Miami Avenue

Miami Avenue is a 16.8-mile (27.0 km) main north-south street running through Coconut Grove, Brickell, Downtown, and Midtown in Miami, Florida. It is the meridian road dividing the street grid of Miami and Miami-Dade County into east and west avenues.

Route description

The southern terminus is on South Bayshore Drive in the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami at Alatka Street/Mercy Way in front of Mercy Hospital. It is one way northbound from South 15th Road to South Fourth Street. It is one way southbound from North 17th Street to the Miami River downtown where it curves onto South First Avenue. At Flagler Street, the latitudinal baseline north-south road of the Miami area, extends from the central business district of downtown Miami to the west Miami-Dade, South Miami Avenue becomes North Miami Avenue. North of North 17th Street it is two way and continues north through the city of Miami until it crosses the Little River Canal after North 85th Street and enters the village of El Portal.

Miami

Miami (/maɪˈæmi/; Spanish pronunciation: [maiˈami]) is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County. The 44th-most populated city proper in the United States, with a population of 417,650, it is the principal, central, and most populous city of the Miami metropolitan area, and the most populous metropolis in the Southeastern United States after Washington, D.C. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Miami's metro area is the eighth-most populous and fourth-largest urban area in the United States, with a population of around 5.5 million.

Miami is a major center, and a leader in finance, commerce, culture, media, entertainment, the arts, and international trade. In 2012, Miami was classified as an Alpha−World City in the World Cities Study Group's inventory. In 2010, Miami ranked seventh in the United States in terms of finance, commerce, culture, entertainment, fashion, education, and other sectors. It ranked 33rd among global cities. In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked Miami "America's Cleanest City", for its year-round good air quality, vast green spaces, clean drinking water, clean streets, and city-wide recycling programs. According to a 2009 UBS study of 73 world cities, Miami was ranked as the richest city in the United States, and the world's fifth-richest city in terms of purchasing power. Miami is nicknamed the "Capital of Latin America", is the second largest U.S. city with a Spanish-speaking majority, and the largest city with a Cuban-American plurality.

Miami Beach, Florida

Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. It was incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on a variety of natural and man-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the latter of which separates the Beach from Miami. The neighborhood of South Beach, comprising the southernmost 2.5 square miles (6.5 km²) of Miami Beach, along with downtown Miami and the Port of Miami, collectively form the commercial center of South Florida. As of the 2010 census, Miami Beach had a total population of 87,779. It has been one of America's pre-eminent beach resorts since the early 20th century.

In 1979, Miami Beach's Art Deco Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Art Deco District is the largest collection of Art Deco architecture in the world and comprises hundreds of hotels, apartments and other structures erected between 1923 and 1943. Mediterranean, Streamline Moderne and Art Deco are all represented in the District. The Historic District is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the East, Lenox Court on the West, 6th Street on the South and Dade Boulevard along the Collins Canal to the North. The movement to preserve the Art Deco District's architectural heritage was led by former interior designer Barbara Capitman, who now has a street in the District named in her honor.

Art Deco

Art Deco (/ˌɑːrt ˈdɛkoʊ/), or Deco, is an influential visual arts design style that first appeared in France just before World War I and began flourishing internationally in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s before its popularity waned after World War II. It took its name, short for Arts Décoratifs, from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris in 1925. It is an eclectic style that combines traditional craft motifs with Machine Age imagery and materials. The style is often characterized by rich colours, bold geometric shapes and lavish ornamentation.

Deco emerged from the interwar period when rapid industrialisation was transforming culture. One of its major attributes is an embrace of technology. This distinguishes Deco from the organic motifs favoured by its predecessor Art Nouveau.

Historian Bevis Hillier defined Art Deco as "an assertively modern style [that] ran to symmetry rather than asymmetry, and to the rectilinear rather than the curvilinear; it responded to the demands of the machine and of new material [and] the requirements of mass production".

South Florida

South Florida is a region of the U.S. state of Florida, it comprises the southernmost part of the state. It is one of Florida's three most common "directional" regions, the others being Central Florida and North Florida. It includes the populous Miami metropolitan area, the Florida Keys, and other localities. South Florida is the only part of the continental United States with a tropical climate.

Area

As with all vernacular regions, South Florida has no official boundaries or status, and is defined differently by different sources. A 2007 study of Florida's regions by Ary Lamme and Raymond K. Oldakowski found that Floridians surveyed identified "South Florida" as comprising the southernmost sections of peninsular Florida. This area includes the Miami metropolitan area (generally defined as Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties), the Florida Keys, and the interior region known as the Glades. Additionally, South West Florida, representing the state's southern Gulf Coast, has emerged as a directional vernacular region. Some respondents from as far northwest as the southern Tampa Bay area identified their region as being in South Florida rather than South West or Central Florida.