According to Travel yahoo Tampa is a small city (Lakeland: college, living in)

[Trigger-f]

Originally Posted by Maggi07

Oh, I absolutely agree with you! It gets really old, really fast, to hear people talk about places in the area that most have never even been to as though it's a war zone. Totally ridiculous. It's a big reason I don't frequent this forum all that often anymore, actually.

I do think awareness is a good thing, as long as it doesn't lead to paranoia.

Total misinformation from FL haters in general. What I don't get is, if they don't like FL or Tampa Bay, why are they still here? If I moved away from FL, I wouldn't care to go online and bad mouth the place, I'd try to forget it was such a bad place to live in the first place, as these people make it out to be. However, all too often, they bad mouth, blow out of proportion or spew inaccuracies on daily basis.

They need to make the best of their lives and quit whining. There's a lot of beauty in Tampa Bay and life's too short.

[Not_liking_FL]

Originally Posted by Trigger-f

Nice try...here's the answer to your question(3rd link)

"We don't hear a lot in Largo about the gangs unless obviously you live in the particular area," she told the officers. "The people who are out and about feel very protected and very safe, because of what you are doing to keep a lid on it."

These are all small, 2nd rate, isolated gangs (probably kids) that pose no significant danger to most people. Just enough ammunition for you to bad mouth Tampa Bay/FL one more time.

I was wondering when I was going to get the blushing, tongue out emoticon. I wasn't bad mouthing anything, I was simply stating a fact. THERE ARE GANGS IN TAMPA BAY. You obviously didn't comprehend my first post on the subject.

[Not_liking_FL]

Originally Posted by Trigger-f

Total misinformation from FL haters in general. What I don't get is, if they don't like FL or Tampa Bay, why are they still here? If I moved away from FL, I wouldn't care to go online and bad mouth the place, I'd try to forget it was such a bad place to live in the first place, as these people make it out to be. However, all too often, they bad mouth, blow out of proportion or spew inaccuracies on daily basis.

They need to make the best of their lives and quit whining. There's a lot of beauty in Tampa Bay and life's too short.

Now you're are just...

You also sound an awful lot like another poster on here.

[tinytrump]

Originally Posted by Not_liking_FL

Now you're are just...

You also sound an awful lot like another poster on here.

OH boy-- if you knew my line of work--(I have lots of proof),, but not getting into childish name calling and anger,,, adios amigos

[Trigger-f]

Originally Posted by Not_liking_FL

I was wondering when I was going to get the blushing, tongue out emoticon. I wasn't bad mouthing anything, I was simply stating a fact. THERE ARE GANGS IN TAMPA BAY. You obviously didn't comprehend my first post on the subject.

The only thing I comprehend is that you have a tendency to blow things out of proportion.

Are the gangs "gangnam style", as the song says? If not, no worries.

[MAniacTHW]

The humorous part about the people defending that Tampa is anything larger than a very small medium city, most of them suggest living in Brandon, Valrico, and Seffner... I don't think a lot of posters here actually live in Tampa. And Tampa will take decades to reach that big city level. Give it time. Let it grow.

[TXRyan23]

Originally Posted by Mike1306

That was my point, different states will incorporate in different ways. You say Houston is 10 times the size by city limits but the urbanized area of Houston is pretty much all within the city limits while Tampa's urbanized area is 6 times that of the city limits at about 960 sq miles.
To use "city limits" as a defining factor is really useless. If you are driving along and see a sign that says you are leaving the city does that change everything on the next block?

The point is that this story based it off of the cities population, and regardless, Tampa has a population of roughly 300,000 within its city limits, Houston is pushing 3 million.

[TXRyan23]

Originally Posted by tonyff67

There are no real gangs here. I've lived here for 17 years. I've lived in Tampa for 15 of them. I work as a civil servant in Tampa. I've worked in all the worst neighborhoods. I never seen real gang activity. Problem is, Tampa being a smaller town, they call a small group of kids calling them selves a gang, shop lifting or putting graffiti on a wall, a Gang.
I would think the best chance of seeing any gang activity ever getting organized enough to be a concern would be in the town and country area. There may be gang members here, but they are horribly disorganized.
It's no LA in the 80's

You're comparing little Tampa to the 2nd largest city in the U.S., which sits roughly 2 hours north of the Mexico border... really?

[TXRyan23]

Originally Posted by MAniacTHW

The humorous part about the people defending that Tampa is anything larger than a very small medium city, most of them suggest living in Brandon, Valrico, and Seffner... I don't think a lot of posters here actually live in Tampa. And Tampa will take decades to reach that big city level. Give it time. Let it grow.

The only problem is that by the time Tampa reaches the "Big City Level" of today's standards, cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, ect, ect, will be much larger and thus, Tampa will STILL be considered small.. It's been published in several places that the populations of Chicago, Houston, and Dallas could double by 2050.

Tampa really hasn't had too much of a population boom over the years, going from 274,000 in 1960 to an estimated 350,000 in 2013.

That's only a net gain of 76,000 over 53 years..

[Mike1306]

Originally Posted by TXRyan23

The point is that this story based it off of the cities population, and regardless, Tampa has a population of roughly 300,000 within its city limits, Houston is pushing 3 million.

So in your eyes because something is 5 feet outside the city limits it is not taken into account. The urbanized area around a city center is what should be taken into account if people are discussing the common characteristics of a city not some legislated line on the ground.
Because Florida, for the most part, has smaller incorporated areas than many other states it would make sense to actually discuss and compare the urbanized areas to get a good idea of what each area has to offer which I think is more what this discussions is about rather than the previously mentioned legislated sign on the ground.
Sure if you want to get into the "my city has this and your city doesn't" you can pick your way of looking at things, that doesn't really give anyone that doesn't know Tampa a good idea of what it has to offer and someone looking at Yahoo Travel, which is what started this thread, probably needs a little help in that area not what the percentage of incorporated areas for a given area is.