t know where it is,” becomes, “Where it is, I don’t know.” The old hassle of bringing your guest tags to the pool to satisfy the resident busybodies has found a technological solution: Each resident gets an electronic key and if a visitor has one, it’s safe to assume it’s been borrowed for a week of vacation.
With the over-construction and foreclosure crises hitting the Sun Belt hard, the value of these houses is on the downswing. But that doesn’t mean they are going away. Sure today’s old New Yorkers might want pedestrian-friendly and transit-oriented development. But that just means it will be a different clientele moving into developments like my grandma’s. Perhaps the developments like my grandma’s, once the epitome of suburban segregation, will become among the most diverse communities in the country.
Ben Adler reports on Republican and conservative politics and media for The Nation as a Contributing Writer. He previously covered national politics and policy as a staffer at Newsweek, Politico and the Center for American Progress. Ben also writes regularly about urban and environmental policy, and he was a 2008-2009 urban leaders fellow at Next American City.
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dan in Hollywood, CA on Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 2:53am
Without an influx in industry theses developments will fade away as their economies revolves around a very specific clientele, an aging clientele. Negative birthrates are never a good thing for a country, state, city or town.
In related news I just read an interesting article entitled “the Beauty of Bubbles” on Carl Graham Fisher in the Economist. You should check it out. Mr. Fisher is responsible for the boom in development that occurred in south florida in the 20s. His investments fizzled because of the times but he built infrastructure that allowed for much of the development that remains. Perhaps some of the streets your grandmother walks were laid down by Carl Fisher and his associates.
chris on Thu, Jan 01, 2009 at 7:36pm
In the teaser for this article, you misused the phrase ‘begs the question.’ This mistake is so egregious and so indicative of the overall literacy of contributors and editors of this site that I, for one, am moving on without reading anything else on here. Too bad, because the site had been recommended to me. Time to hire a copy editor?
Berthe Neham Small in Leesburg, VA on Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 8:44pm
AS ONE OF THOSE EVER-MORE-SCARCE SPECIES, AN ABSOLUTELY VERIFIABLE NATIVE-BORN MIAMIAN, I REALLY ENJOYED YOUR COMMENTS ABOUT THE MIAMI OF YOUR GRANDMA WHO MOVED THERE SOME THIRTY YEARS AGO. I’M OLD ENOUGH TO BE YOUR GRANDMA, TOO, AND GO BACK A LOT FARTHER THAN THE COMMUNITY YOU VISITED.
MY FATHER AND MOTHER AND THEIR FIRST CHILD, MY BROTHER HARRY, THEN TWO, WENT TO MIAMI IN 1908. THEY TRAVELLED FIRST TO THE LOWER EAST SIDE OF NEW YORK WHEN THEY ARRIVED FROM VITIPSK, RUSSIA, BUT FOUND THAT THE STREETS WERE DEFINITELY NOT PAVED WITH GOLD, AS GOSSIP HAD IT, AND HAVING HEARD FROM A ‘LANSMAN’ THAT MIAMI WAS UP AND COMING, THEY TOOK ONE OF THE EARLIEST TRAINS THAT WENT AS FAR AS JACKSONVILLE, AND A HORSE AND BUGGY WHICH TRAVELED A FEW DAYS SOUTH AND LANDED IN WHAT WAS LITTLE MORE THAN A SEMINOLE INDIAN VILLAGE CALLED MIAMI.
I HAVE A PICTURE OF THEM STANDING PROUDLY IN THE DOOR OF A TENT WHICH WAS THEIR FIRST ABODE. NOT HAVING A TRADE, MY FATHER BECAME A HOUSE PAINTER, AS THERE WAS MUCH NEED FOR CONSTRUCTION SKILLS, AS THE BENIGN CLIMATE AND PHYSICAL BEAUTY OF MIAMI BEGAN TO ATTRACT MORE AND MORE PEOPLE. AS A SECOND AND THEN A THIRD CHILD ARRIVED IN OUR FAMILY, MY FATHER HAD EARNED ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY A LARGE WOODEN HOUSE WHICH HE HAD TOWED TO A PLOT OF LAND HE HAD IN COCONUT GROVE ON GRAPELAND BLVD., WHICH LATER BECAME S.W. 27TH AVE., JUST A FEW BLOCKS FROM BISCAYNE BAY.
AS A PAINTING AND DECORATING CONTRACTOR, MY FATHER WORKED ON A NUMBER OF THE EARLY ESTATES, SUCH AS THE DEERING ESTATE, AND WAS A MEMBER OF THE GROUP WHICH CONCEIVED AND EXECUTED THE BUILDING OF THE COMMUNITY WHICH BECAME CORAL GABLES. BECAUSE OF MY FATHER’S LOVE FOR PASTEL COLORS, THAT BECAME THE STYLE. AND LATER, ON MIAMI BEACH, WHEN IT, TOO, BEGAN TO DEVELOP, ALL THE SMALL HOTELS ALONG OCEAN DRIVE WERE DONE IN EVERY PASTEL SHADE IMAGINABLE.
MUCH HAS CHANGED ABOUT THE CITY, OF COURSE, AND I STILL HAVE FRIENDS AND FAMILY WHO REMAIN THERE, BUT I ALWAYS REMEMBER “MIAMA”—WHICH IS NOT A MISSPELLING, BUT THE WAY WE NATIVES ALWAYS CALLED IT…I ALWAYS REMEMBER “MIAMA” AS “HOME”.