Advocating for a Sustainable Jacksonville

Find out how Metro Jacksonville has become an advocate for a sustainable Jacksonville in a recent United States Green Building Council (USGBC) North Florida 2040 Talk presented by co-founder Ennis Davis, AICP.

Jacksonville is a community at a crossroads. According to Transportation for America, Jacksonville is the 3rd most dangerous city in the country for pedestrians and cyclist.

A lack of interest in preserving our culture and historical heritage has been a major contributor to many neighborhoods being erased from existence and our downtown becoming a shell of its former self.

Despite having 747 square miles of land within our borders, many of our suburban areas are falling into decline as sprawl development pushes outward into neighboring counties.



However, things were not always this way. Our progressive African-American community was instrumental in paving the way for the Harlem Renaissance.

Our neighborhoods were connected with each other by the state's largest rail-based streetcar system. A 61-mile system that carried more passengers annually in 1912, than JTA does today county-wide.

A place where the maritime industry met the railroad, downtown Jacksonville was a major logistics center for the distribution of goods, people and supplies throughout the east coast.





What made early Jacksonville a sustainable community didn't happen by accident.

Following the Civil War, Jacksonville's port and railroads flourished due to the demand for lumber and forest products to rebuild the nation's war-torn cities.

With thousands employed in industries along the riverfront, the need for complementing residential, retail, hospitality and even red light districts became apparent.

Because this took place in a era before the automobile became king, the result was a dense walkable urban environment.

In other words, growth wasn't contrived, it was organic.





Primarily due to federal subsidies facilitating what is now known as sprawl, this sustainable development pattern and economic model had been destroyed by the time of Jacksonville's consolidation in 1968.

In the following decades, we've enacted a number of policies and land development regulations with a one-size fits all mentality, despite our borders being larger than the cities of Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Portland, Las Vegas and Miami combined.

As a result, we've created a financially unsustainable economic future for Jacksonville.





Over the last half century, we've used our massive land area as an excuse for failed downtown revitalization efforts and subsidizing unsustainable growth. However, our context tells a different story. In reality, we're a 30 square mile rust belt city surrounded by 717 square miles of low density suburbs.

Furthermore, that rust belt city has lost 50% of its population since 1950. In the meantime, what’s been overlooked is what made Jacksonville a successful city 100 years ago. An economic model that facilitates organic sustainable growth and development.





In 2006, fed up and frustrated by the city's direction, Metro Jacksonville was launched by six residents determined to make a difference.

However, instead of relying on the power of a big financial budget or political backing, we'd use the interactivity of community journalism, the internet, social media and good old fashioned "elbow grease" to become an influential advocate for a sustainable Jacksonville.

Seven years after being labeled a mischievous band of misfits by threatened long time movers and shakers, Metro Jacksonville is now recognized as a successful grass roots change agent.





However, what makes us different from many organizations pushing for sustainable growth and revitalization is our focus on the things most tend to overlook.

Instead of determining specific uses for specific sites, specific people, specific economic classes and specific races, we strive to advocate and facilitate market rate growth and opportunity through individual human creativity and innovation.

As a result, true organic growth can naturally thrive in environments that many have written off as outdated, blighted and economically worthless.





In addition to getting our city's health and financial house in order, we also believe the forgotten urban core is the key to the city's economic future.

Why? Because nationwide, there are 86 million millennials that will soon drive market decisions for decades to come.

Unlike previous generations, statistics suggest most make locational decisions based on quality of life, drive less each year and 80% claim to have a desire to live in vibrant central cities.

Thus, Jacksonville's core (not just downtown) must become a "place" instead of a "space".





Citizens don't always need money and support at city hall to make a change. Sometimes, all we need is a chance to display our individual talents.  

With this in mind, Metro Jacksonville practices the art of Tactical Urbanism to advocate for a sustainable future.

This basically means implementing affordable and immediate small-scale short term actions to facilitate long term change.

Three issues we believe are critical to the city's sustainability where these methods have and continue to be applied are Historic Preservation, Economic Development and Mobility.





During the last half century, we've turned our back on the unique urban core built after the Great Fire of 1901 that our predecessors left for us.  

One by one, special districts such as Riverside Row, Railroad Row, and LaVilla's Ashley Street, places that we travel as tourist to other communities to visit, have disappeared from our landscape.

In recent years, the wrecking ball began to center in on Springfield. As a response, several Metro Jacksonville discussion board members organized Preservation Save Our Springfield in 2010.





The genesis of Preservation SOS began with the knocking down of one too many historic homes. Ready, willing and able to do what they can to prevent further demolitions in the historic district, Preservation SOS has successfully lobbied for mothballing legislation to preserve the integrity of vacant homes for future use and repaired homes of long term residents in danger of losing their properties to the wrecking ball.

