loadingalias

We have five new ones in Baldwin Park. It’s zero crime over here, relatively speaking, and they’re obscene. My neighborhood is full of kids, too.

I couldn’t believe when I looked and saw them here. I was just shocked. The idea that they’re deterrents is bizarre. They’re altogether useless with respect to deterring crime and if that IS the standard line used to validate… why are they in the lowest crime neighborhoods?

I think it’s a HUGE violation of privacy. I have neighbors that won’t even walk their dogs on the camera side of the Blue Jacket Park over here.

I have thought about this a lot. I moved to Orlando after having been raised in NY and living in Europe for years. I’m also the owner of a tech company thinking about where to establish our roots.

- Public transportation is awful. Orlando is too large to have no reliable public transportation. This isn’t unique to Orlando, obviously, but it’s really easy to spot here. You cannot go anywhere without a car. I live in Baldwin now - likely the most walkable area of our city… and it’s still mandatory to have a car. Sun Rail is cool, but functionally kind of useless. It needs massive investment.

- The downtown scene is dead. We have a downtown that’s three blocks from some of the most dangerous areas of the city. We have curfews. We have these weird laws around clubs, bars, and lounges. It’s just not a great look… and we don’t have any kind of replacement. We’re not getting Michelin restaurants and art museums. We get empty buildings.

- Politically, Florida hurts Orlando, IMO. I mean, Florida’s growing importance to the country is cool… but this insistence to be SO far right is just silly. We need a State and City government that falls somewhere in the middle. Orlando has done a decent job here, but it’s not enough. Banning books is children’s classrooms isn’t how you bring smart money and companies into the city. This is true regardless of how many rainbow sidewalks are built or fought for or tore up. It’s just too nonsensical at the State level.

- The cost of living is really starting to rise and we aren’t a city with like great anything. We’re a city of “it’s pretty good” or “it’s alright” + Disney. We don’t have outstanding restaurants in the city, we have a ton of pretty good ones. We don’t have amazing gyms, we have a ton of decent ones. We don’t have amazing parks, we have a handful of decent ones. We are just so average in every single metric that it’s mind numbing.

- Orlando doesn’t really foster the “art” vibe that most cities need to be considered “cool” cities either. NYC, London, SF, Madrid, LA, Miami, etc. all kind of work to keep the art scene alive because for some reason… it brings in everyone else. We don’t have that.

- Disney has the juice. It’s likely any major company coming in will fight with them at some point in time. I think Disney has done a lot for the metro area, but the truth is… they’re predatory with respect to the power they have. Disney can move entire elections here; they’re capable of getting laws written or removed from anything. It’s just too much power.

There is a lot more on my mind, but it feels negative. I have always felt like Orlando could be the best city in the country, or very close to it… almost for exactly the reasons we’re not there today. We have a sprawling space to show the world what a fast train system would look like in America. It would be game changing and boost the city massively over decades.

We have the ability to turn Lake Nona into the medical and athletic campus of the country. The hospitals are already world-class. We need more of them. We need more specialists. We need the best equipment and training and pipelines to get doctors and nurses trained. Furthermore, we need the medical schools to make it a clean transition… this already kind of exists. We need them to double down.

We need to fight back against stupid State laws… even if that means a public showdown.

We need to fix downtown. It cannot just remain empty. We need the city to step in and facilitate business. Go land us three world-class chef’s that want to explore a new restaurant. Go bring in a baseball, football, or pro hockey team.

We need to make a choice to clean up the one thing I think kills us… the leftovers from the Pill Mill epidemic. Those people in every corner of the city living in the woods, by the lakes, and waiting to get high again. This is as much the State’s fault as their own. We should just embrace it. Seriously. Make Orlando the best public healthcare system in the world and start with those in the worst shape, the undesirables, the hungry and poor. Actually commit to helping them in a real, tangible way. This opens the door in a way that only this can.

We are a decently clean city relative to the world, but it’s not enough. We have to tighten it here.

We have to do something about the roads that flood every other day in the summer across every other neighborhood in the city.

There are just basic things, too. Tighten rules on the drinking water. Seriously. Improve the quality of the drinking water. Fight for better renewables or solar use… nothing extreme, small, incremental changes. Make the Florida education system more like NY’s or PA’s. Really prioritize the kids getting a world class education and being safe.

Improve the cities jails (I know) but seriously. Get a better system in place to make them more useful instead of warehouses.

All of these things act as levers that over a short period of time make living in the city a much more desirable idea.

Then, of course, you have to incentivize the companies to set up shop here. Taxes. Subsidies. Fast track approvals for new buildings and businesses. Take business practices and registration seriously - look to Delaware, Wyoming, etc as a playbook.

It takes a few years to see a noticeable change; in a decade this would be the first city on every list.