Lakeland is about halfway between Tampa and Orlando, which means it is surrounded by 'Worlds' (Sea World, Disney World), 'Lands' (Gator Land, Tomorrow Land), 'Gardens' (Cypress Gardens, Busch Gardens), and innumerable theme parks (Universal Studios, Wet 'n' Wild, the Seminole Bingo Reservation).

Although there are a dozen sizeable lakes within the city limits, only one of them is more than a couple of feet deep, thanks to decades of storm runoff¹. Of these lakes, one is controlled by gangs of obese Muscovy ducks, another by gangs of joggers.

There seems to be no city centre. People throng at the mega-mall to the north, or swarm around the industrial estate to the south. Much of the city is built on reclaimed phosphate mining land, so pockets of radiation persist in the suburbs.

Lakeland's chief exports are electricity, ammunition, orange juice and Pepperidge Farm Cookies. The chief imports are retired Canadians and the Detroit Tigers.

A notable annual event is the Sun 'n' Fun Fly-In - a ten-day party for flight enthusiasts in which most of the private planes in the US, as well as a handful of F-16s and a wondrous assortment of war-birds and antiques, gather at Lakeland's small airport. For those under the flight path of this otherwise sleepy air field, it's a time of astonishing noise.

Lakeland contains the largest aggregation of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture anywhere, at Florida Southern College. It looks the way a space academy ought to look, but is in fact a rather conservatively religious liberal arts college. Ironically, architecture isn't taught there.