Walt Disney could have built his biggest theme park anywhere. He chose Florida. The weather is balmy, and when it gets too hot there are lots of pools to cool off in, says. Meg Crofton, Walt Disney World's CEO'. Florida also offers plenty of space to expand. Disney World, which was first carved out of wild woodland in 1971, has swollen to four parks covering 40 square miles (104 sq km) and employing 60,000 'cast members'. Contrary to the stereotype of rapid flow in the service sector, the average full-time employee sticks around for nine years. Florida's business climate is sunny, too. The Milken Institute, a think-tank in California, compiles an index of 'best-performing cities' in America, a composite measure of such things as job creation, wage growth and whether businesses are thriving. In the most recent index, six of the top ten metropolitan areas are in Florida. (Orlando-Kissimmee is sixth.) And 18 of the top 30 are in the South. For a long time the South's weather got in the way of its development. Richard Pillsbury, a geography professor at Georgia State University, describes traditional life in the lowland South, a region stretching from northern Virginia down to the Gulf coast of Texas: 'Smallish barren farms almost lost in the white heat of a hot and humid summer sun as the owners and their help fought swarms of mosquitoes to plant, cultivate and harvest the meagre cotton crop for market'. Then air-conditioning came. As it spread after the World War Ⅱ, the South became suddenly more comfortable to live and work in. From the 1940s until the 1980s the region boomed. In his book Old South, New South, Gavin Wright lists four reasons why Federal defence spending stimulated growth. Sunshine attracted skilled professionals. The South, having developed so little in the past, was a 'clean slate', without strong labour unions, entrenched bureaucracies, restrictive laws or outdated machinery. Lastly, given how much catching up the South had to do, the potential returns were higher than in the north. Southerners have prospered in part by playing to their traditional strengths. The fame of southern hospitality has bolstered the region's hotel chains, such as Holiday Inn. That of southern cuisine helps local restaurants, such as Waffle House, Cracker Barrel and KFC. Arkansas-based Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has kept costs low by refusing to recognize unions. And Coca-Cola owes at least some of its success to its southern origins. In contrast to Disney World, one of the characters in the service sector is that ______.