World’s First Solar City?

  • An artists rendering of the solar cells on Babcock Ranch in southern Florida (photo courtesy of Babcock Ranch)

A former NFL player wants to build the world’s first 100-percent solar-powered city. He’s billing it as the world’s most sustainable city too. Rebecca Williams visited the planned site of the new city to find out how green real estate can get:

Transcript

A former NFL player wants to build the world’s first 100-percent solar-powered city. He’s billing it as the world’s most sustainable city too. Rebecca Williams visited the planned site of the new city to find out how green real estate can get:

Syd Kitson used to be Number 64… an offensive lineman for the Green Bay Packers. Now… he’s a developer… with a even bigger dream for fame.

He bought a 90-thousand acre ranch in Southwest Florida… called Babcock Ranch. He sold more than three-quarters of it back to the state as a nature preserve. The rest will become a city of 45-thousand people.

(video clip)

“It’s a place where business, education, technology, energy, transportation, and safety all merge into an exceptionally livable, environmentally sensitive community.”

It might sound like he’s packing a lot in… but the plans don’t end there. The video tour shows you a glittering utopia. Little animated people glide by on sailboats and Segway scooters. You’d get to work in your electric car, and plug it in while you’re at work. You’d be harvesting rainwater. You’d go camping on the nature preserve. And pretty much everything would run on the sun.

Syd Kitson says what’ll make the city even greener… is that it’ll meet all of your needs.

“The whole idea of Babcock Ranch is that you don’t leave. That you have everything you need in Babcock Ranch. That’s not to say people aren’t going to go to Disney World or the beach but for daily needs, go to work, shopping, normally have to get in their car and drive an hour, or 20 minutes – they can do that right there in their hometown.”

Kitson’s proud to say he’s won over a lot of local environmental groups. But his city of the future has its skeptics.

The Florida Sierra Club sued to stop the sale of the land. Kitson and Partners ended up settling the lawsuit… and the deal went forward.

Frank Jackalone is with the Sierra Club. He says he does like the plans for solar power… and the city looks pretty well-planned out. But he says once development starts it usually doesn’t stop.

“Even the best planned community could be swallowed up by a sea of urban sprawl… of roads, of shopping malls, of poorly planned development that surrounds it that creates the very nightmare that environmentalists fear the most.”

Jackalone says it’d be better to invest in older cities and retrofit for solar power. He says it’d be better to keep the land intact for Florida wildlife – like bears and panthers.

Syd Kitson says he does respect that point of view.

“And we hope at end of the day they’ll look at it and say you know we would’ve loved to have it all preserved but they did a great job here.”

The solar city is supposed to get underway within the next couple years.

But reality is blocking the dream. Right now… Babcock Ranch is still just a ranch with grazing cows and watermelon fields. The huge 75-megawatt solar plant that would power the city hasn’t been built yet. The Florida legislature still has to approve it.

And of course… there’s the little issue of the recession. The solar city’s planned in a county with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation.

Kitson says these are just temporary hurdles.

“It’ll take time but we think eventually the housing market will come back and this’ll be a place we think people will look first to live.”

In fact… he thinks all developers are going to have to build in a greener way.

“I think if any developer, any builders who aren’t thinking about doing it in an environmentally responsible way are really going to miss the boat on what’ll be happening when we come out of this recession.”

But as Kitson himself has found… even the world’s most sustainable city is still a city. There will always be opposition from someone who thinks the greenest kind of city is rebuilding our old cities.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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