Cape Coral, Florida - Boomtown That Shouldn’t Exist

Swamp Peddlers Selling the Dream of a Waterfront Wonderland

This year the studio investigated an obscure city in southwest Florida that was founded by two brothers in 1957 as a planned community. Originally marketed as a “Waterfront Wonderland” to future northern retirees, Cape Coral was created by dredging and filling an existing mangrove swamp into over 400 miles of man-made canals. Such a massive transformation of the land and waterscapes not only eliminated a natural hurricane barrier, but also caused ecological devastation and a lack of biodiversity.

Making matters worse, the city of 120 square miles (310 km2) was laid out with the intention to maximize residential lots. Little consideration for commercial areas or pedestrian walkways left the largely elderly populace dependent on vehicles in order to move around the sprawling city.

Cape Coral, thus could be defined in multiple ways as a non-place based on the theoretical propositions of Marc Augé. Our investigations, therefore, questioned if it were possible to shift the perceptions of a city dominated by sprawl and the automobile into a place or a series of places through non-conventional modes of enquiry.

Conventional design approaches which produced obvious solutions were not considered valid vehicles of questioning. The fundamental challenge of the intellectual explorations of the studio, therefore, was to seek more obscure ways in which designing for the present and (a hypothetical) future simultaneously. With Hurricane Ian hitting landfall just a few miles away in September 2022, the students were confronted from the start to think about climate change in very immediate terms. With hurricanes increasing in strength and frequency, students were asked to speculate how their proposals would survive the treats of torrential rain, high force winds and storm surge into the distant future.

To meet such a challenge whilst avoiding preconceived tendencies of place making, the students were obliged to demonstrate a willingness to step outside his/her comfort zone – to be displaced. Theoretical, historical, political, and socio-economical readings from a broad spectrum of intellectual positions were orchestrated in order to implement a strategy of displacement as the means of enquiry.