In the beginning, there was the beach, and the people saw that it was good. Then the people said, \u201cLet there be houses, too.\u201d And the people saw that the houses were good.<\/p>\n
Then the beach started to erode, and the people said, \u201cWait, this isn\u2019t good.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the people called in the dump trucks, which brought tonne after tonne of sand to rebuild the beach. And the people said, \u201cWow, this is good again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should build more houses. And let them be even bigger than the last.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then the sea started to rise.<\/p>\n
This is the origin story of modern-day Florida, where the landscapes most susceptible to drowning and destruction are also the targets of both rampant development and beach nourishment\u2014the process of shoring up eroding coastal landscapes with sand.<\/p>\n
As new research shows, efforts to restore and protect the state\u2019s eroding beaches have coincided with an increase in the number and sizes of nearby houses<\/a> on those same beaches\u2014all of which are now increasingly vulnerable to the forces that made the beaches need protection in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a positive feedback loop,\u201d says Scott B. Armstrong, an environmental dynamics doctoral candidate at the University of Southampton. \u201cThe more you invest in nourishment of beaches, the more you invest in houses, and vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\n Eli Lazarus<\/a>, also with the University of Southampton, puts it a little bit differently: \u201cIt\u2019s a chicken-and-egg question,\u201d he says. \u201cWhich part is driving the other?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s no secret that houses in America are getting bigger. Recent research by the Pew Charitable Trusts reveals that the average home has grown nearly 30 percent since 1970<\/a>. Armstrong, Lazarus, and their colleagues took that a little bit further, combining Florida state tax records to see how house sizes correlate with beach nourishment.<\/p>\n Though they expected to see larger properties near nourished beaches, the scale of their results surprised them, Lazarus says. In nourished zones on the Gulf coast, there are two times as many single-family houses on beachfront property than in non-nourished zones. On the Atlantic coast, that rises to three times as many houses.<\/p>\n The houses in these nourished zones are also significantly larger. The largest homes are nearly double the size.<\/p>\n \u201cThe size of the beach, the width of the beach, and how attractive it looks make all the difference to those front-row houses,\u201d Armstrong says.<\/p>\n