JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As Jacksonville grows, the big question isn’t simply how many people move here—it’s what kind of city they arrive to. Victor Dover, a nationally known town planner and urban designer and the keynote speaker at Scenic Jacksonville’s Sixth Annual Great Cities Symposium on Feb. 5, says the communities that win the next era of economic competition will be the ones that deliver a great day-to-day experience.
Dover’s message is straightforward: when a city recruits a company, it’s also recruiting that company’s employees and leaders. Places that feel good to live in—walkable streets, inviting public spaces, and mixed-use neighborhoods—gain a real edge in attracting talent.
He believes Jacksonville has a unique opportunity because it contains “all of it”: areas where growth is expanding at the edge, corridors of aging retail that need “retrofitting,” standout historic neighborhoods like Riverside that show what human-scale design can become over time, and a downtown core with meaningful progress and “untapped potential.”
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If there’s one lever Dover would pull first, it’s not a new mega-project. It’s street design.
Streets, he argues, are among the hardest civic features to change once they’re built—and among the most frequently designed with the wrong priorities. When streets are engineered almost exclusively for free-flowing traffic, cities can sacrifice safety, beauty, and the kinds of “addresses” people and businesses are proud to be on. The alternative is a street network that supports shorter trips, more choices, and stronger neighborhoods.
That street-by-street approach also connects to a challenge Jacksonville shares with many fast-growing metros: housing affordability. Dover points to “gentle density”—townhomes, small multifamily buildings, and accessory units—as a way to add housing without turning neighborhoods into high-rise districts. He notes that Jacksonville already has historic examples of these building types blending into traditional streets.
For Dover, the most powerful “North Star” may be deceptively simple in a hot Florida city: plant street trees. A healthy canopy brings shade, comfort, and value—and, he says, it’s often the first item cut from budgets.
Dover will expand on these themes during Scenic Jacksonville’s Great Cities Symposium, scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 5, at the Garden Club of Jacksonville.