FIVE THEMES

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#336666" TEXT="#080000" background="062b85a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#EEEEEE" FACE="Arial" ><B>NETWORKS OF POSSIBLE FUTURES</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="NETWORKS OF POSSIBLE FUTURES"><B>home</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="NETWORKS OF POSSIBLE FUTURES"><B>NETWORKS OF POSSIBLE FUTURES</B></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="megatrends_as_a_concept_map.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="NETWORKS OF PREDICTIONS"><B>NETWORKS OF PREDICTIONS</B></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="pivotal_predictions.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="PIVOTAL PREDICTIONS"><B>PIVOTAL PREDICTIONS</B></A><B>   |   </B><B>FIVE THEMES</B><B>   |   </B><A HREF="one_predictions_reach.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="ONE PREDICTIONS REACH"><B>ONE PREDICTION'S REACH</B></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="a_similar_scenario.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A SIMILAR SCENARIO"><B>A SIMILAR SCENARIO</B></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="one_predictions_failure.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="CONSEQUENCES OF A FAILED PREDICTION"><B>CONSEQUENCES OF A FAILED PREDICTION</B></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="an_alternative_future.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="AN ALTERNATIVE FUTURE"><B>AN ALTERNATIVE FUTURE</B></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="betting_on_robustness.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="BETTING ON CONTINUITY"><B>BETTING ON CONTINUITY</B></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="footnotes_and_updates.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FOOTNOTES AND UPDATES"><B>FOOTNOTES AND UPDATES</B></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="references.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="REFERENCES"><B>REFERENCES</B></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="postscript_on_the_water_issu.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="POSTSCRIPT ON THE WATER ISSUE"><B>POSTSCRIPT ON THE WATER ISSUE</B></A><B>   |   </B><A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Florida Futures Survey"><B>Florida Futures Survey</B></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=250 BGCOLOR="#336666" TEXT="#080000" background="063fab83.jpg"> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="07176730.gif" border=0 width="118" height="115" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="NETWORKS OF POSSIBLE FUTURES">NETWORKS OF POSSIBLE FUTURES</A></div> <div> <A HREF="megatrends_as_a_concept_map.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="NETWORKS OF PREDICTIONS">NETWORKS OF PREDICTIONS</A></div> <div> <A HREF="pivotal_predictions.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="PIVOTAL PREDICTIONS">PIVOTAL PREDICTIONS</A></div> <div> <B>FIVE THEMES</B></div> <div> <A HREF="one_predictions_reach.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="ONE PREDICTIONS REACH">ONE PREDICTION'S REACH</A></div> <div> <A HREF="a_similar_scenario.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A SIMILAR SCENARIO">A SIMILAR SCENARIO</A></div> <div> <A HREF="one_predictions_failure.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="CONSEQUENCES OF A FAILED PREDICTION">CONSEQUENCES OF A FAILED PREDICTION</A></div> <div> <A HREF="an_alternative_future.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="AN ALTERNATIVE FUTURE">AN ALTERNATIVE FUTURE</A></div> <div> <A HREF="betting_on_robustness.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="BETTING ON CONTINUITY">BETTING ON CONTINUITY</A></div> <div> <A HREF="footnotes_and_updates.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="FOOTNOTES AND UPDATES">FOOTNOTES AND UPDATES</A></div> <div> <A HREF="references.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="REFERENCES">REFERENCES</A></div> <div> <A HREF="postscript_on_the_water_issu.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="POSTSCRIPT ON THE WATER ISSUE">POSTSCRIPT ON THE WATER ISSUE</A></div> <div> <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Florida Futures Survey">Florida Futures Survey</A></div> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 width="100%" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="06107073.jpg"> <div> <B>FIVE THEMES</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The predictions clustered into five main themes.