It’s 1:55pm on a September weekday. As I exit my suburban high school, I feel the familiar hot sun and humidity of Florida’s west coast. I unlock my car and turn on the ignition; however, I will not be driving anywhere. My two legs and sneakers will be enough for the mode of transportation I will be doing: running.
Pinellas County is the densest in Florida, packing in around one million people on a peninsula extending into the Gulf of Mexico, creating Tampa Bay. Seventy years ago, the run from my high school would have been through cow pastures and orange groves; however, the “country” of my cross country practice is now six-lane highways, tract homes, and a scattering of city parks. Running through my town of Largo, relatively indistinguishable from the other municipalities in the conurbation, has provided me with a lens into the past and present of its development.
Beginning our run, my team speeds past the 7-Eleven and encounters our first roadblock: the mega-intersection of Bay Drive and Missouri Avenue. We hit the “cross” button and wait for the famous walking man to appear. We enter Largo’s “downtown,” or what is left of it. Most commercial activity moved long ago to the dozens of strip plazas along the boulevards of the county. There are few people on the sidewalk, indicative of a reliance on personal automobiles that I included take part in. However, as opposed to flying through in my car, running gives me a chance to really see the workings of my city. The suburbs, popularly viewed as oppressively homogeneous, are not as one-sided as they may seem. In this short stretch of my run, I dash past a Puerto Rican restaurant, a medical marijuana dispensary, and an American Legion post on the same block.
Leaving downtown, we traverse a pedestrian flyover with the sound of our coach yelling to pick up the pace on the rare incline. The bridge is part of the Pinellas Trail, an old rail line reimagined as a linear park. Today, many American cities are facing the decline of industry; however, my coastal Florida town saw the shift to the service sector long ago. As the suburbs gobbled up the orange groves in the mid-twentieth century, the trains that brought the produce to Northern consumers went with them. On my run, the trail serves as a reminder of the old, agricultural Florida and how elastic and long-lasting infrastructure can be. At the top of the flyover, Bay Drive provides a view straight to the sea, hotels punctuating beaches that are the cogs in the tourist economy machine.
As I slip off my shoes, this perspective of the city is done for the day. My run demonstrated the myriad dynamics of this place I call home, including suburbanism running rampant, service sector consumerism’s effect on the landscape, the importance of walkability, and the diverse vitality of humans going about their lives. 3:45pm. Run complete.
Jackson Feldman (NetID: jef289)