The politics of landscape production in the history of development along Florida’s Atlantic coast

The politics of landscape production involve questions about the power to define what landscape means, who or what belongs to landscape and who or what belongs in landscape. Asserting the right to participate in landscape production and thus to help steer landscape along desirable development pathways remains a core component of landscape politics and grows in importance as many societies experience widespread citizen withdrawal from engagement in political processes. In this article, I review the history of landscape production in Florida, USA, to reveal the interrelated consequences of adjustments in political economy, administration, land use and spatial representations for future landscape development. In particular, my analysis of the strategic contestation of undesirable development in the production of the local landscape in a small coastal community highlights the increasing need to engage strategically in the politics of landscape production in the pursuit of socially and environmentally desirable landscapes the world over.