The Promise of Paradise: FANBY - The phenomenon of people seeking geographic areas that are associated with high quality of life (e.g., natural amenities, less pollution, less congestion and sprawl).

Perhaps one of the most important pieces of literature to address FANBY-ism and environmental impact is the publication, “The Promise of Paradise: Recreational and Retirement Communities in the United States since 1950” (Stroud, 1995).

 

This book provides, from a geographical perspective, information about the location and size of large recreational retirement communities and their environmental and economic impacts, beginning with the 1950s. As Stroud (1995) notes in his introduction, “The impact of recreational land development can be both positive and negative. Positive features include putting to use land that might otherwise be only marginally productive, thereby boosting rural economies by generating new tax revenues and consumer sales, stimulating the housing construction industry and providing recreational opportunities.

 

These benefits must be weighed against the serious problems amenity seeking populations bring as they move into rural areas, including the reduction of land resources, the environmental devastation of ecologically fragile land and the overtaxing of local public services.”

 

The dilemma in this evolutionary process is that the Arcadian site is then transformed into a living space that becomes reminiscent of the site-of-origin that the migrants left behind. Thus, there is the potential for the FANBY process to begin again.