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Existing hard-working residents will comprise the new "poorer" classes after these new developments are built. S. Florida new construction, esp. downtown FTL will be marketed to the same classes of people, often shadowy, faceless global elites that construction in Miami-Dade was marketed to. Marketers will tell you how wonderful this was for areas of Miami-Dade, but you should ask people who've lived here. New businesses will cater to the very wealthy classes, traffic will increase dramatically. Part-time, wealthy, sometimes very arrogant owners don't give a darn about the community. Their real estate investment in your area is just part of their portfolio. Your quality of life will not improve bc of shiny new buildings nearby. This would be horrible for Ft Laud. which still has plenty of original character left.
Everyone is making some correct arguments here. Fort Lauderdale's population has grown slowly for years, and most of the growth has occurred because the city has annexed a few outlying areas to the west.
It's also true that Broward's population has grown from slightly over 1 million in 1980 to almost 2 million now. Couple that with Fort Lauderdale's downtown development over the years and it certainly means more people driving into and out of the city.
That said, I don't find traffic -- inside the city or elsewhere in Broward -- to be that horrible when compared with other large metro areas. Might be because I've spent my entire life in major metro areas and am accustomed to traffic (I mean, if you want to see a really bad situation, try driving at peak hours anywhere near O'Hare Airport in Chicago, where I grew up). If your background is in a less populated area and you're not used to traffic, your mileage may vary (no pun intended).
Interestingly, some of the worst traffic I've encountered in recent years was near Asheville, N.C., hardly a major metro area.
I don't think that it makes any sense to complain about how Fort Lauderdale is changing. More immigrants are moving here from outside of the USA and more people are moving here from other parts of the USA. Change is inevitable. Its going to get more crowded, and its going to look a whole lot less like the 'traditional America' of the past that's depicted in the Rockwell paintings. By this I mean that culturally it will continue to change as different people from all over the place come here---ergo, it will be a whole lot less white, and far fewer people here will be speaking English in the not too distant future. The only thing that's surprising about this is that anyone at all is surprised by it.
Many people have moved out of the area because they don't like the changes. And many people who are moving here to get away from the crowding, high costs, crime, and rudeness of people in the tightly-packed cities in the northeast and west coast will find that what was over there is also over here. Its a globalist world now, friends. We soon won't have borders anymore. And those of us who think that our posh neighborhoods won't be seeing an uptick in crime just haven't yet seen how the federal government is planning to fix that problem with refugees and 'social engineering'. It will soon become a matter of deal with it, or die. No one cares, not really.
I don't think that it makes any sense to complain about how Fort Lauderdale is changing. More immigrants are moving here from outside of the USA and more people are moving here from other parts of the USA. Change is inevitable. Its going to get more crowded, and its going to look a whole lot less like the 'traditional America' of the past that's depicted in the Rockwell paintings. By this I mean that culturally it will continue to change as different people from all over the place come here---ergo, it will be a whole lot less white, and far fewer people here will be speaking English in the not too distant future. The only thing that's surprising about this is that anyone at all is surprised by it.
Many people have moved out of the area because they don't like the changes. And many people who are moving here to get away from the crowding, high costs, crime, and rudeness of people in the tightly-packed cities in the northeast and west coast will find that what was over there is also over here. Its a globalist world now, friends. We soon won't have borders anymore. And those of us who think that our posh neighborhoods won't be seeing an uptick in crime just haven't yet seen how the federal government is planning to fix that problem with refugees and 'social engineering'. It will soon become a matter of deal with it, or die. No one cares, not really.
Fort Lauderdale, and South FL in general, has always been a diverse place with lots of foreigners and transients moving here from other parts. I'm not sure why people expect it to be any different. If you want a small town feel with all whites, then move to Nebraska or somewhere in the middle of the country where no tourists wanna go.
Fort Lauderdale, and South FL in general, has always been a diverse place with lots of foreigners and transients moving here from other parts. I'm not sure why people expect it to be any different. If you want a small town feel with all whites, then move to Nebraska or somewhere in the middle of the country where no tourists wanna go.
Is your argument that people who are against this development, are racist, anti-immigrant, or prefer to live in Nebraska? You're very judgemental especially since you've no idea of the background of people on the bulletin board.
You'd do better at convincing people of your viewpoint if you were a little less condescending.
If you want up to the minute information on everything going on downtown, follow URBNPLANR on facebook. He has up to the second information on everything going on downtown.
In addition to three new downtown hotels, the All Aboard Florida, now renamed Brightline, has managed to get the bus station moved downtown which will help with the homeless.
The new Brightline train station is close to being finished.
I live off Las Olas and personally, I'm excited about everything that is going on.
Is your argument that people who are against this development, are racist, anti-immigrant, or prefer to live in Nebraska? You're very judgemental especially since you've no idea of the background of people on the bulletin board.
You'd do better at convincing people of your viewpoint if you were a little less condescending.
The last poster presented an anti-immigrant viewpoint, but I guess you don't consider that judgemental. Only if I take the opposite side that diversity is good can I be judgemental. Right?