</B></div> <bR> <div> Clustering occurred in the Megatrends network where a number of predictions were the proximate causes and/or consequences of each other. These cross-linkages joined the predictions together in different combinations to create several chain scenarios that were all thematically related. Each cluster was a tangle of little stories and the theme was what the stories were about. (Frank, 1995; Palla, et al, 2005)</div> <bR> <div> Recurring predictions were points of thematic assembly and around these coalesced five major clusters: the Aging Voter, Tax Gridlock, the Hemispheric Gateway, Rise of Minorities, and Urban Sprawl. </div> <bR> <div> The clusters differed in their patterns of causal flow. In two instances, the pattern was convergent. All the predictions led to one “final” consequence that led nowhere else in the cluster. But in three, the pattern was circular. These clusters contained looping sequences in which a consequence of a prediction fed back to become its own cause. The invasiveness of Urban sprawl, the steady stream of Hispanic immigrants through the Hemispheric Gateway, and the budgetary shortfalls due to Tax Gridlock were all seen to be self-sustaining trends that could be socially, economically and politically disruptive if these cyclical processes should overshoot.</div> <bR> <div> <B><U>The aging voter theme</U></B></div> <div>  </div> <div> Recurring predictions: </div> <bR> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Senior population will begin to explode by 2010. </div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Seniors will demand better eldercare. </div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Elected officials will respond to political pressure from older voters.  </div> <bR> <div> Chain scenario: The senior population will explode after 2010, as boomers begin to retire. Many will move to be near their aging parents, with the result that the very aged will remain in Florida (rather than return home in their final years). Consequently, the aging population will place heavy demands on eldercare services. Florida will then try to contain the budgetary impact of medical care and nursing homes services, causing cash-strapped communities to cut back on services and facilities. Seniors will respond by organizing politically to demand better eldercare services. Florida will eventually respond to pressure from older voters because their activism has made them one of the state's most influential groups.</div> <bR> <div> <B><U>Tax gridlock theme</U></B></div> <bR> <div> Recurring predictions:       </div> <bR> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Budget gap will widen between revenue and public needs. </div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">State and local governments will underfund education, health care and social services.</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Florida's legislature will reexamine the state's tax structure.</div> <bR> <div> Chain scenario:  Infrastructure investment will lag behind growth.  To catch up, Florida will reexamine its tax structure, but tax reform proposals will falter because legislators are unable to agree on a fair distribution of the tax burden. As a result, the budget gap will widen between revenues and public needs, causing the state to underfund education, health care and social services and fall further behind in infrastructure investment. </div> <div> <B>PUBLIC WILL SUPPORT INCREASED SALES TAX TO FUND PUBLIC EDUCATION</B></div> <bR> <div> Most Florida voters will support sales tax increases (or elimination of sales tax exemptions) as the means of financing public education.  A minority will favor spending cuts to make up for reduced property tax revenue.  - Quinnipiac University Poll, in spring of 2008, reported in <I>Tampa Bay Business Journal</I>, 03June08.</div> <bR> <div> <B>PUBLIC WILL RESIST PROPOSALS TO USE PUBLIC FUNDS TO PROVIDE VOUCHERS TO RELIGIOUS AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS.</B></div> <div> There is widespread opposition to the use of public funds for vouchers to religious and private schools, but support for a requirement that schools spend at least 65 percent of their budgets in the classroom. -- - Quinnipiac University Poll, in spring of 2008, reported in <I>Tampa Bay Business Journal</I>, 03June08.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> The network representation of this theme revealed a circular pattern in which the gap between revenues and public needs grows ever wider because the state is unable to agree on an equitable tax formula that raises the necessary funds. This is one of three cycles contained in the network as a whole.</div> <div> The cores of the Tax Gridlock and Aging Voter clusters were clearly differentiated, but the boundary between them was somewhat fuzzy.  Both clusters contained predictions about the budgetary problems the state will confront in trying to meet the demands of the politically powerful seniors for improved health and nursing home care, transportation, and programs to promote aging-in-place. Merging the two clusters created a mega-theme that might be called The Budgetary Politics of Aging. </div> <div> It was not uncommon for a prediction to belong to more than one cluster. The Tax Gridlock cluster, for example, also shared, with the Rise of Minorities, the prediction that the state will neglect “children-at-risk” and, with Urban Sprawl, the prediction that infrastructure investment will lag behind growth.  </div> <bR> <div> <B><U>Hemispheric gateway theme</U></B></div> <div>  </div> <div> Recurring predictions: </div> <bR> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Florida will continue to attract a large number of immigrants. </div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">International trade and commerce will become important to economy.</div> <bR> <div> Chain scenario: Increasing commercial contact with the Americas bolsters South Florida's role as a hemispheric “capitol”, especially in the post-Castro era when trade links between Cuba and Miami multiply.  Strengthening economic and cultural ties brings a continued influx of immigrants, attracted by job opportunities and accelerated by periodic political unrest in the region. The expansion of international commerce reduces the state's reliance on tourism, agriculture, and construction. </div> <bR> <div> Immigration will also be driven by the escalating demand for services by a growing population of the aged and aging.  Hispanics and other new arrivals will easily find work in hospitals, nursing homes, restaurants, construction, landscaping, home health care and domestic service. (Note that <I>Megatrends</I><I> </I>was written before immigration policy surfaced as a highly volatile political issue.)</div> <bR> <div> The Hemispheric gateway theme contained the second of the cyclical patterns found in the network. The expansion of business with the Americas creates jobs and personal contacts that attract more immigrants, creating a growing market for stores and services that cater to Hispanics.  New hiring follows new business formation, boosting still more the number of non-native workers.</div> <bR> <div> The theme shared, with the Aging Voter, the prediction that seniors will depend on immigrants as low-wage service providers; with the Rise of Minorities, the prediction that the growth of Hispanic businesses will create job opportunities for minorities; and, with Urban Sprawl, the prediction that minorities will move into communities vacated by retirees trying to escape congestion.</div> <bR> <div> <B><U>The rise of minorities theme</U></B></div> <bR> <div> Recurring predictions:  </div> <bR> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Whites will lose influence as minorities grow.</div> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Political priorities of whites will conflict with those of minorities.</div> <bR> <div> Chain scenario: Whites will lose political influence with the growth of minority populations, creating social tensions. As the priorities of whites conflict with those of Hispanics, blacks, and other minorities, Florida's elections will become increasingly polarized. The widening racial and ethnic divisions will revive “white power” groups eager to exploit the immigration issue. Hostilities may erupt during cyclical downturns if the state's economy continues to heavily depend for jobs on tourism and construction.  </div> <bR> <div> The Rise of Minorities shared, with the Aging Voter, the prediction that senior activists will be better organized than minorities in lobbying for tax-supported programs; with Hemispheric Gateway, the prediction that immigrants would continue to settle in Florida; and, with Urban Sprawl, the prediction that derelict communities will be plagued by social unrest.</div> <bR> <div> <B><U>Urban sprawl theme</U></B></div> <bR> <div> Recurring prediction:</div> <bR> <div> <IMG BORDER="0" SRC="Symb075c00b700f000003300.png" HEIGHT="16" WIDTH="24" ALIGN="bottom" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Urban sprawl will continue to encroach upon rural and semi-rural areas..</div> <bR> <div> Chain scenario: Developers will push further and further into rural and semi-rural areas in their quest for cheap, available land, abetted by revenue-hungry local governments. New residential projects in relatively low-density areas will attract retail and service businesses along with their employees, who must either commute or find affordable housing nearby. Soon traffic clogs highways lined with strip malls and the cycle of urban sprawl is perpetuated as buyers are lured to new developments even further out on the rural/urban edge. </div> <bR> <div> As those who can afford to move decide to relocate to less crowded areas, they will leave behind communities with a reduced tax base.  As schools decline, services suffer, and infrastructure decays, the quality of life is degraded for those who remain - the poor, the elderly, and the immigrants. </div> <bR> <div> The failure to contain urban sprawl leads to a contagion of blight. It also endangers the environment, raising pollution levels and putting the water supply at risk. The growing scarcity of water pits “wet” areas of the state against “dry” ones. <A HREF="postscript_on_the_water_issu_a__network_of_predictions_about.