USA Sprawl Festival continued: Tampa

James Bond Agent 007 · #1 Posted **Dec 12, 2006, 7:36 AM**

You know the routine . . .

Link to the first thread in this series.
USA Sprawl Festival

Or, click on the following links to see just individual cities in that thread:

Kansas City
Some northern Denver suburbs
Albuquerque
Seattle
Las Vegas
Dallas-Fort Worth
Some western & southern Minneapolis suburbs
Orange County, California
Philadelphia
Tucson
Orlando
Northern Virginia/DC
Cleveland
Houston
Atlanta
Indianapolis
Long Island, New York
Jacksonville
Boston

And the 2nd round ones:

Phoenix-East
Phoenix-South
Phoenix-North
Phoenix-West
Portland
Silicon Valley
Los Angeles
San Bernardino County
San Diego - south
San Diego - north
Buffalo
Broward County, Florida
Dallas-Fort Worth II
Riverside County, California
Denver - south suburbs
Orange County II
Bergen and Passaic Counties, New Jersey
Milwaukee
Columbus
El Paso, with some Juarez
San Antonio
Detroit

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TAMPA, FLORIDA

Windows Live Local had real good coverage of Tampa and Hillsborough County and there was a lot of really good material there so I got a lot of pics for this thread. However there was almost no coverage of Pinellas County so there's no St Peterburg in this set.

Not so sprawly. Looks like a neotraditional development.

Gotta include a mall.

Semi-rural sprawl quite a ways north of the city.

Truely ugly.

Fading mobile home park.

Some nice apartments.

Hideous. And ubiquitous.

Older stuff on the left, newer stuff on the right.

I'm beginning to like the look of all these covered swimming pools from the air.

This looks a lot like some of that southern California stuff, except maybe the roofs tend to be "flatter."

Close-up of some houses in the same development.

Houses, apartments, a mini-storage place, and a baseball diamond. It's got everything a real American needs!

Some people don't need to go far for their shopping.
Has anyone besides me ever noticed that parking in the back of shopping centers like this is almost *always* under-utilized?

More nice apartments.

Life is good!

Close-up of new houses being built.

Close-up of some more nice apartments.

Meeting your fast food needs.

Lots of land set aside for wetlands, ponds and greenbelts.

Houses, park and school. How homely.

I wonder if there's any alligators living in that pond.

Some older apartments.

Close-up of older neighborhood with lots of big trees.

Close-up of new neighborhood without any trees at all. Except for some newly planted baby ones.

I wonder what lives here?

Here's where they store stuff before it gets to the store. Job security for truck drivers.

New at the top, old at the bottom.

More hideousness.

Money shot of downtown Tampa, just for the heck of it.

A poor inner-city neighborhood. Looks like they've built some new stuff at the top, at least. Not really sprawl, just for the heck of it.

A well-to-do inner city neighborhood. Again, not so sprawly, just for comparison to the other stuff.

Looks like a middle-class or working-class inner-city neighborhood. Not too sprawly.

Some ageing sprawl.

People gotta work somewhere.

More ageing sprawl.

New stuff next to the woods. Beware of alligators!

Fore!

It's round!

A new subdivision about to be built.

Ageing business park.

Nice.

A pretty chaotic jumble of stuff east of the airport. Not really sprawl but it looked interesting in its own way.

vertex · #2 Posted **Dec 12, 2006, 8:47 AM**

Wow, all of those covered pools, the mesquito problem must be tremendous.

James Bond Agent 007 · #3 Posted **Dec 12, 2006, 8:58 AM**

^
Not to mention the alligator problem. If you've got your swimming pool enclosed the alligators can't get in.

James Bond Agent 007 · #4 Posted **Dec 12, 2006, 9:01 AM**

Such problems!

Lakelander · #5 Posted **Dec 16, 2006, 4:01 PM**

Interesting, I recognized may areas in the pics. Btw, yes, if there's a body of water, there's a pretty good chance you'll find at least one gator in it.

bobdreamz · #6 Posted **Dec 16, 2006, 5:00 PM**

interesting pics Bond...most of sprawl in central Florida looks the same and those hideous commercial strips with fast food joints,gas stations and commercial strip malls seem to infest all of the Orlando metro as well...they looked the same too me.

UncleRando · #7 Posted **Dec 16, 2006, 5:04 PM**

*vomits*

crisp444 · #8 Posted **Dec 16, 2006, 6:54 PM**

Why do you vomit? Although much of Tampa's sprawl is hideous, the picture you posted is 100 times more attractive than most of the sprawl in JBA007's series. Modest and well kept homes, landscaping, and boating canals.. nothing wrong with that.

UncleRando · #9 Posted **Dec 16, 2006, 7:14 PM**

^I'm not sure what you mean by "nothing wrong with that"...but how about a terrible manipulation of the natural environment, or the old 'you can't get there from here scenario, and also a prime example of the typical individualistic neighborhoods created by modern day developments.

For the effort that went in to creat the canals....I would have hoped for a better product, but instead they took the same blueprint for Anywhere, USA and stamped it down into a unique setting.....thats truly disturbing to me.

LuckyTrix · #10 Posted **Dec 17, 2006, 4:54 PM**

The one with the buildings forming a circleish thing looks like the Capital One park/campus/whatever, my sister used to work there. I'm sure my old house is somewhere in there but I can't find it.