Economic Development and Public Finance Working Paper Series
REP 07-02, Does State Growth Management Change the Pattern of
Urban Growth? Evidence from Florida, by Marlon G. Boarnet, Ralph B. McLaughlin and John I. Carruthers.
This paper examines a policy question that is of acute interest in the field of urban and regional
economics: If a state government wanted to alter the spatial pattern of growth, could it? The
analysis uses a neoclassical growth model to examine equilibrium densities of people and jobs
throughout the Atlantic Southeast, which includes Florida—a state having one of the nation’s
best-known pieces of growth management legislation. The results suggest that Florida’s policy
has had two countervailing effects: (1) a lower population density at equilibrium; and (2) a slower process of adjustment toward equilibrium. In short, Florida’s growth management program may
have produced more residential sprawl, even as it slowed the transition toward that outcome.
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