Babcock Ranch, the first 100% green city in the United States
I've heard of a new 100% green city in the United States, it's great that such places are created by man.
The media craze around Babcock Ranch attracted more than 15,000 visitors during the month of March 2017, to discover this pioneering ecological vision in America.
The visitors, who discovered the notion of green energy applied to a city at Babcock Ranch, were thrilled to see how things are going. The first house was sold for $ 460,000, twice the average selling price in the region. The owners of this two-bedroom lakefront home moved in May 2017. More modestly priced homes, between $ 180,000 and $ 220,000, will be built in the coming years to attract buyers.
Babcock Ranch was invented and built by a former American football player, Syd Kitson, 57, who played in the lucrative American Football League (NFL) for five seasons before becoming a real estate developer. He made a fortune and is an ecologist. He launched in Florida the construction of the first American city powered solely by solar energy.
Ten years after acquiring the land, the construction of the city continues but it is almost complete. It is the first green city in the country, a city able to accommodate 50,000 people in 20 years. The first residents have already moved in.
Its mission is to create a new city and to prove that reasonable growth and environmental protection can go hand in hand.
Rather than building yet another residential area or a subdivision far from the city center, he decided to build an ecological city from A to Z, with all the comforts necessary for modern life.
His project includes a public school, a neighborhood with shops and restaurants, hiking trails and lakes for water sports.
The inhabitants of "Babcock Ranch" should be able to order with their smartphones a car without a driver to move.
The apartments and houses are designed for occupants of all ages, priced from $ 200,000 to $ 800,000.
The first phase of construction, with 1,100 housing units, was completed in 2017.
The city should be equipped with the latest green technologies and certified sustainable by the Green Building Coalition of Florida.
Obstacles
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The course was riddled with obstacles. Starting with the global financial crisis of 2007, which broke out just after the purchase of the land. Construction is a time that has remained at a standstill.
Residents also reported that the project was going to damage the environment and affect their rural way of life. Some have threatened to launch a lawsuit to try to block the sale of the land by its owners since 1914, the Babcock.
Mr. Kitson managed to extinguish the opposition by buying the nearly 370 square kilometers owned by the Babcock Florida family company before selling the vast majority to the state of Florida to create a nature reserve.
He paid about $ 700 million to the Babcock family and then recovered some $ 350 million from the sale of land to the state.
And there were also doubts about the possibility of producing solar energy at an affordable price. Indeed, a city powered by electricity from the Sun, it had never been done before, said the CEO of the electricity company Florida Power and Light.
When he first met the property developer nine years ago, he warned him about the high cost of solar energy.
The developer eventually gave 179 hectares to Florida Power and Light for the construction of a solar farm.
If the presentation documents of the project evoke the first city in the world walking with electricity entirely solar, the energy produced by the solar installation will not directly feed the new eco-village but will be injected into the network of the company. Florida Power and Light.
Mobility and education
When it comes to public transport, the EasyMile self-powered electric shuttle, which can carry up to 12 people, is tested. The shuttle travels only in portions of 800 meters and less than 16 km / h. If someone passes by, she stops automatically.
In a country where the car is queen, Babcock Ranch now offers about ten kilometers of hiking trails out of the 80 planned in the long term. Irrigated water in the region's crops will be recycled. On the other hand, no golf course on the program. This emblem of Florida may nevertheless be considered if golfers come to live in the city. Proof of the craze for the city, the public school, which will go from primary to college, is already full.