Editing Florida (section)

=== ORLANDO-TAMPA (TAMLANDO), THE TRAGIC KINGDOM ===
Once upon a time, there were two very different cities eighty miles apart.  
Tampa, a relaxed metropolis on the Gulf Coast, combined sleepy suburban neighborhoods as white bread as they come with the vibrant energy of the Cuban enclave known as Ybor City. The great sweep of Tampa Bay with its mangrove forests under the relentless semi-tropical sun provided endless beauty to explore.  
Orlando, more centrally-located, was essentially a gigantic parking lot – but what a parking lot it was. Little effort had been spared to turn it into the vacation destination of millions of families, pairing truly grand landmarks like Disney and EPCOT with tourist schlock like Gatorland.  
And then the water came, and the staggering wealth and population of southern Florida needed somewhere to go.  
They came in droves, from Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, from Port St. Lucie and Jacksonville - and always, especially, from Miami. They flooded Orlando, as the nearest large city, and displaced the less affluent of the original populations further west. As for Tampa? The passage of Hurricane Myleen in 2076 smashed through its waterfront, levelling a great deal of what sea rise had already threatened to erase. It was one of the only cities to handle pre-emptive retreat from the coast in an almost orderly fashion because of it, and so its centers of power moved a significant deal eastward all at once.  
Inevitably the two cities met in the middle, and a strange balance was achieved as they found themselves inheritors of two halves of Miami’s spirit.  
Coastal Orlando became a vacation paradise for parents as much as children, the Vegas of the south – a riotous show of constant carousing energy, as cheap as it was very expensive indeed. The once-tiny town of Plant City, colonized into the new heart of Tampa in Myleen’s wake, positioned itself as the cultural center of Florida – a bastion for arts, music, and cuisine, with a particular nod toward representing the Cuban heritage inherited from now-lost Ybor City. (In the most upscale way possible, of course.)  
And everything in between these two areas?  
It became a wasteland, a great, charmless megacity that serves as a dumping ground for the unlucky dispossessed – Tamlando, as the residents of the ‘interior’ call it. It is by far the largest city in Florida by population, pushing 10 million people, but nearly 80% of those people live in poverty. Redlining, excessive policing, and rampant drug addiction make it very difficult to escape once you’re inside. It doesn’t help that much of the land between Tampa and Orlando is too wretchedly swampy now for construction, forcing high population density… or that many buildings of Tamlando were cobbled together as slapdash prefabricated housing for refugees, never intended to be permanent. Disease, crime, and misery are rampant between the two shining spires of Orlando and Tampa.

==== Notable Landmarks ====
* Venice, Florida. There was a real Venice, Florida once – a small but prosperous gulfside town – but the water took it. Now, ‘Venice, Florida’ is a tongue-in-cheek name for one specific district in Tamlando – a city once known as Lakeland. The ground is so very saturated and boggy that the streets have largely become murky rivers navigable by shallow motorboats or paddlecraft only. Anyone with the money to get out did, so the remaining residents are largely extremely poor – though there are rumors that the Condori criminal organization uses Venice as a way to transport goods quietly through places most people would never go.  
* Carnivale. When it first was discussed in the 2080s, fueled by investors fleeing Miami, it was pitched as ‘Disneyland for adults only’ – a part of Orlando dedicated to the greatest party experience on Earth. In the two decades it took for it to come together, it emerged as something like a combination of theme park and city-within-a-city: a six-by-six street block of world-class arcades, high-roller casinos, exclusive strip clubs, fashionable nightclubs, luxurious bars… The streets are thronged with elaborately costumed dancers and escorts, live music at every corner alongside flashy street food vendors and sidewalk bars. (And misting fans attached to the gigantic sunshades that cover the street; god, it’s hot.) Visitors are encouraged to come masked and dressed up, and uniquely enough, no children are permitted within 5 blocks of the area. It’s a never-ending party, after all.

==== Notable Local Organizations ====
* The Condori. In the 22nd century, cartels have gotten a lot more clever – not simply family businesses but elaborate networks with impeccable security. It is known the Condori are Bolivian drug traffickers specializing in cocaine, a time-honored drug (if one sometimes seen as quaint). But they are elusive as their namesake, the Andean condor, extinct in the wild since the 2110s. The Condori are not tied to any known family name or any physical location, not explicitly identified with any legitimate cover businesses, and rarely even seen doing business. This has led to a curious situation where anyone with known Bolivian ancestry is viewed with suspicion yet rarely harassed; inviting the wrath of the mysterious Condori is not a smart thing to do.  
* The Dalittantes. The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg – home of the world’s largest collection of Salvador Dali’s art – was permanently sunk in Hurricane Myleen when the massive seawalls built up to protect it failed. This delighted certain fans of his work, who considered it the best tribute to surrealism nature could have ever designed. Thus were born the Dalittantes, a society of conceptual artists. Their name, with its reference to dilettantes, incorporated the irony of the fact they were originally largely children of privilege and power. By the 2150s, however, the Dalittantes were as likely to include the graffiti artists of Tamlando as the avant-garde pop art professionals of Plant City. They agree on only one central principle: to make art that highlights the absurdity of the modern world.