Lee County: sprawl capital of the U.S.

Here's more ammunition for the anti-growth crowd.

The Cape Coral-Fort Myers metropolitan area had the largest increase in the share of jobs located more than 10 miles outside downtown from 2007 to 2010, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution.

Brookings' recently published report on the phenomenon of job sprawl says that's a bad thing. It uses all sorts of buzzwords about “sustainable” and “inclusive” urban-core growth that largely ignores the realities of suburban life in Florida. For starters, tiny downtown Fort Myers couldn't even begin to handle the region's 214,000-strong labor force.

Granted, the think tank looked at every metro area of the country to identify broad demographic shifts. It wasn't designed as a sophisticated analysis of the Fort Myers area.

But you can bet that government bureaucrats and environmentalists in Lee County are going to wave the report in their quest to halt the construction recovery. The building industry should be prepared to counter those arguments.