Babcock Ranch

By Dominique Gilbert Christina Gold Zachary Greening Noa Hechtman Jacob Wolfe  

Babcock Ranch, Florida, the United States’ first solar-powered city, is now entering its 15th year of existence. The city’s land, which lives on the edge of the now Babcock Ranch Preserve, was purchased in July 2005 by a company owned by former American football player Syd Kitson. Previously, the land was privately owned by the heirs of Edward Vose Babcock, a lumber industrialist who bought the land in 1914. When the Babcock family announced their intentions to sell the land, conservationists quickly pointed out the importance of this land for preservation purposes. The land makes up what was viewed by the conservationists as the final section of land needed to complete an environmental passage from Lake Okeechobee to the Charlotte Harbor Estuary. A deal with the State of Florida for purchase of the land was in its final stages with a price set at $455 million. However, because the family wished to sell the land via all the company’s stock in order to avoid a heavy tax burden, negotiations with the State directly broke down as the Florida Constitution prohibits using funds earmarked for land purchase to buy company stock. 

The real estate development company Kitson & Partners ended up purchasing the land for far more money. The company eventually sold most of the land, which was the most environmentally critical, to the State of Florida and Lee County, maintaining just 18,000 acres of the original 91,000 for development. These 18,000 acres is the beginning of Babcock Ranch. 

Babcock Ranch construction started in 2006 and has maintained eight core initiatives throughout its now 14-year development. These initiatives are environment, health, education, energy, technology, transportation, storm safety, and fun. Balancing these is of course no small feat, but the recent trip of the authors leaves a good impression of their success so far.  

The authors had minimal prior knowledge of the design planning of Babcock Ranch. However, it is readily apparent that much careful planning was involved. Starting with energy, Florida Power & Lighting has now begun construction of an on-site 75-megawatt solar plant. This power plant, along with rooftop solar panels on some of the housing and other buildings, is designed to provide more power than the future 19,500 homes will consume. By providing entirely solar energy, the city’s carbon footprint is significantly reduced, lending to the environmental and health initiatives.  

Considering the transportation and technology initiatives, the city is laid out so that major destinations will be, at most, within biking distance. This includes major business districts, schools and parks. There are eight schools planned, with elementary ones near the center of each village and a high school accessible via bike trails. This attests to the careful planning as children can be accompanied short distances by their parents to school while teens will be able to get more exercise and freedom by biking to school. An offer has even been extended to the Florida Gulf Coast University for the creation of a satellite campus within the Babcock community. 

The city also plays host to an experimental transportation technology. Shuttles have been designed with the intention of eventually offering a completely autonomous electrical transportation service that can be subscribed to in a manner like Uber or Lyft. It is envisioned that these vehicles will have no driver and simply will react to a call by an app, pick up the caller, deliver them to their destination, then continue about its business and maintenance. 

In order to promote storm safety, the city is designed with several lakes. In the event of major storms, these lakes help prevent the elevated levels of water from causing as much damage as it otherwise would. These lakes also serve as sources of recreation as well as transportation with people being able to take a boat from one area to another. 

All these features play a role in the environment. A sustainable energy source and promotion of other methods of transportation besides cars are always enticing to hear about. In fact, all the buildings in the area are certified for maintaining a high energy efficiency. These are all great theoretically, but it is important to not forget, the land where all of this is built was unoccupied. All these “great for the environment” features are being built ON the environment. 

This is not to take away from these initiatives. Babcock Ranch itself was built on agricultural land. So it was not entirely natural to begin with, but still it is worth mentioning that now, the environment will not have a chance to recover on its own like it would otherwise. These technologies and features designed to help the environment would be better for the environment if they did not reduce the size of the natural environment.  

If the argument is that humans need to expand, then this is not a bad venture. Babcock Ranch has dedicated to conservation approximately 90% of its initial size including more than half the part retained by the developing company. It will be 100% solar powered, and minimally dependent on cars. As a result, it has completely taken care of the two largest carbon-producing activities of humans, a very impressive feat. Its lakes, along with its overall design, promote exercise and other outdoor activities. It certainly has followed its guiding initiatives of environment, health, education, energy, technology, transportation, storm safety, and fun. 

Now the question is, how can we apply what we have learned from the still young development of Babcock Ranch? Well, let’s consider energy. According to government statistics, Florida is the fourth largest energy consuming state. It uses nearly 8 times the amount of energy it produces. In 2008, Florida burned approximately 29 million tons of coal. In 2018, the number has fallen to 12 million, with natural-gas plants replacing the old coal ones. Also, in 2018, solar energy accounted for more than a third of renewable energy. What if every building in Florida had its own solar panels like Babcock? 

Transportation poses more of a problem. It simply isn’t feasible to re-layout major cities just to promote not traveling by car. Instead, the government and people need to organize a plan for more centralized or other alternatives to transportation. In very recent history, several companies like Boeing have started demoing personal helicopter-like devices for travel. While this sounds like a step in the wrong direction in terms of energy consumption, think about the fact that it won’t require any roads to use. The video here talks about the hope that roads, built in the 1900s, are getting congested enough that people are feeling the need to do something about it. The people in the video also mention that transportation is now the leading cause of carbon emission. But they are optimistic, saying that once one device like theirs can transport humans, many more devices of all different shapes and sizes will start being invented. Henry Ford said, “If I asked the people what they want, they would have said ‘faster horses.” No one knows how this will turn out, but it is something to keep an eye on. 

It is important that our generation does as much as possible to improve our sustainability. A recent study warns that we may very well be reaching a point of no return in environmental change. Sure, they could be wrong, but just think for a second. What if they are not? Building sustainable cities of tomorrow is nice, but we need to apply these practices to our fuel-centric cities of today. Before it is too late.