(though our densest urban areas are in Miami-Dade County, not Broward)\

I was kind of surprised when the math showed M-D as less dense than Broward. My guess is that M-D has a bit of a bi-polar distribution, much like the ones I pointed out in CA and NY. And taking the time to look at a map, it appears that M-D includes a chunk of the Everglades, which has almost no one in it. That's a bit like LA county, with the dense city of LA, then a bunch of lightly populated outskirts in the mountains.

But then again, Broward also includes a chunk of the Everglades. If it was that important to my argument, I'd re-check my data sources.

So the prediction that Florida will start to have qualitatively different issues as our congestion approaches that of California or New York is just mistaken.

...

you can just keep population densities low and sprawl into areas where space is available.

OK. But is FL really doing that? Is there really space available?

You've got a pretty dense area on the southeast coast, from Miami through Palm beach. There's another pretty dense area across the peninsula from Fort Meyers thru Tampa/St. Pete. And once you're north of Lake Okeechobee, everything that isn't a designated wilderness area (State Park, National Park/Monument, etc.) has people in it. The population can't grow further without increasing density - whether making the existing dense cities denser, or the semi-rural areas less rural and more suburban.

--Peter