Turner & MurrayMa aging Growth in a Climate of Urban Diversity Managing Growth in a Climate of Urban Diversity South Florida’s Eastward Ho! Initiative

Miami and all of South Florida is characterized by increasing population diversity.The arrival of Cuban refugees in the 1960s created a foundation for Miami to become the gateway to Latin America. Lucrative trading, banking, and investment opportunities have added to Miami’s lure as a favorite destination for Central and South Americans as well as Caribbean island émigrés. The resident Anglo-American (non-Hispanic white) and African American populations are not always enthusiastic about the changing makeup of the region’s population. They cope with images of raf-ters, “cocaine cowboys, ” migrant farm workers, and boat refugees who do not speak English or need it in an increasingly non-English marketplace. Such cultural and social tensions are strained by the spatial confines unique to the South Florida geography that comprises the three-county metropolitan area that includes the cities of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach. The population of 5 million people is hemmed in by the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Everglades environmental sanctuary on the west. The heavy pace of population growth continues to force the transformation of agricul-tural and natural environs into developable land. Figure 1 shows the location of Miami-Dade,1 Broward, and Palm Beach counties in the southeastern-most part of th