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MyRegion.Org’s Perceptions Of Polk

Posted Nov 14, 2007 by Billy Townsend

Updated Nov 14, 2007 at 11:28 AM

MyRegion.org is the Orlando-area regional partnership designed to coordinate growth and development planning for Central Florida. Its western flank is Polk County. I was noodling around on its Web site and came across its Polk County page.

When you click the page, the first thing you see is a collection of “fun facts” about the county. I’ve reproduced them below:

      —Polk County became Florida’s 39th county on February 8, 1861, when the State of Florida divided Hillsborough County into eastern and western halves.

      —Polk County consumes over 180 million gallons of water a day for agriculture purposes. (Central Florida Regional Indicators Report 2005, Pg 26)

I wonder whether these are the fun facts Polk’s leaders would choose to describe their county.

And the dominant photo MyRegion chooses to illustrate the county is a farm of some kind. You would think no one lives here. There’s no mention of urban issues in a county of 550,000 people.

By contrast, in talking about Orange County, MyRegion touts not just its theme parks but “its over 100 parks, museums, cultural and wildlife experiences.” It talks about the more than 400,000 pieces of real estate in Orange County and the distances its residents have to travel in their cars.

This is a small thing, but I think it suggests something about how people outside of Polk County see the county when they think about regionalism.