“Jacksonville as a Port Economy: The Socio-Economic Costs and Benefits of an Urban Growth Strategy”, David Jaffee, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Project Overview
The economic future of Jacksonville has been closely linked to the expansion of the Jacksonville Port Authority (JAXPORT) and the addition of two new container terminals (Mitsui and Hanjin) at Dames Point. Jacksonville is now marketing itself as “America’s Logistics Center”. This community-based research project will examine the social and economic impact, and potential costs and benefits, of a port economy as a growth strategy for Jacksonville and the Northeast Florida region.
Project Description
Jaxport, and the associated logistics industry, has been identified as the single most significant source of economic dynamism for Jacksonville and the Northeast Florida region. Like former Mayor John Peyton before him, current Mayor Alvin Brown has committed city resources to Jaxport and recently described the port as “the economic engine” of the area’s economy. Governor Rick Scott has also included Florida’s ports, and international trade, as a major component of the state’s economic development strategy.
In spite of the attention directed to the port as a source of economic expansion for Jacksonville, most residents have little knowledge of what is involved in a local economy revolving around a container shipping port, the logistics industries, and the movement of goods. Almost all public information about the port is produced and disseminated by Jaxport, local businesses and boosters that will benefit directly from the expansion of the port, and local officials who view the port as a growth machine for Jacksonville. A critical, academic, and objective analysis of the port economy -- the costs and benefits, and the inevitable tradeoffs entailed in pursuing one growth strategy rather than another -- is largely absent. The Ports Project at UNF was initiated in 2008 to address this gap in information and public knowledge about the social and economic aspects of a regional port economy. Several pieces of research were completed on different aspects of the Jaxport enterprise, and the port economy, by several students and David Jaffee.
It is now time to ramp up the Ports Project as a community-based research project that can bring together students (and ideally faculty) from different academic departments and colleges – a truly multi- and interdisciplinary enterprise – to conduct research on a range of broad research questions about the social and economic impact of the port. What is critical is to have students not only conduct the research on the local port economy -- informed by the existing literature and lessons learned from ports across the nation and globe -- but also articulate constructive policy implications and recommendations.
The proposed research plan will involve the recruitment of one or two interested students from academic programs that include sociology, economics, political science/public administration, civil engineering, biology, public health, and transportation/logistics. Rather than accept a course release (I am already awarded one course release in my role as Faculty-Student Contact in Sociology), I will organize a credit-bearing seminar-style course for these students that will operate as a learning “community of practice” in which students not only share and apply their respective disciplinary knowledge, but also work together to discover the broad implications of an expanding port economy for Jacksonville. Each student will conduct research that pertains to their area of academic interest. In the course of the research, students will contact and work with community organizations, agencies, and groups that have can contribute to and have an interest in their line of inquiry.
The research questions addressed will fall into the following broad areas:
Jaxport and the Labor Market Impact. Jaxport is expected to have a significant impact on the larger Jacksonville and regional economy. Various estimates have been presented with regard to the number of jobs that will be created as a result of the port expansion. An important area of research should consider the labor market impact of Jaxport in terms of not only the quantity of jobs, and the accuracy of estimates, but also their location, the quality of employment, compensation levels, union representation, job security, benefits, and contributions to the larger quality of life in the region (sociology, economics).
Jaxport and the Urban Infrastructure/Urban Planning. One of the most significant challenges facing Jaxport will be having in place the necessary infrastructure to move containers through the port and on to final destinations. This will require major physical improvements and/or expansions in maritime waterways and highway and rail infrastructure (civil/coastal engineering). How will these be developed? Where will they be located? How will they be financed? Who will be impacted? Such questions involve city and urban planners in developing acceptable land use and urban transportation systems (political science, public administration).
Environmental Impact of the Port Economy. Like all forms of economic activity, the port economy will impact the natural environment in significant ways. The expansion of Jaxport will impact water, land, and air quality. Water and marine species will be impacted by the increasing container ship traffic and the plan to deepen the St. Johns River to accommodate the larger post-Panamax ocean carriers (coastal biology). Land will be impacted with the construction of the container terminals and the building of physical infrastructure to move cargo from the port to the hinterlands (transportation and logistics, civil engineering). Air quality will be impacted by diesel fuel-burning ships, trucks, trains, and cargo-handling equipment (public health). Research in this area is designed to raise awareness and inform policies that will prevent and mitigate the negative externalities of port expansion.
As an economic sociologist, Jaxport -- the port economy and the labor and industrial dynamics of intermodal logistics -- has been a recently-developed focus for my scholarly activity. When UNF launched the Community-Based Transformational Learning initiative, I identified Jaxport as a research venue with community implications. Since that time I have published one referred article on the topic, presented papers at three separate conferences, and conducted several “research briefs” (see at http://www.unf.edu/coas/cci/ports/). What may seem like a rather narrow and esoteric research topic – Jaxport – actually has broader implications pertaining to globalization, ports as local nodes in this global production/distribution system, the transformation of the United States economy from goods-producing to goods-moving, and urban/regional economic development strategies. Thus, the research topic is of significant interest across a wide range of academic disciplines.
The work of the student research team will make a major contribution to the larger project in gathering data and perspectives from multiple community stakeholders and organizations. Consistent with UNFs mission, the research will have an applied component involving recommendations for the Jacksonville economy based on the data collected and best practices at other ports nationally and globally. The longer-term research plan is to develop several additional journal publications (potentially co-authored with participating students) as well as a full-length research monograph on this topic.