Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Have to say I've never encountered a lot of conservatives here though. Liberal progressive people seem to be much more ubiquitous.
What does this have to do anything? BOTH areas have heavy concentrations of liberals and progressives, this tends to be the case with most urban metros, not really a mystery there... If you are expecting Portland to be more "conservative" then you are in for a big surprise..
What does this have to do anything? BOTH areas have heavy concentrations of liberals and progressives, this tends to be the case with most urban metros, not really a mystery there... If you are expecting Portland to be more "conservative" then you are in for a big surprise..
What does it have to do with anything? A ton of people base their living choices on the political makeup of the region. Don't try to discredit my argument by claiming irrelevancy I am well aware of this tactic and it never works on me.
Also, you have it backwards. I'm liberal, not conservative.
Hmm if I could fix the biggest problems in this region...First I'd completely redesign the public transport system to make it useful to the hoi polloi (I.E. not wave rider, Cadillac Escalade suburban families from Parkland who can afford to go to the beach whenever) -- Who cares where light rail will go if construction hasn't even started yet? The difference is the PDX system was announced and finished within a reasonable timeframe, it wasn't just the flatulence at the end of some press conference by a government bureaucrat who likely thinks public transportation is beneath their "status". Tri Rail Coastal link station at the airport??? You mean FLL where airlines are begging the city to extend the facilities just a bit because they are regularly over-congested? Where are they going to build an onsite train station if they had to build over a highway just to increase the length of a runway? The runway which took forever to finish and is now reported to be structurally unsound no less with big cracks in the inner foundation
What does it have to do with anything? A ton of people base their living choices on the political makeup of the region. Don't try to discredit my argument by claiming irrelevancy I am well aware of this tactic and it never works on me. Also, you have it backwards. I'm liberal, not conservative.
No use in getting upset because City-Data is a majority based liberal audience. Arguing with them is like trying to reason with a wild Bear in the Alaska back country. Whatever you say, however you say it, no matter how many facts you give, they will always make excuses and deny the truth.
Considering that it's the norm for nearly everyone here to be in their motor vehicle to go anywhere with a cellphone glued to their ear tuning out reality, most people in this area are pretty oblivious to what is going on around them here with uncontrolled development.
Depending on just how fast the ice caps keep melting and raising the sea level and also depending on how old you are now, you may or may not get to see the dramatic end results of the current building and building and building of high rise office and residential towers on top of chunks of porous coral rock and sand, which is what makes up the ground of and under South Florida.
All you have to do is look at the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy, which was built on moist, sandy unstable soil to see how the high rises here will eventually begin to lean as the water table continues to rise, as it is now currently doing, and the sand under the high rises here become moist and unstable and begins to shift and compress under the high rises. The Leaning Tower of Pisa was made stable and has been kept from falling over by the pumping in of tons of gravel under the base of the tower and this gravel sits upon bedrock but there is not bedrock in South Florida.
Sea walls will hold the rising water back from the surface of the land here for awhile as they do now but because of the sandy soil under them with no bedrock to block the flow of seawater under the sea walls, water will eventually seep under the sea walls and seep up on the other side of the sea walls, along with causing the eventual collapse of the sea walls that aren't constantly being repaired with cement to fill in the breaks in the seawalls that will occur as the sea walls begin to lean just like the high rises will when the sandy soil under them becomes moist from salt water intrusion.
They say that the highest points of Miami will eventually become an island as the oceans continue to rise but because developers in the Miami area decided not to invest in the vast system of canals that were dredged out of the swamps that once covered most of the very low lying Fort Lauderdale area to make Fort Lauderdale "the Venice of America," people who decide to stay in the Miami area as the oceans rise won't have to contend with the expense of building all the sea walls higher on the canals that now wind through much of the Fort Lauderdale area to try to keep rising canal water levels out of their neighborhoods.
Considering that it's the norm for nearly everyone here to be in their motor vehicle to go anywhere with a cellphone glued to their ear tuning out reality, most people in this area are pretty oblivious to what is going on around them here with uncontrolled development.
Depending on just how fast the ice caps keep melting and raising the sea level and also depending on how old you are now, you may or may not get to see the dramatic end results of the current building and building and building of high rise office and residential towers on top of chunks of porous coral rock and sand, which is what makes up the ground of and under South Florida.
