This Article analyzes the 2011 changes to Florida’s growth management legislation and the negative impact these changes present for urban sprawl in Florida. In June 2011, the legislature enacted the Community Planning Act, which makes significant changes to Florida’s previous growth management scheme. The Community Planning Act greatly reduces the State’s role in overseeing land use planning and eliminates mandatory concurrency requirements for schools, transportation, and parks and recreation. This Article argues that by making these changes, Florida’s legislature is improperly using a statute intended for long-term planning in an attempt to curb the effects of the current economic crisis, while ignoring sprawling growth’s destructive impact on Florida’s valuable resources and landscape.

This Article ultimately calls for legislative reform in the growth management arena and proposes that Florida should incentivize smart-growth techniques on a state level by limiting public funding to designated suitable-growth areas and providing incentives for developers to build in these areas. Alternatively, this Article proposes that local governments use the increased control they are granted under the Community Planning Act to discourage sprawl by retaining concurrency, creating more mixed-use development zones, and implementing form-based code.