Here in Tampa we have been given the opportunity to develop insights about the cultural and social values of the U.S. We would certainly admit to being surprised at the size of the city, and the extent of development. Unfortunately, much of that development is unflattering to the concept of a utopian society developed from free market principles in their purest application. Of course, everyone knows that this idealistic philosophy has never been applied in Tampa, or anywhere else in the U.S for that matter, and that the status quo reflects the peculiar combination of exploitative capitalism and clumsy governmental social engineering that is a unique and pervasive feature of life in the U.S.
We find ourselves saddened at the soulless "communities" with cynically attenuated design lives that have slopped over from the city of Tampa, wastefully using the natural beauty and, in a cliched irony, destroying the very environment that makes Florida so attractive in the first place. It is an inorganic sprawl that seems to revel in exploiting the deficiencies of the simplistic zoning approach to city development.
The road system is a particularly painful and noxious feature, and a tragically self-serving one at that. The traffic system design is so inadequate that it is impossible to operate a useful public transport system, and private transport is a necessity; this burgeoning population of vehicles justifies the maintenance and development of intrusive and divisive roads, and has even been used in recent letters to local newspapers to justify the cancelling of passenger rail projects - "even in the most ambitious light rail systems, rail takes only about 24 percent of the drivers off the road..." (I suspect a gross over-simplification of the fairly complex impact of rail travel on personal vehicle use); "In Europe, there is growing dissatisfaction with the road traffic delays that the bullet trains cause." (As a European, albeit reluctant and slightly removed, my response is "Eh?"). The divisiveness of these menacing grids is evident as one examines any detailed map; the minor roads
that run off the main arteries are largely for access only, and in no way provide alternate routes; hence all traffic is funnelled into and out of these thundering, noxious rivers of roaring metal, daunting even the most doughty pedestrian from venturing out of his allotted "community" - communities that consist solely of over-sized housing mazes in tweely and unconvincingly named Courts, Avenues, Rides and Glens and hemmed in by screaming strip-malls offering services that relate little to the concept of a community, with names that seem to form some snarling modernistic poem-as-social-commentary : MacDonald's, Lou's Exotic Dancing, Ambulance Chasers 'R' Us, Pager Paradise, Golfers Green, The Cuttery, Mega-Mart, Mini-Mart, Felicity's Fantasies, Jiffy-Lube, Yim's Takee Outee, Quincy's, Quimbys, God's Squad, Doggie Doos, Ad Nauseam...