What's Tampa like?

Gordon_Gekko
Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:22:31 +0000

Actually, I’ve visited every large/major city in Florida and I’d rank them as follows:

Ft. Lauderdale
West Palm Beach
Orlando
Miami
St. Petersburg
.
.
Tampa
Jacksonville

Most of these other cities were at least planned better. There was essentially no planning with Tampa because everything is so spread out. The CBD is Westshore, not downtown which most people would find puzzling. Everyone considers South Tampa to be the nicest area of town but even the Hyde Park area isn’t so great in my opinion. We’re in Florida but Tampa really is nowhere near the beach. The majority of the city is plagued by poverty. (Everything from Busch blvd all the way to Ybor.) Most cities at least have somewhere that stands out as being especially nice (Orlando-Winter Park, Lake Eola, Windermere; Miami- Coral Gables, Bal Harbour, etc.) and Tampa just doesn’t have that. All Tampa really has is Busch Gardens and I was really disappointed when I went there.