Miami-Fort Lauderdale Guides
Miami urban core
Brickell
Miami's financial-district core, built almost entirely on land the Brickell family began selling off in the 1910s, now the city's densest concentration of high-rise condo towers with a free Metromover loop and its own Metrorail stop.
Downtown Miami
The city's original 1896 townsite, rebuilt since 2000 into a condo-and-rail hub where Metromover, Metrorail, Brightline, and Metrobus all converge around Flagler Street and Bayside Marketplace.
Edgewater
A bayfront condo corridor between Downtown and Midtown that's gone from low-rise “Millionaire's Row” remnants to a still-rising Biscayne Bay skyline almost entirely since 2000.
Wynwood
Miami's mural-covered arts and nightlife district, a former garment-warehouse neighborhood a 2015 rezoning capped at 12 stories and reshaped into a walkable Arts & Entertainment District.
Design District
More than 200 luxury flagship stores packed into blocks of former furniture-wholesale warehouses, now adding its first wave of ultra-luxury condo towers alongside the maisons.
Little Havana
Miami's best-known Cuban-exile enclave along Calle Ocho, remade after 1959 from a quiet Southern and Jewish neighborhood of bungalows into a mile of cigar shops, domino games, and two federally recognized historic districts.
Little Haiti
Built by Haitian refugees who began arriving in the 1970s on land once called Lemon City, and now the city's most-cited example of “climate gentrification” as developers eye its higher, flood-resistant ground.
Coconut Grove
Miami's oldest continuously inhabited neighborhood, a bayfront patchwork of historic Bahamian streets and tree-canopied estate lots with its own Metrorail station and a founding story that predates the City of Miami itself.
Miami Beach & the barrier islands
South Beach
The nation's first 20th-century National Historic District, a square mile of pastel Art Deco hotels, Ocean Drive nightlife, and Lincoln Road shopping on barrier-island land developers began filling in the 1910s.
Mid-Beach
Miami Beach's resort corridor of hotel towers and beachfront condos, from the Fontainebleau to the Faena District, built where a strip of 1920s oceanfront “Millionaire's Row” mansions once stood.
North Beach
Miami Beach's quieter, more residential north end, from the French-street-named Normandy Isle to a historic Jewish retiree community that's grown steadily more diverse.
Key Biscayne
A 1.25-square-mile barrier island reached by a single road, the Rickenbacker Causeway, home to the 1825 Cape Florida Lighthouse and some of Miami-Dade's lowest-density, highest-income living.
Sunny Isles Beach
Once mid-century “Motel Row” along Collins Avenue, now a dense luxury-condo skyline nicknamed “Florida's Riviera” and among the most densely populated small cities in the country.
Miami-Dade suburbs
Coral Gables
A 1920s planned Mediterranean Revival city built almost single-handedly by developer George Merrick, home to the University of Miami, the landmark Biltmore Hotel, and some of the county's strictest architectural zoning.
Hialeah
Florida's sixth-largest city and the highest concentration of Cuban-Americans anywhere in the country, with its own Metrorail stations and a noticeably more affordable housing stock than most of the county.
Doral
A master-planned golf-resort suburb turned Miami-Dade's fastest-growing city of the 2000s, now home to the country's largest concentration of Venezuelan Americans and built almost entirely for cars.
Kendall
Miami-Dade's largest and most-searched unincorporated suburb, a flat grid of subdivisions and strip malls anchored by Dadeland Mall and Metrorail's southern terminus, with no city hall of its own.
Pinecrest
An incorporated village of one-acre lots and a protected tree canopy carved out of unincorporated Kendall in 1996, among the wealthiest municipalities and most sought-after school zones in the county.
Palmetto Bay
A leafy, low-rise bayfront village of single-family, canopy-road neighborhoods incorporated in 2002 around the historic Charles Deering Estate.
Aventura
A master-planned city built almost entirely by one developer since the 1970s on drained Intracoastal swampland, now home to one of the five largest shopping malls in the U.S. and a Brightline station of its own.
Miami Lakes
A Graham-family “garden suburb” built around 23 man-made lakes and a New Urbanist Main Street, one of the youngest and most tightly HOA-governed towns in Miami-Dade.
