Florida has experienced strong growth in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Tampa Bay area in particular saw among the country’s highest population growth in 2021 and 2022, according to the latest US Census Bureau data. Tampa mayor Jane Castor discusses the city’s growth spurt with fDi Intelligence and her current priorities.  

Q: What is driving Tampa’s recent growth? 

A: During the pandemic, individuals have had time to reflect on their lifestyle and life choice. We have seen a huge influx of both businesses and residents as we can offer a good quality of life and we are relatively inexpensive compared to other options on the east or west coast. So it’s been an incredible time of growth. Today, we’re one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation — statistically, about 125 people are moving to Tampa every day.

Q: Against this backdrop, what are your priorities as mayor? 

A: We’re looking at the transportation system. We’re looking at housing to ensure that we have the supply, and that that supply is fit to meet the demand and it’s affordable. We are looking at workforce development for all types of jobs to ensure that we have a very diverse workforce for the economic portfolio that we have built. And so really focusing on those areas and then the overarching quality of life, making sure we remain one of the safest cities in the nation.

Q: What are you doing for transportation, specifically? 

A: We don’t have any mass transit — as we say, mass transit in the south is more than two people in an SUV. We are so far behind that we may be in a position to leapfrog. Building more roadways — more interstates — is not the answer for the future.

In our community, alternate modes of transit — bicycles, scooters, those types of things — are what the young people moving to our city are interested in. So, we have to make sure that they have safe transit opportunities with segregated bike lanes, making sure that we have connected pathways between buildings and between neighbourhoods, which take people off of the roads. 

Q: Are you looking into reshoring manufacturers? 

A: It takes a lot of space to accommodate things like semiconductor manufacturers, as well as a lot of water. That particular industry is looking more at depressed markets and states.

In Tampa, we are looking at the kind of manufacturing that we can bring into opportunity zones that are close to our port and our interstates roads, and bring that manufacturing back to the city. At the same time, we are working with the University of South Florida to have a school of manufacturing there as well.

We have a very diverse economic portfolio. We have a focus on tourism and manufacturing, but we are also looking at things like cyber security, fintech and life sciences. That is something that made us very resilient through the pandemic. 

Q: You emphasised water availability. Can you elaborate on that? 

Water is the most pressing precious resource worldwide. In our city, we pull 81 million gallons of water out of the Hillsborough river every day to provide the city and a third of the county with freshwater. On the other end of it, we treat wastewater to just below drinking water standards and expel it out into our bay.

Every day we basically throw away 50 million gallons of water. We have a plan to treat that wastewater to drinking water standards, but that’s turning into a political hot potato. Any solution takes at least 10 years to put into effect and we can’t wait until we become like Arizona before we start looking for some solutions. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

This article first appeared in the June/July 2023 print edition of fDi Intelligence