All you have to do is look at the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy, which was built on moist, sandy unstable soil to see how the high rises here will eventually begin to lean as the water table continues to rise, as it is now currently doing, and the sand under the high rises here become moist and unstable and begins to shift and compress under the high rises. The Leaning Tower of Pisa was made stable and has been kept from falling over by the pumping in of tons of gravel under the base of the tower and this gravel sits upon bedrock but there is not bedrock in South Florida.
Sea walls will hold the rising water back from the surface of the land here for awhile as they do now but because of the sandy soil under them with no bedrock to block the flow of seawater under the sea walls, water will eventually seep under the sea walls and seep up on the other side of the sea walls, along with causing the eventual collapse of the sea walls that aren't constantly being repaired with cement to fill in the breaks in the seawalls that will occur as the sea walls begin to lean just like the high rises will when the sandy soil under them becomes moist from salt water intrusion.
They say that the highest points of Miami will eventually become an island as the oceans continue to rise but because developers in the Miami area decided not to invest in the vast system of canals that were dredged out of the swamps that once covered most of the very low lying Fort Lauderdale area to make Fort Lauderdale "the Venice of America," people who decide to stay in the Miami area as the oceans rise won't have to contend with the expense of building all the sea walls higher on the canals that now wind through much of the Fort Lauderdale area to try to keep rising canal water levels out of their neighborhoods.
There's so much hot air here, no wonder the ice caps are melting.
I think Hot and Humid lives on the canals somewhere in Ft. Lauderdale. I too live on the water here. After this last hurricane, the water level in our waterways was at the highest level ever, in Lauderdales history. Lived on the water here my entire life. Never seen it this high. Am I concerned? A little bit.
If you don't like sitting in traffic, it's time to seriously consider leaving Fort Lauderdale. None of the city or county officials are interested in solving the traffic problems in this area. I wrote the City of Fort Lauderdale a few years back to complain about driving down Broward Boulevard from Federal Highway to 1-95 between 4-5 in the morning to drive down to Miami Beach to sell at the Lincoln Road Antique and Collectibles Market that runs from October to May and hitting read light after red light after red light, as it common almost any time of day even when there is no traffic delays as the traffic lights are so badly timed here.
The City told me it wasn't their problem and to call Broward County. Broward County told me that had installed motion sensitive traffic lights and that the traffic lights on Broward Boulevard were supposed to stay green unless someone pulled up to a cross street. The official I spoke to said to call him back if the lights weren't working correctly. Of course they weren't working correctly as that's why I called in the first place but Pass the Buck and Not Do Your Job is common practice for public officials here.
I suggested to the last mayor of Fort Lauderdale that the railroad tracks should be put under or over the busy streets they cross so commuter traffic doesn't have to stop for trains crossing those streets but of course, people are still sitting in their cars burning up expensive gasoline waiting for long freight trains to pass by on the train tracks cross busy streets here and now it's going to just get worse with a new commuter rail line just installed that will cause the guard rails to come down to stop street traffic more often than ever before. I try to save fuel by turning off my engine on cooler days when I waiting but it's too hot here during the summer months to sit waiting for a train to pass with the air conditioning off.
I also suggested that the bridges on the Intracoastal only be opened at certain posted times for boats that are too high masted to pass under them which causes the bridges to have to go up to let them through while traffic on the roadways that goes over the bridges gets delayed waiting for the bridges to go up and down for the boats to pass through. Of course, wealthy leisure boat owners are more important than the working person to public officials here so the traffic continues to get stopped and the bridges go up and down whenever a boat arrives that needs to have the bridges raised for the boat to pass through instead of on a schedule.
And considering that over $6 million dollars is being spent to install pumps to pump out flood waters and for valves to close rainwater drains during high tides on one of the wealthy islands of multi-million dollar homes connected to Las Olas Boulevard because of tidal flooding due to rising sea levels, you can bet that home owners who don't live in affluent areas where the City of Fort Lauderdale is willing to spend the money to protect their homes from flooding, are going to see more and more tidal flooding in their areas since the Broward County won't spend a nickel of all the money it has flowing in from the property taxes on all those condo housing units in new buildings downtown to build locks on the rivers here to keep high tides from flowing up the rivers and into the connecting canals and flooding whole neighborhoods even on sunny days as happened in South Beach before the City government there raised property taxes in order to take actions to prevent flooding there by raising street levels, install floodwater pumps and putting in shut-off valves in rainwater drains.
