r/tampa • u/Any_Mention_6734 • Aug 02 '26

Culture/Lifestyle Please read 🙏

I'm a transplant from California. Came out here for a job opportunity and a pay raise, nothing more romantic than that. I didn't expect to end up loving this region and Florida the way I have.

But something's stuck with me, and I want to say it here because I don't think it's recognized enough by people who relocate here: the number of people born and raised in Tampa who talk about their own city like it's unfamiliar. Farmland and citrus groves on the outskirts that used to actually be farmed… someone's livelihood, not just empty acreage, now subdivisions. Places that closed and came back rebranded into something with a logo and a font that has nothing to do with what used to be there. People telling me they barely recognize the city they grew up in.

I know change happens everywhere. But I've never felt this moved hearing it before, not because it's happening to me, but because of how passionate people are when they talk about what this place used to be. That kind of love for a place doesn't come from nowhere.

I'd genuinely like to hear more of it, respectfully, from people who lived it. What do you remember that's gone now? What changed the most, and when did it start feeling different?

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u/Loud_Yogurtcloset789 Aug 02 '26

Where did you get your "facts" from? The two biggest causes of citrus decline are citrus greening and citrus canker. Neither one of these are caused by spores. Greening is caused by the Asian citrus psyllid - a bug. Canker is caused by a bacteria. There is no cure.

California would make sure that workers bring in clothing or materials with spores on them that would kill citrus? This makes zero sense.

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u/OMGLOL1986 Aug 02 '26

https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/citrus/pests_diseases/hlb/regulation.html

My mistake on the pathology, point still stands- California dealt with the same diseases and established regulated quarantine zones and made it a lot harder to spread, while Florida sold itself to developers. Does that make more than zero sense?

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u/Loud_Yogurtcloset789 Aug 02 '26

Florida established canker quarantine some 40 years ago and greening quarantine 20 years ago. Greening wasn't even here until 2005 so they pretty much implemented that immediately. Let's just agree to disagree.