W Pasco provides great insight into what happens a generation later, when the only 'plan' for growth is to serve one single mode of transport and one single lifestyle at the direct expense of all others. This kind of auto-centric, segregated-use sprawl, far removed from urban amenities and employment centers usually doesn't even create enough of a tax base to pay for inevitable infrastructure replacement costs, let alone to establish the many amenities that sustain a neighborhood over time, but which developers omitted during initial development because they were allowed to. (parks, sidewalks, good zoning to encourage steady economic growth, etc)
I think it's telling that there is almost zero groundswell in W Pasco to fix the mistakes of the past too. Everyone has moved on to the latest greenfield development hotspots in Wesley Chapel and Wiregrass. There's nothing in the county budget for W Pasco, and almost zero community groundswell for change. As the article points out, the only people presently working to improve W Pasco's fate are FSU grad students working for school credit, and an outside group being paid by the feds.
This is why it's vital to get development right the first time. Once bad development ruins a place, it's almost always too cost prohibitive to fix it. It will just keep aging and stagnating, until the place has finally decayed to the point that various tax incentives can kick in. And by that point, a neighborhood has become a crime infested ghetto.
We are already seeing this play out in Hillsborough too, where shit planning has created ghettos-in-waiting in the old inner suburbs, like parts of Town n Country, N Tampa, Brandon, and Carrollwood. And just like Pasco, Hillsborough made a plan to fix the mistakes of the past, and for the most part no one cares (Numerous "urban town centers" were designated throughout the county. Not a single one of them has come to fruition). Development buzz has moved on to new greenfields in eastern and southern Hillsborough, and to legitimate urban redevelopment opportunities in the city, adjacent to urban amenities and employment centers... And of course Pinellas County has been grappling with this issue for years already, with a number of places devolving into real shitholes, while the one legitimate urban center in the county (DT St Pete) continues to grow steadily and become ever-more vibrant and prosperous.