In a developing story, the young non-profit organization has played a leading role in exposing Jacksonville's illegal use of federal dollars to fund the demolition of historic building stock. As a result of their efforts, there have been no demolitions in the historic district in six months.





Some may wonder what's the importance in keeping existing building fabric where possible?

Benefits include safeguarding our local heritage, education, civic beauty and bolstering community pride.

Economically, having an abundance of existing buildings allows urban pioneers at all income levels to be a part of the renaissance.

We can see this all around us today. The lack of available building stock in downtown is one of the primary reasons businesses many desire in the Northbank, end up in areas nearby such as the CoRK Arts District, King Street, and Hendricks Avenue instead.





In 2010, we hosted our first pub crawl. At the time, the goal was to provide an evening of entertainment that would generate revenue for struggling downtown nightlife venues while also exposing guests to other urban core activity centers such as Five Points, San Marco Square and Park & King.

Utilizing luxury shuttle buses to link these districts was viewed as a way to introduce "choice" riders to the idea of mass transit as well.

During the days of the initial pub crawls, many crawlers were exposed to urban districts outside of downtown for the first time.





In the three years since the initial pub crawls to King Street, the strip has transformed into the area’s latest nightlife district despite the economic recession.

No longer are there complaints about vacant storefronts. Today, some are seeking to slow down the proliferation of new businesses because the on-street parking spaces they were once accustomed to are now filled with patrons visiting the King Street strip.

In 2014, we'll be focusing on helping breathe excitement into other overlooked urban core districts such as Beaver Street in the vicinity of the farmers market and Murray Hill's Edgewood Avenue.





Despite the national-wide popularity of food trucks, the industry struggled to survive locally due to antiquated anti-industry regulations and opposition by influential political forces.

In an effort to showcase economic benefits of this industry and the best of Jacksonville's local street food culture in a single location, members of the Metro Jacksonville community organized Jax Truckies, The Jacksonville Food Truck Championship in early 2012.

Fresh off the heels of that successful event, a second rally was hosted in a downtown surface parking lot to demonstrate how food trucks could activate a dead block and create small business growth opportunities at an affordable cost.





The downtown event was a success and proved that brick and mortar businesses could benefit as well.

Since the launch of Jax Truckies in 2011, the food truck scene has exploded throughout Northeast Florida, leading to the creation of jobs, designated truck spots in downtown and new food truck legislation for consideration in Jacksonville Beach.

Now several of the food trucks have grown to become successful enough to open brick and mortar restaurants helping make Jacksonville a place instead of a space.






Investing in alternative forms of mobility to facilitate connectivity and human scaled economic growth are essential to any community desiring sustainability.

In 2006, Metro Jacksonville exposed JTA's proposed +$1 billion Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan as the largest public boondoggle in local history. While highlighting the flaws; commuter rail, streetcars and better utilizing the Skyway were suggested as viable alternatives.

Once Metro Jacksonville advocacy generated community support, JTA's BRT proposal has been significantly modified and complemented with future commuter rail, streetcar and skyway use.





In 2011, the City of Jacksonville adopted the 2030 Mobility Plan and Fee, as an innovative funding mechanism for multimodal transportation projects and land use policies to combat unsustainable sprawl.  

Earlier this year, a bill to enact a three year moratorium on the plan was considered by council at the request of the local development community.

In response, Metro Jacksonville used its influence to present a counter argument to rally the community.  Responding to heavy grassroots-based community opposition, the City Council enacted a compromise and today revenue is being generated for Jacksonville's future mobility needs.





In 2011, five local urban planners who met through Metro Jacksonville decided to establish Transform Jax. Transform Jax advocates and educates the community and decision makers regarding policies and projects that benefit downtown and surrounding neighborhoods.

Over the last two years, Transform Jax's successes include introducing the idea of establishing a local bike share program, working with public officials to not approve constructing a road in front of the new courthouse and performing the traffic analysis needed for the creation of San Marco's recently completed Balis Park expansion.






In conclusion, Jacksonville can become whatever we decide to make it by 2040. However, my experience with Metro Jacksonville and affiliated advocacy groups suggest that the seeds for significant change can be incrementally planted and bloom into something great without the need of a well-financed bank account or city hall playing the leading role.

I'd encourage everyone in the room who'd like to see our community become more sustainable to embrace the ideas of Tactical Urbanism, be like Nike and "Just Do It."


USGBC North Florida 20 40 Talk Presentation by Ennis Davis, AICP. Contact Ennis at edavis@moderncities.com