Miami is a port city located in southeastern Florida, United States, around the Miami River, between the Everglades and the Atlantic Ocean. It is pronounced /miámi/ in Spanish2 and its gentilic is miamense; however, in American Spanish it is mostly pronounced /maiámi/ and the common gentilic is mayamero, although these forms are not admitted by the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts.
It is the county seat of Miami-Dade County, and therefore, the main, most central and most populated city in the Miami Metropolitan Area. It was founded on July 28, 1896 and according to the 2014 census it has a population of 417,650; Its metropolitan area encompasses more than 5.4 million inhabitants, making it the seventh largest in the United States.4 The United Nations has calculated that Miami became the ninth largest metropolitan area in the country, behind New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco.
It is considered a global city of importance in finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts and international trade.6 It is home to numerous corporate headquarters, banks and television studios. It is also an international center for popular entertainment in television, music, fashion, film and performing arts. The Port of Miami is considered the port that houses the largest volume of cruise ships in the world and is also home to several cruise line companies. In addition, the city has the highest concentration of international banks in all of the United States of America.
In 2008, Miami was named «America’s Cleanest City» by Forbes magazine for its year of work on air quality, large green spaces, clean drinking water and streets, and various recycling programs.8 That same year, Miami was ranked as the third richest American city and the twenty-second richest in the world, according to a study by UBS AG.
Miami is a city with a majority of inhabitants of Latin origin, who are concentrated mainly in neighborhoods such as Little Havana, the residence of Cubans in Miami; Little Haiti, where Haitians are located; Doral (known as Doralzuela, for its concentration of Venezuelans); Kendall (Florida), also known as Little Colombia, due to its large number of residents of Colombian origin, Allapattah (or Little Santo Domingo), where Dominicans reside, Wynwood (Little San Juan, due to its large Puerto Rican community) and Sweetwater (Florida) (Little Monagua, by Nicaraguans).
In Miami-Dade County, Spanish has been the official language of administration since 1993. It is spoken by almost 70% of the population, while English is spoken by only 25.42%.
HISTORY
Before its founding, the area known today as Biscayne Bay was inhabited by the indigenous Tequesta, Mayaimi and, occasionally, Calusa ethnic groups. When Juan Ponce de León arrived in the area that now corresponds to Miami, in search of the «fountain of youth,» he found a dazzling variety of indigenous people. In 1567, with Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the Spanish presence in the region was consolidated; on a Tequesta settlement, the Spanish created the Tegesta mission, the work of the Jesuit Francisco Villareal, which was located at the mouth of the Miami River. However, after successive wars, the territory was abandoned by the Spanish. Florida remained under Spanish rule for three centuries—except for the English parenthesis from 1767 to 1787—until its forced cession to the United States in 1821.
In 1891, a wealthy widow named Julia Tuttle moved to Florida and purchased 640 acres of land on the north bank of the Miami River. Later, Tuttle convinced wealthy railroad builder Henry Flagler to extend the railroad to Miami, build a luxury hotel, and lay out a new town. The result was the founding of the city in 1896. As a result of these events, thousands of people came to Florida. Even then, in the early days of the city, the population was diverse; people from different cultures, from different parts of the world, came to the new city: Miami’s first mayor was an Irish Catholic, some of the first merchants were Jewish, and African Americans and black Bahamians made up one-third of the new members of the city.
Urban growth seemed unstoppable in the 1920s, when real estate prices in some cases quadrupled in five years. Land speculation was halted by the destructive hurricane of 1926, which killed more than 200 people, left at least 25,000 homeless and caused several million dollars in damage; this led Miami into a deep economic depression three years before the rest of the country. However, it did not stay bad for long and managed to emerge from the depression of 1929 before the rest of the nation, thanks in part to the aviation industry. During the depression, Pan American Airways ushered in the modern aviation era with the Miami Dinner Key Flying Clippers. Even then, Pan American Airways advertised Miami as the Gateway to the Americas. Today, the Pan American Airways terminal is the site of City Hall.
During World War II, the city was an important training and concentration center for troops, especially in Miami Beach. Many men and women who had trained during the war returned to South Florida, sparking a new period of great growth.
