How to read this map
Work in progress. This map is not exhaustive. It presents the result of documented research at this release and changes as sources are added, corrected, or superseded. Every node is based on at least one public source and carries its sources and confidence class. If something is missing or wrong, use Correct in the node panel or the Contribute page.
Every circle is an operation or a company, every dashed circle a person documented as a founder, principal or public official, every square a town, an institution, an agency or an event. Colour is the layer of the place: eleven lanes from citrus to the outside. Gold rings mark the top ten landowners on the resolved owner table of the BusinessFlare® GIS Heartland Agricultural Land Module, the source of record for every land figure on this map. Node size follows how connected a node is, computed on this dataset and never adjusted.
The map reads the Heartland as one agricultural economy assembled by a small number of families, companies and institutions over 140 years, held together by its towns, and now reworked by three forces at once: citrus greening turning groves into pasture, capital from outside the region turning pasture into solar and subdivisions, and a rotational vegetable economy that runs on leased rangeland and appears in no map but this one.
Lineage lays the economy out on a timeline, 1880 to 2026, each lane in its own band. Network lets the connections pull the map into clusters: the sugar complex in the Glades and the Lykes holdings are the two densest structures, the towns sit between the operations and the institutions rather than beside them, and a visible share of the region's structure routes through nodes outside it. Cities puts everything on a Florida county basemap at county scale: operations cluster on their districts, the towns are place nodes inside the districts, and the outside clusters sit in open water off the region. 3D lets the same network settle in three dimensions. Play runs the timeline: the industry accretes around water, rail and drainage, citrus thins after 2005, and the solar and development nodes arrive as announced.
Solid lines are land, capital and people moving between operations, towns and institutions: a family founding an operation or a town, a principal or a membership, land moving by documented sale or lease, a subsidiary or a company town, an earlier operation on the same land, a related venture, a mill built by or for named growers. Dashed lines are influence, used only where an operation or institution has itself said it followed another; there are none on this release. Dotted lines are programs, permits and leases with agencies, fairs and industry events, documented agreements, and time bounded institutional roles. Land conversions carry the acreage and the year in the edge note, and an announced conversion, such as an FPL site plan entry, is coded as announced, never as completed, until the parcel roll or a completion record shows it.
Public disclosure policy. This map uses public business records, public corporate filings, property records, public calendars, public civic documents, public press coverage and public listings. It maps commercial infrastructure and documented civic activity, not endorsements, partnerships or private cultural behaviour. Inclusion does not require participation, consent or approval. The map corrects factual errors promptly and considers removal requests case by case where a listing is outdated, an entity has closed, publication presents a material safety concern, or the entity is not conducting public facing commercial activity. Public commercial infrastructure is mappable; private cultural behaviour is protected.
Hub regions. Every node folds into one of four agricultural districts the module defines, or into the outside clusters. The Ridge holds Highlands County with Sebring, Avon Park and Lake Placid, plus Frostproof and Fort Meade as the optional Polk extension the module reports separately. The Peace River valley holds Hardee and DeSoto counties with Wauchula, Bowling Green, Zolfo Springs and Arcadia. Okeechobee holds the town and the north shore. The Glades holds Glades and Hendry counties and the Palm Beach County Glades communities: Clewiston, Moore Haven, LaBelle, Belle Glade, Pahokee, South Bay and Canal Point. Belle Glade, Pahokee and South Bay are Heartland although they sit in Palm Beach County; coastal Palm Beach County sits in the outside cluster. Outside the Heartland holds Florida entities elsewhere, folded further into outside Florida where that applies. Nodes with no recorded place sit in a place not recorded cluster. A town carries edges of its own, and every count by place uses the district.
The outside share. Beside degree and betweenness, every node carries one more computed figure: the share of its connections that leave the region, edges to nodes in the outside hubs divided by all its edges. It is reported in this panel, in the workbook and in the reference's network metrics section, by lane and by district as well, so the map answers how much of the region's own economy routes through nodes outside it. It is computed on this dataset and never adjusted.
Evidence. Data are current through . Activity after that date is described as announced or scheduled, never as completed. The module is the source of record for the 2025 agricultural base of 2,324,300 acres, the acres by class, the ownership split and the announced conversions; the map states those figures as authoritative and never recomputes them. Each node carries a confidence grade and source ids in its panel: High means an official record or two independent sources; Medium means a reference entry or a single press report; Low means a detail still flagged as unverified. A node is on the map when it has at least one documented link of an edge type to another node; four resolved owners from the module's table carry no drawn relationship yet and their documented placement is the owner table itself, disclosed in Method. Persons appear only as documented founders, principals, moving executives or public officials; no owner of a small operation is named from the roll or a corporate filing alone. Superlatives are qualified. Nothing from private communications or client work is cited.
Sibling maps: japan.themusiccities.com · tampa.themusiccities.com · creators.businessflare.net · westdixiestudios.themusiccities.com · southdade.streeteconomics.ai · nmbasiatown.streeteconomics.com · the BusinessFlare® GIS module
Downloads: PDF reference · Node and edge dataset (Excel) · data.json
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