urbanMSP

I had a flight cancelled on me and got to spend a night in Miami in 2005. The airline put me up in a run of the mill hotel on a stroad somewhere close to the airport. There was a Cuban restaurant across the street in what looked to be a converted Denny's that I took a chance on for dinner.

It ended up being one of my favorite meals ever. There was a loud brassy Cuban band, terrific food, and some strangers invited me to join their table after they saw me sitting alone at the bar nursing a beer. I ended up hanging out with them for a couple hours and danced with the ladies of their group who were at least 15 years older than me. I will always have a soft spot for Miami.

I think it's pretty cool that the capital of Latin America is in the US.

Brickell CityCenter
Swire Properties, based out of Hong Kong, is undertaking a $1.05 billion, 9.1 acre mixed-use development in the heart of the Financial District Downtown Miami called Brickell CityCenter.

http://brickellcitycentreconnect.com/

Project Highlights:
-520,000 sq ft shopping center
-120,000 sq ft of office space
-800 condos in two towers
-243 hotel rooms
-93 serviced apartments
-3,100 parking spaces (two-level underground parking garage that spans 7 acres)
-Estimated completion: end of 2015

Swire wants to build an 80-story, 1,102 sq ft mixed-use tower as an addition to the previous plans listed above. WTF!?
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/20/3 ... tower.html

Update:
It appears this massive development is inching toward completion for the end of 2016. Cool new renderings and progress shots available.
http://residencesbrickellcitycentre.com/explore-360/

An interesting take on market urbanism and Miami's Brickell neighborhood: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... regulation

Tomorrow's waterfront property, today!

A tool to envision the change the 112 projects happening will make to the skyline.

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/04/ ... ource=SFFB

The article says it will double Miami downtown population to 80,000.

In other news, the Miami Herald has been covering this boom in relation to the capital flight phenomenon related to the Panama Papers.

This applies more to the far northern suburbs of Miami and West Palm, but I was pretty shocked at the number of gated communities in places like Jupiter and Juno Beach. When I got back here I realized how different it was to see houses along public streets, after not seeing any for five days.

I know this isn't starting in Miami until a few more months but since we don't have any threads for Ft. Laurderdale or West Palm Beach, here should be good enough.

Brightline is scheduled to start limited phase 1 service later this month with full service to Miami early next year
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2017/11/29/br ... in-travel/

Doubt it will cause any railroad companies here to start thinking about passenger service, but I would be nice to imagine if it did
(For context if we had something similar here it would be around 16 trains a day each direction from SPUD to Rochester taking about an hour to make the journey)

Well looks like Miami Central is now official open.

Good article about downtown Miami population growth:

https://finance-commerce.com/2018/06/mo ... own-miami/

Truly great article on the Miami 21 zoning code and how it has fostered a streetscape that has won lots of praise.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 23091.html