Kid City (Tampa, Florida)

 interesting place  Add category

Kid city is a pretend little town full of buildings built to the scale of four and five year old kids, rather than adults. They could toddle around, or ride bikes and trikes, go in little buildings, pretend to be adults with jobs. It was a fun, cute little place. Great for imaginative play, which is hugely important for kids. Ridiculously hot in summer, but that's Florida for you.

In one form or another, this place had been here since the 1950s, when it was a storybook fairytale village. It passed through several owners, before becoming a possession of the Lowry Park Zoo. The park operated it for several years, and then shut it down in 2008, I have no idea why. Since then, homeless people have taken to sneaking in at night and living in the buildings. This led to one of the buildings - the police station - burning down in 2010.

It's a really really, really sad thing to see this place shut down.