Homestead
Miami-Dade's southernmost city and a working agricultural hub in the Redland, rebuilt from the ground up after Hurricane Andrew's direct 1992 hit and now the gateway to both Everglades and Biscayne National Parks.
Cutler Bay
One of Miami-Dade's newest municipalities, incorporated in 2005 out of the old Cutler Ridge community and now mid-transformation with a $1 billion Southland Mall rebuild.
North Miami
A majority-Black, heavily Haitian-American city of roughly 60,000 wedged between Miami and North Miami Beach, home to Miami's contemporary art museum.
North Miami Beach
A 1920s land-boom town reborn as a densely built, ethnically diverse city wrapped around Oleta River State Park and a centuries-old imported Spanish monastery.
Broward County / Greater Fort Lauderdale
Downtown Fort Lauderdale / Las Olas
A downtown built around water: a hand-dredged canal grid that earned the city its “Venice of America” nickname, a Riverwalk lined with museums and theaters, and its own Brightline station.
Hollywood
A 1920s planned seaside city built around a 2.5-mile oceanfront Broadwalk and a historic Young Circle arts district, one of Broward's largest and most demographically diverse cities.
Wilton Manors
A roughly one-square-mile “Island City” of finger canals just north of downtown Fort Lauderdale, nationally known as one of the highest-LGBTQ+-population-share cities in the country.
Plantation
A roughly 100,700-person city dead-center in Broward, built out from a failed early-1900s rice-plantation venture into one of South Florida's original planned “Dream City” suburbs.
Weston
A roughly 68,000-person master-planned city built from scratch starting in the 1980s by Arvida, the same developer behind Walt Disney World, now home to Cleveland Clinic Florida's flagship hospital.
Coral Springs
A roughly 135,000-person planned city built almost entirely by a single developer starting in 1963, essentially build-out complete since 2003.
Parkland
One of Broward's smallest cities by population but consistently one of its highest-income, a low-density suburb of gated single-family communities that's kept much of its 1963 founders' rural, large-lot vision.
Pembroke Pines
A roughly 178,000-person suburb of master-planned communities west of I-75, home since 1998 to one of the largest city-run charter school systems in the country.
Miramar
A fast-growing Broward suburb directly on the Miami-Dade county line, corporate home to the FBI's Miami Field Office and regional operations for Comcast and Royal Caribbean.
Sunrise
A master-planned Broward suburb built almost from scratch by a single Iowa developer starting in 1960, now home to one of the largest outlet malls in the country and the Florida Panthers' arena.
Davie
One of Broward's oldest communities, a former Everglades-drainage farm town that still writes horses and hitching posts into parts of its zoning code, now also home to Nova Southeastern University.
See what makes Miami-Fort Lauderdale stand out — verified, named medical, dietary, sports, and other specialty resources you won't find in most metros.
Explore Specialty Resources →Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro snapshot
The facts below are the same across every guide in this metro, so they live here once instead of repeating on all 36 pages — each neighborhood and town guide links back to this section for the full picture, and keeps only what's actually specific to that place (utilities, exact commute times, local flood risk) on its own page.
Typical weather
Tropical climate — hot, humid, wet summers and mild, dry winters, with Atlantic hurricane season running June through November. Both Miami-Dade and Broward counties see essentially no winter freeze risk, a genuine departure from every other market on TheNewPlace.com.
Home teams
The Miami Heat (NBA), Miami Marlins (MLB), and Inter Miami CF (MLS) all play in Miami-Dade County; the Miami Dolphins (NFL) play in Miami Gardens, near the Miami-Dade/Broward line; and the Florida Panthers (NHL) play in Sunrise, in Broward County — all five teams within roughly a 30-40 minute drive of most places in this metro.
Attractions
In Miami-Dade County: Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, Zoo Miami, South Beach's Art Deco Historic District, and Everglades National Park. In Broward County: the Riverwalk and Las Olas Boulevard in downtown Fort Lauderdale, the Museum of Discovery and Science, the Bonnet House Museum and Gardens, Fort Lauderdale's own beach, Butterfly World in Coconut Creek, and Everglades Holiday Park.
Airports
Miami International Airport (MIA) is Miami-Dade County's primary commercial airport, and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) is Broward County's; both serve the wider metro, so which one is closer depends mainly on whether a given place sits in the metro's southern or northern half — check each place's own guide for its specific drive time.