Crude, Coppertone®, and the coast: Developmental channelization and constraint of alternative development opportunities

Southern Louisiana and southern Florida are characterized by the two most extensive coastal wetlands in the continental United States. These immense, seemingly hostile, and similar environments have experienced two very different directions of regional development. Louisiana developed much earlier, focusing initially on the extraction of renewable resources from the coastal marsh. Later, by the 1920s, the discovery of oil and gas led to the rapid development of an offshore, nonrenewable extractive system that is literally unparalleled on the planet. In contrast, at the time of early settlement, southern Florida had fewer recognized renewable or nonrenewable resources; its development began later, centered around amenity use rather than consumptive use of resources. In spite of potentially massive economic benefits, Florida has bitterly fought recent attempts at offshore oil or gas exploitation, and coastal tourism in Louisiana seems as unlikely as offshore development in Florida. At the same time, however, there are significant challenges to the continued vitality of both the oilbased economy of southern Louisiana and the tourism‐based economy of southern Florida. The two contrasting cases provide examples of developmental channelization. On the one hand, once an area or region takes a given developmental direction, both the process of specialization in a given primary activity and the investment of human and economic capital in the capture of linkages tied to that primary activity can set in motion a process that may effectively preclude other developmental options. On the other hand, a given course of development can also be pursued so intensively as to bring about its demise.