But Southwest Florida is not alone. Across the country, people are suffering the consequences of unchecked growth as the nation’s numbers continue to climb at unprecedented rates. For example, from 1990 to 1997, the population of the United States increased by a whopping 32 percent. And, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, America is fast approaching the 300 million inhabitants mark. Locally, the Southwest Florida region is expected to be home to more than one million residents in the next several years.

But other metropolitan areas are experiencing similar growing pains. In an effort to protect our regional sustainability, it is worthwhile to look at the ramifications of rapid, unchecked growth.

Drive Time

From 1990 to 1997, traffic on roads across America jumped by 131 percent, and the number of licensed drivers in our country grew by more than 60 percent. However, during those same seven years, road capacity increased by merely 6 percent.

Earlier this year, Lee County officials told residents something that most of us are already well aware of—our roads are congested and they’re not getting any better. According to a report released in January, the county meets only minimum road standards on most of our thoroughfares. Some roads are reaching maximum capacity and others are getting very close. Combine this with an ever-expanding resident base and the prognosis for drivers in Southwest Florida is bleak, but not yet as bleak as other parts of the country.

Last year, residents of Chicago were polled to determine the issues affecting their daily lives. What topped the list? Traffic congestion. This issue ranks at the forefront in the minds of many Americans. The list of cities suffering traffic woes is impressive, including Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Baltimore and Houston.

Earlier this year, officials in Houston began searching for ways to accommodate the growth that will soon add more than one million cars to already-crowded roadways. From 1990 to 1995, sprawl in the area was on the rise as more than 90 percent of Houston’s growth occurred in the suburbs. As a result of these 500,000-plus new residents to the western suburbs, Houston’s major thoroughfares became increasingly congested, with traffic at peak times slowing to little more than a crawl.

A Sprawling Landscape

Southwest Florida has recently seen development moving east of Interstate 75. A little more than 10 years ago, I-75 was deemed undesirable by many in the building industry. Today, however, with nowhere else to go, the migration to the east has taken hold. With this migration comes the inevitability of increased sprawl in a region where residents favoring their space and boundaries have shunned the concept of increased density.

But with sprawl comes a laundry list of problems. This pattern of growth, which is depleting the American countryside at an alarming rate, forces us to become even more dependent on automobiles, which increases traffic congestion, in turn increasing air pollution—a vicious cycle.

Southwest Florida is not alone in witnessing an increasingly sprawling landscape. For decades, Los Angeles has suffered many sprawl-related problems. According to the Urban Land Institute, from 1970 to 1990, the population of greater metropolitan Los Angeles grew by 45 percent while the developed area of the region grew by 200 percent. This development pattern resulted in increased traffic congestion, greater public investment in facilities and loss of open space.

The Chicago region also suffered a similar scenario during the same 20-year span. Lois Morrison, manager of the Campaign for Sensible Growth, says that between 1970 and 1990, nearly 450 square miles of farmland and open space in the region, an area twice as large as Chicago itself, was developed, while the population of the same area grew by only 4 percent. Once again, this growth trend resulted in increased traffic and the need for new roads, sewers and schools.

Education Woes

How to pay for those new schools? This is a major question locally, as developers and officials have heatedly debated the possibility of imposing school impact fees on new homes. However we pay for them, the bottom line is that we need new schools. The problems of overcrowded, understaffed schools are being felt every day by parents, children and educators.

Officials in Maryland currently are trying to find a way to assuage the need for more schools. Maryland is heralded among growth management scholars as an example of how to plan for growth and tackle the associated problems. The state’s nationally recognized smart growth program uses directed state investments to encourage sound growth management strategies. At the current rate of growth, projections estimate that more than two million more people will move to Maryland over the next 50 years. Even with its innovative and progressive growth management plan, can Maryland handle this many additional residents without sacrificing the standard of living? As the growth rate continues, officials there are facing the challenge of how to educate the thousands of new students entering their school systems.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, officials in the state of Maryland spent nearly $6 billion on primary and secondary education in 1999. From 1997 to 2007, more than 50,000 more students are expected to enter Maryland’s school systems. To accommodate these children in grades K through 12, new schools will have to be built and new teachers will need to be hired. Where is the funding going to come from? It’s a daunting task, considering that at the start of the 2000 school year numerous districts throughout the state of Maryland were already understaffed.

By adding thousands of more students to their school systems, an already serious educational situation will be worsened. The U.S. Department of Education has predicted that student enrollment in Maryland will pass the 850,000 mark by the end of the year—a 14 percent increase from 1991. The question remains: How will officials in Maryland, a state that is already heralded across the country for its growth strategies, handle this influx?

Can’t We all Just Get Along

The list of growth-related problems and the cities, towns and regions facing them is endless. However, as the problems come to light and to the forefront of the minds of voters, changes are being enacted. But these changes need to occur at the regional level, instead of locally.

For example, three hours away in Orange County, there has been an explosion of the school-age population. As more and more kids are being born in Orlando, the rate of school construction has gone in the opposite direction. In a well-meaning decision, Orange County officials enacted a building moratorium until school development caught up with demand. Consequently, builders moved to outlying areas. The result? More sprawl and no new schools.

When one locality begins limiting growth within its own boundaries, the natural result is that the growth moves to neighboring localities or to outlying areas. The problems don’t disappear, they just move around. Localities cannot control problems such as traffic congestion and air pollution—these difficulties occur regionally, which is another reason why a regional effort is necessary to combat the challenges of Southwest Florida’s exploding growth.

Kristin Nail is a freelance writer and visiting instructor at Florida Gulf Coast University.