Also, the iguanas that now proliferate here because of warmer winter temperatures (they used to die off in large numbers during cold snaps) are damaging the seawalls built years ago along the rivers and canals so developers could drain swamp land to build houses on. The iguanas dig into the walls to build caves to stay in on cooler days and nights. If you have a house on a river or canal and go through the time and expense of making sure your seawall is kept repaired and in tip top shape, if your neighbor doesn't have the money or the inclination to keep their seawall up to par, river and canal water can easily permeate your neighbor's damaged seawall, traveling over their property and end up flooding your house and property during a high tide or from a storm surge from a hurricane.
There's so much hot air here, no wonder the ice caps are melting.
Miami Beach hired experts from the Netherlands to come over and advise city officials about what they could do to hold back rising sea levels as the people of the Netherlands have pushed back and held back the North Sea for ages in order to increase the amount of farmland in the Netherlands so it could feed itself without resorting to spending so much of it's GNP on importing food to feed it's people, such as China does now and has turned to buying up land in Africa to farm to lessen it's dependency on food imports from the U.S., although our stores are filled with manufactured merchandise made in China.
The city officials in Miami Beach were told that seawalls, etc., could be built at present to hold back some rising seawater but they would eventually become useless as the sea level became higher than the land behind the seawalls. The reason the Netherlands can hold back the sea even though parts of the Netherlands are below sea level that is being farmed on is that the Netherlands has bedrock that the barriers that hold back the North Sea are built on.
Florida has no bedrock and even the pieces of coral rock mixed in with the sand you now stand on is in pieces and chucks and does not cover any significant area of the land under us to prevent seawater from permeating up through the ground and flooding land that is below sea level.
And if you don't think that high rise buildings here will eventually begin to lean and possibly fall over as the sea level rises and corrosive salt water intrudes under the foundations of the buildings, the next time you are at the beach, find the high tide water line and go several feet back inland from that line and start digging down into the sand and you'll find that you hit seawater at a very low depth. Then keep in mind how developers here try to get zoning variances to increase the occupancy density on every singe inch of the land they own and considering their political power in a state where the economy is based on tourism and real estate sales, why haven't more developers been allowed to build on the beach right into the water here like they have in Chicago such as at Hollywood Beach on the far north side of Chicago?
Because there is no bedrock here like there is in Chicago to anchor their buildings on that are currently being constructed here on packed sand that will eventually give way as corrosive seawater permeates in and out with the flow of the tides under the buildings here as we see more and more salt water intrusion from rising sea levels which is happening now as Hallendale Beach had to close several fresh water wells it drew drinking water from because of salt water intrusion due to rising sea levels.
A quick education for those not in the know: The Leaning Tower of Pisa does not lean because of rising sea levels with tidal waters flowing in and out underneath the tower. The Leaning Tower of Pisa leans because it was built on unstable ground that began to shift during the construction of the tower. The tower began to lean during the construction because of uneven settling of the land under it from the weight of the construction materials and adjustments were made during the construction in an attempt to prevent the tower from leaning further. While these adjustments worked somewhat, the tower continued to lean because of the poor subsoil under it and the tower was eventually closed to visitors. As the lean increased and the tower became increasingly in danger of falling over, funds were collected and gravel was pumped underneath the tower to strengthen the subsoil and to prevent it from falling over.
Fact: The man-made islands along Biscayne Bay in the Miami area were made of landfill dredged from Biscayne Bay as was Miami Beach, just as much of Fort Lauderdale is built on landfill dumped into swamps to fill them. Many homeowners on the man-made islands in the Miami area have had to shore up their pools and the grounds surrounding the pools with gravel pumped underneath the pools and surrounding property after years of rising corrosive seawater going in and out by way of the tides flowing through the sand and coral rock underneath the pools and surrounding properties has removed sand into surrounding waters and caused the walls of pools and of some of the homes next to them to begin to crack as the sand below them ebbed away. Many of the homes in the Fort Lauderdale area are tiled not only because of convenience of cleaning tile and mold problems in carpeted homes but also because heavy amounts of rainwater have seeped up the cement slab foundations in low lying housing developments that were built on filled in swamp land and caused the carpeting in place to become wet and bubbling up off the floor.
Last edited by HotandHumid; 12-27-2017 at 07:20 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Fort Lauderdale Quality of Life Issues