My argument is that people on here have unreasonable expectations of what they think Fort Lauderdale is supposed to be. This area is not, and has never been, "traditional America". It has always been a place of great diversity, transients, immigrants, and people from elsewhere. If you are not into such diversity, why would you spend time complaining and whining about the people here? Why not look elsewhere in the U.S.?
Last edited by Nolefan34; 08-21-2016 at 07:05 AM..
Is your argument that people who are against this development, are racist, anti-immigrant, or prefer to live in Nebraska?
"This development", as you call it is an interesting phenomenon that is as old as The Devil. It reminds me of an old Classic tale about the devolution of extent culture in the advent of multiculturalism. The two are mutually exclusive, and the animus that drives them today is exactly the same as the one of yore.
The short version of the story goes like so:
The gods had initially decreed that Man should spread out on the earth and form themselves into different societies according to their cultures and interests. But the people got together in defiance of the gods and decided for themselves that they did not want to separate. Instead, they wanted to build a megacity where they could all live together in a multicultural utopia. Then the people decided to build a massive step tower that reached up into the heavens so that they could kill the gods and then decide for themselves how to live their lives. But before they got to finish building the tower they began to have arguments amongst themselves about whose cultural beliefs should prevail in their new city and who should be in control. These disagreements eventually led to them, once again, separating themselves into neighborhoods of cliques that grew larger and more vocally opposed. Then their arguments turned into fights. And the fights turned into civil war. Many of them died, and the step tower never got built. And as they were trying to recover from the devastation an invading army from the East rode in, killed the men, raped the women, enslaved the children, and took over the land.
After a while, the marauding interlopers interbreed with the conquered and they grew considerably in numbers. Then they had this brilliant and original idea to build a megacity where they could all live together in a multicultural utopia; and they marveled at the novel idea of building a massive step tower that would reach into the heavens so that they could kill the gods who wanted them to do otherwise. At first, the gods laughed at Man's arrogance, foolishness, and redudancy. And then they wept.
I think you had unreasonable expectations. The 17th Street/Harbor Beach area is known as being ground zero for tourists getting off of the cruise ships. The area is filled with restaurants that tourists frequent. There are very few full-time residents in that section.
To me, despite the tourists, the area is very nice and is frequented by a higher class of people than other areas of Fort Lauderdale. What exactly made you feel so uncomfortable? You were there to move someone out of a house, not to socialize. What did you expect?
Did you go anywhere besides Starbucks? I feel uncomfortable whenever I step foot into a Starbucks regardless of which city. The idea of pretentious people paying $6 for a cup of coffee and hanging out for hours on wifi without looking at anyone or talking to anyone kind of makes me sick.
I stopped at Starbucks for someone else, I never even went inside but rather people watched outside. It was this observation that made me think about the area on a bigger scale.
Sure I could pop into Southport and see Buddy (the owner) or a few familiar faces but seeing the crowds on 17th or Las Olas it just seemed very out of touch to me. The crowd at Starbucks from rich getting out of 100K cars to poor cruise ship employees on day leave just seemed very mixed with no interaction.
The last poster presented an anti-immigrant viewpoint, but I guess you don't consider that judgemental. Only if I take the opposite side that diversity is good can I be judgemental. Right?
My argument is that people on here have unreasonable expectations of what they think Fort Lauderdale is supposed to be. This area is not, and has never been, "traditional America". It has always been a place of great diversity, transients, immigrants, and people from elsewhere. If you are not into such diversity, why would you spend time complaining and whining about the people here? Why not look elsewhere in the U.S.?
"Anti-immigrant" perhaps in your mindscape, but incorrect nonetheless. The post was simply an observation of cultural change in progress. It is not true that this area has "always been a place of great diversity", for transients, immigrants, and people from elsewhere. Go back far enough in time, not too far though...say, the 1950s through the early 1960s and you will see the evidence. If you search through some of the antique shops in Dania you can still find some of the "whites only" and "Gentiles only"-type signs that used to be all over Fort Lauderdale beach and Miami Beach back in the day available for sale as novelty items. Even Diana Ross and the Supremes, the #1 pop music act in the country back in the mid 60s, were told that they could not stay in any of the hotels on the beach and were relegated to staying in a dive in Overtown while they were on tour and performing for the privileged guests in the ritzy south Florida beach hotels. If you were a person of color working in certain areas you had to have a pass, and you had to be out of there by 6PM. Go back just a little further and you will find that there were a LOT of lynchings and a disproportionate number of eminent domain seizures of black people's property in south Florida's past.
This area was very much 'traditional America' until around the late 1970s through the early 1980s. This was when the demographics really began to change---slow at first, and then dramatically over the years that followed. There is a LOT of sordid history here, my friend. And a lot of it best remains untold. My point is that this area was not always as diverse and welcoming and tolerant as you seem to believe. I don't think that anyone here has expressed unreasonable expectations of what they think that Fort Lauderdale is 'supposed to be'. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that people have strong opinions about what Fort Lauderdale pretends to be. Its now 2016, and mainstream Hispanic culture is now dominant in southeast Florida, white people are still moving north, and black people are still experiencing a lot of racism (oh God, the plethora of this that abounds!). It is important that people who read these forums and are relying on the information to determine whether they move here or not understand that southeast Florida is not El Dorado as so many people try to make it seem. There's nothing wrong with describing something the way it actually is.
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