Kissimmee, FL

Appears on

• Top 6 Suburbs of Orlando

  Currently #4 · score 0

Reviews

Log in to leave a review.

Barks

Log in to bark.

Similar places

• Winter Park, FL

  Winter Park was developed beginning in the 1880s as a planned winter resort community for wealthy Northerners, and its historic Park Avenue commercial district, built directly alongside a chain of scenic lakes, has preserved a walkable, upscale shopping and dining core that's stood in deliberate contrast to Orlando's more sprawling, car-oriented suburban development. Rollins College, founded in 1885 as Florida's oldest recorded institution of higher education, sits directly on the shore of Lake Virginia in Winter Park, giving the city a genuine small-college presence and a Mediterranean Revival-style campus that's become one of the more architecturally distinctive college campuses in the entire state. The Scenic Boat Tour, operating continuously since 1938 along Winter Park's interconnected chain of lakes, gives visitors a waterfront view of the city's historic lakefront estates from small pontoon boats, a genuinely old-fashioned tourist attraction that's persisted largely unchanged for well over eight decades. Winter Park's combination of its 19th-century planned winter-resort origins, a historic and walkable Park Avenue commercial district, and a genuine small liberal arts college has made it one of the most consistently affluent and culturally distinctive suburbs anywhere in the greater Orlando metropolitan area.

• Lake Nona, FL

  Lake Nona is a large master-planned community in southeast Orlando built substantially around "Medical City," a deliberately clustered concentration of hospitals, research institutions, and biotech companies including a University of Central Florida College of Medicine campus and a Nemours Children's Hospital, developed specifically to create a self-sustaining medical and life-sciences employment hub. The community was developed by Tavistock Group, a private investment firm, with a deliberate emphasis on technology integration and "smart city" infrastructure, including extensive fiber connectivity and, in more recent phases, autonomous shuttle pilot programs tested directly on Lake Nona's internal roads. USTA's National Campus, the United States Tennis Association's primary training facility, relocated to Lake Nona in 2017, bringing dozens of tennis courts and elite training facilities to the community and giving it a significant sports-training presence alongside its medical and technology focus. Lake Nona's combination of a deliberately clustered medical and biotech research hub, genuine smart-city technology infrastructure, and a major national tennis training campus has made it one of the most ambitiously planned and rapidly developing communities anywhere in the greater Orlando metropolitan area.

• Celebration, FL

  Celebration was developed by the Walt Disney Company beginning in 1994 as a fully planned town built on Disney-owned land near Walt Disney World, designed around New Urbanist planning principles — a walkable downtown, front porches close to the street, and alleyway-accessed garages — deliberately evoking an idealized small-town American aesthetic. The town's downtown, built around a small lake, features artificial "snow" sprayed from rooftops on select evenings during the holiday season, a deliberately theatrical touch consistent with Disney's broader approach to creating a curated, storybook-quality atmosphere throughout the community. Disney sold off its ownership stake in Celebration's governance and commercial properties in phases through the 2000s and 2010s, transitioning the town toward more conventional independent municipal governance even as its Disney-planned architecture and street layout have remained largely intact. Celebration's combination of its origins as a fully Disney-planned New Urbanist town and its continued distinctive, deliberately nostalgic small-town design has made it one of the most architecturally unusual and closely studied planned communities anywhere in the country, not just the Orlando area.

• Windermere, FL

  Windermere sits along the Butler Chain of Lakes southwest of Orlando, a series of unusually clear, spring-fed lakes protected by strict local development and boating regulations specifically designed to preserve their exceptional water clarity relative to most other Central Florida lakes. The town has become a favored home base for professional athletes, including several prominent NBA and golf figures, drawn to Windermere's combination of large private lakefront lots, proximity to Orlando, and a level of privacy and gated-community security uncommon in the broader Orlando suburban area. Windermere's small, historic downtown has retained a genuine small-town character despite the town's association with celebrity residents and high-end lakefront estates, with a modest commercial district that's stayed deliberately low-key relative to the scale of wealth found along much of the surrounding lakefront. Windermere's combination of the unusually clear, protected Butler Chain of Lakes, a significant concentration of professional athlete residents, and a preserved small-town downtown has made it one of the most exclusive and consistently expensive suburbs anywhere in the greater Orlando metropolitan area.

• Altamonte Springs, FL

  Altamonte Springs sits directly north of Orlando along Interstate 4, and Cranes Roost Park, a lakefront park built at the center of the city's Uptown Altamonte development, has become a significant regional gathering space, hosting concerts and festivals throughout the year around its central lake and amphitheater. The city has built a substantial corporate and medical office presence along its I-4 corridor, giving Altamonte Springs a genuine daytime employment base distinct from many purely residential Orlando-area suburbs, anchored partly by AdventHealth's significant regional hospital and administrative presence. Uptown Altamonte, the mixed-use development surrounding Cranes Roost Park, combines retail, dining, and residential space in a walkable format that's given the city a genuine downtown-style gathering place, a deliberate departure from the more purely commercial-strip development found along much of the surrounding I-4 corridor. Altamonte Springs's combination of a significant corporate and medical office employment base, the lakefront Cranes Roost Park as a genuine community gathering space, and the walkable Uptown Altamonte development has made it one of the more economically self-sufficient suburbs anywhere in the greater Orlando metropolitan area.