Miami ? Eight decades ago, this state was the site of the first great modern retirement real estate boom — followed swiftly by the first great modern real estate bust. Five years ago, it was the venue for the most contentious presidential election struggle in more than a century. This spring, Pinellas Park has been the focus of a drama over the fate of a brain-damaged woman who became an international symbol.

Florida is dripping with the imprints of the past — the voyages of Ponce de Leon, the first explorer for the source of sunny youth; the daring vision of Henry Flagler, who established the railway from Jacksonville to Key West and thus tied Florida together; the astronaut dreamers of Cape Canaveral, who in the silver suits of Project Mercury reached into the heavens and into humankind’s oldest yearnings.

But this spring, with attention riveted on the hospice where Terri Schiavo slipped toward death, Florida may have symbolically replaced California as an important cultural indicator. It may be that Florida, rather than California, is the place where the future is best viewed.

Nation will face same trends

For this is now a state where many of the social, political, economic and cultural trends that soon will reshape the country are arriving first. It is the sandbar on which the waves of the future crash.

There is no small amount of irony in this. Only two generations ago, Florida was a sleepy rural outpost, home mostly to orange groves and cattle herds and a special brand of sun-bleached, tobacco-stained drifter. Transformed by air travel and air conditioning, Florida swiftly became America’s America, the place people went from somewhere else. By the end of the 20th century, its lure was international, so much so that now, according to the Census Bureau, 36 percent of Florida’s growth can be attributed to immigration from abroad.

In the early 21st century, Florida has become a colorful mix of people and peoples who are wading warily into the future. Which is why it may be no coincidence that the Schiavo tragedy, a modern composite of the most incendiary health, religious, political and family issues, was played out here.

Trends in medical technology and in religious politics — two growth industries in the nation but especially in Florida — converged this spring on Pinellas Park. The result was a cultural clash unlike any America ever has seen, but surely one that, with heightened passions and instant electronic news, will be replicated elsewhere before long.

Florida was, in the memory of a majority of Americans, a place where nothing much happened at all, which was one of the main sources of its appeal. It was a getaway with stunning beaches, flamboyant buffet tables and a climate whose main attraction was that in winter it didn’t look at all like Boston, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago or Philadelphia. It was someplace else, but it was also nowhere.

Economy diversified

Then, as an affluent society became an aging society, the place became overrun with opulent hotels and trailer parks alike, followed by the real estate rondo of the condo. But Florida wasn’t destined to be only a retirement haven. Both the cause and the beneficiary of the turn from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, Florida’s economy diversified — and so did its outlook.

Eventually the state became an engine of growth of its own, nearly tripling in population since 1970. Leaping past Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Pennsylvania, it became the nation’s fourth-largest state; by the next census it almost certainly will surpass New York and rank third. In the last four years, Orange County has grown 13.1 percent; overall it went from a population of 470,000 in 1980 to well over a million. The fastest rate of homebuilding in the history of the state of Florida is occurring right this instant; housing starts increased 19.7 percent last year, and the rate this year is already higher than that.

All of this growth is causing churn in communities and, more important, in the very nature of community in Florida. Florida is becoming more like the nation even as the nation is becoming more like Florida, an inevitable result when 89.5 percent of the state’s growth is due to migration, not births and deaths.

A quarter-century ago, the Democrats outnumbered Republicans in Florida by more than 2-to-1. (The governor was Bob Graham, a Democrat, and the two senators in Washington were Lawton Chiles and Richard Stone, both Democrats.) Today the Democratic advantage has dropped from 36 percentage points to only 4 percentage points. (The governor, Jeb Bush, is a Republican, and one of the senators, Mel Martinez, is a Republican. Martinez was one of the principal figures in the Capitol Hill battle over the Schiavo case.) One statistic shows the change in the political dynamic: Since 1980, the Democrats have added 810,694 voters to Florida’s rolls, which ordinarily would be a remarkable achievement. But the Republicans have added more than 2.1 million in the same period.

Growth brings change

This is a different place than it was; any state that grows by about 800 people a day almost has to be. But in some ways, Florida is the place the rest of the country is becoming. The overtime election in 2000 and the Schiavo dispute are huge landmarks in the nation’s history. The overtime election stands as a symbol of national political contention; the Schiavo case stands as a symbol of the national clash of values.

But in some ways it is the smaller landmarks that are more telling, their effect more enduring. Consider this one: In only five years, for the first time ever, there will be more Floridians between the ages 45 and 64 than between the ages 25 and 44. And the percentage of Floridians who will be in the prime labor-force group (those between the ages of 25 and 59) will be only about 45 percent. In Florida, the future is now.

— David Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.