When the Cuban Revolution took power in 1959, Miami’s history took an unexpected turn: in just one decade, more than 400,000 Cubans arrived in Miami. The first exodus of Cubans was mostly from middle- and upper-class families during the presidency of Fulgencio Batista, who was supported by the United States. After the Cuban Revolution, they lost all their privileges. This caused discontent among some Miami residents, especially in the African-American community, who claimed that Cubans were occupying jobs that were held by African-Americans. In addition, the educational system had to make an excessive effort to educate thousands of Spanish-speaking children. The hundreds of thousands of newly arrived Cubans settled throughout the county but especially in the Riverside area, later renamed Little Havana, an area in which Spanish speakers from all over the city could conduct their business and daily lives speaking only Spanish.
1980 was an intense year for the city due to the riots known as Liberty City Riots, which occurred due to an act of abuse of authority by police officers towards an African-American named Arthur McDuffie. That year saw the second wave of immigrants, the Mariel Boatlift, in which 150,000 Cubans arrived in Miami; this group differed from the first wave of immigrants in that they were (mostly) poor, of low educational level and it is estimated that 25,000 had criminal records in Cuba. Also in 1980 the city witnessed an increase in Haitian immigrants, who settled in an area that later became known as Little Haiti. All this migratory flow into Miami increased violence and crime, bringing the homicide rate to historic levels in the 1980s. This period of violence is known as the Cocaine War, in which Colombian gangs faced off against Cuban gangs (called the Cocaine Cowboys at the time) who worked for high-caliber drug traffickers.
In May 1980, the acquittal of several police officers responsible for the death of an African-American veteran sparked riots: 18 people died and more were injured.
Meanwhile, political conflicts in Central and South America generated waves of migration from many other countries. In the aforementioned 2000 census, 65.8% of the city’s inhabitants were classified as «Hispanic,» reaching 90.8% in areas such as Little Havana.
GEOGRAPHY
In terms of surface area, Miami is one of the smallest large cities in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city covers a total area of 143.15 km². Of this area, 92.68 km² is land and 50.73 km² is water. That means Miami houses more than 400,000 people on 91 km², making it one of the most densely populated cities in the country, along with New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago, among others. The city itself is home to less than 1 in 13 South Florida residents. Additionally, 52% of Miami-Dade County’s population does not live in any incorporated city. Miami is the only city in the United States bordered by two national parks, Everglades National Park to the west and Biscayne National Park to the east.
Miami and its suburbs lie on a wide plain between the Everglades and Biscayne Bay, which also extends from Florida Bay north to Lake Okeechobee. The elevation of the area never rises above 40 feet (12 m), and averages around 6 feet (2 m) in most neighborhoods, especially near the coast. The greatest undulations are found along the coastal Miami Rock Ridge, the substratum of which underlies most of the eastern portion of the Miami metropolitan area. The main body of the city lies on the shores of Biscayne Bay, which contains several hundred artificially and naturally created barrier islands, the largest of which are at Miami Beach and South Beach. The Gulf Stream, a warm ocean current, flows northward just 15 miles (24.1 km) off the coast, allowing the city’s climate to remain mild and warm year-round.
GEOGRAPHY
The surface foundation of the Miami area is called the Miami oolith or Miami limestone. This foundation is covered by a thin layer of soil, no more than 15 m thick. The Miami limestone was formed as a result of the drastic changes in sea level associated with recent glaciations or ice ages. Beginning about 130,000 years ago, the Riss-Würm interglacial raised the sea level to about 7.5 meters above the present level. All of southern Florida was covered by a shallow sea. Several parallel lines of reefs formed along the edge of the submerged Florida Plateau, extending from the Miami area to what is now the Dry Tortugas National Park. The area behind this line of reefs was, in effect, a large lagoon, and the Miami limestone formed the total area from the oolite deposits and the bryozoan deposits. About 100,000 years ago, the Wisconsin glaciation began to cause a drop in sea level, drying out the lagoon floor. By 15,000 years ago, the sea level had dropped to 90 to 110 m below the contemporary level; however, it rose rapidly after this, stabilizing at the present level, 4,000 years ago, leaving the mainland of South Florida just above sea level.
Beneath the plain lies the Vizcaino Aquifer, a natural underground source of fresh water that extends from southern Palm Beach County to Florida Bay, with its highest point around the cities of Miami Springs and Hialeah. Most of the South Florida metropolitan area gets its drinking water from this aquifer. As a result of the aquifer, it is not possible to excavate more than 4.57 m below the city without hitting water, which prevents underground construction. For this reason there is no underground subway system in Miami.
Much of the western edge of the city extends into the Everglades, a subtropical marshland located in the southern part of the state of Florida. This causes occasional problems with local wildlife, such as alligators venturing into Miami communities and onto major roads.