Can you build an entire town off-the-grid? Babcock Ranch wants to find out
Enlarge / Babcock Ranch doesn't want to be any other developer-driven southwest Florida today. (credit: Dyllan Furness)
BABCOCK RANCH, Florida-About a decade ago, NFL lineman-turned-real estate developer Syd Kitson began to have a vision. Fiber-optic Internet fed into every home. Self-driving cars ferried kids back-and-forth from school. A great blue sea of solar panels stretched to a horizon line of pines, soaked up rays in the Sunshine State.
Kitson wanted to turn the abandoned land he saw around him in Southwest Florida into a sort of future town, a place running entirely on the latest and greatest in energy-efficient technology. So in 2006, Kitson purchased 91,000 acres of mostly undeveloped agricultural land just 15 miles northeast of Fort Myers. He named the development Babcock Ranch, honoring the family who sold it to him.
There's never been a shortage of real estate developers wanting to capitalize on Florida, of course. Yet Kitson promised his town would be different, better because it would be as sustainable as possible. When media outlets (ABC, CBS) eventually saw it, they dubbed Babcock Ranch America's "first solar-powered town."
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