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="POSTSCRIPT ON THE WATER ISSUE">(Another network, constructed from a relational database of predictions about water policy and politics in Florida, is briefly described in the postscript..)</A></div> <bR> <div> What may someday impede the process is intensifying opposition by a public grown weary of dealing with the many problems created by the lax regulation of development. This cycle, of the three discussed in Megatrends, is the only one in which a potential counterforce was identified.</div> <bR> <div> The network representation of this theme revealed a cycle-within-a-cycle structure. Embedded within the larger cycle of retirees' periodic resettlement was a smaller one that further fed the growth of sprawl:  businesses multiply, both in number and variety, as the local workforce becomes larger and more diverse in its composition. It is a <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >common real estate maxim that retail development follows new housing. </FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>RESTLESS RETIREES' REPEATED RELOCATIONS</B></div> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="081e9cc0.jpg" border=0 width="1001" height="460" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>Comment: </B>Colburn and deHaven-Smith sketched the circular sequence that occurred along the southeast coast of Florida during the 1980s and 1990s as retirees moved successively from Miami Beach to Broward County to Palm Beach County to escape sprawl and congestion. What they left behind with each resettlement was urban blight -- low-income communities without the tax base to support schools and services for those who remained. By 2005, Palm Beach Gardens was the “it” destination (Passy, 2005) as Boca Raton, at the southern end of the county, was overtaken by congestion.  Next in line for new development will be communities still further to the north: Stuart and Port St. Lucie.  As the authors predicted, the cycle continues. (Colburn and deHaven-Smith, 1992, page 112) <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#330000" FACE="Arial" >Constructed using the <A HREF="http://cmap.ihmc.us/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://cmap.ihmc.us/">Cmap Tools Knowledge Modeling Kit, version 4.10</A></FONT></div> <bR> <div> Urban Sprawl shared, with Hemispheric Gateway, the prediction that immigrants will settle in communities abandoned by retirees; with Tax Gridlock, the prediction that the building of critical infrastructure will not keep up with rapid growth; and, with Aging Voters, the prediction that boomers will retire to Florida in huge numbers.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Democrats will seek political advantage among younger Cuban-Americans, but risk loosing an opportunity with Florida's non-Cuban Hispanics.</B></div> <div> Democrats will try to exploit a generational shift among Cuban Americans. The old exile community (the “historicos”) is dying off, even as their children are more open to proposals that would relax travel restrictions.  A survey by the <A HREF="http://lacc.fiu.edu/centers_institutes/?body=centers_cri" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://lacc.fiu.edu/centers_institutes/?">Cuban Research Institute (</A>at Florida International University) in 2007 found that that more than half (55.2%) favored unrestricted” travel to Cuba for all Americans - a reversal from three years earlier, when a majority opposed any easing of travel bans.  An even larger proportion (64%) wanted to be allowed one trip a year (instead of the current three-year limit).  But Cuban Americans most likely to vote continue to favor a more conservative stance. Registered voters opposed loosening travel restrictions by 58 percent.  “If there is a generational shift,” observed Frank Calzon of the Center for a Free Cuba,” it has been greatly overestimated.” </div> <div> <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >Democrat's fixation on Cuban voters in Florida may lead them to neglect opportunities among the growing non-Cuban Hispanics.  Cubans now make up only about 45% of the state's Hispanic registered voters, down from 75% eight years ago.  More than half the electorate is not Cuban and the people who would benefit from a change in travel and trade policy, argues pollster Sergio Bendixen, are a very small slice of the Cuban electorate.  “It's a mistaken strategy” he believes to overlook issues more relevant to non-Cuban Hispanics. --</FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><I>New York Times</I>: Democrats see Cuba travel limits as a campaign issue in Florida (Damien Cave), 01Jun08</div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>