Wynwood and north of the river
North of the river, where warehouses have been turning into housing since a 2015 rezoning, and where the city's sharpest arguments about who that housing is for are happening.
Photograph: The Wynwood Art District · Phillip Pessar from Miami, USA · CC BY 2.0 · source5 guides north of the river, in the part of Miami changing fastest. Wynwood was a garment and warehouse district that became a mural district in the 2000s and then, after the City adopted the Wynwood Neighborhood Revitalization District rezoning in 2015, a residential one. Beyond it the same pressure is working through Edgewater on the bay, the Design District, Little Haiti and the Upper Eastside, and inland through Liberty City. It reaches Allapattah and Overtown too, and those two are covered on the west and downtown pages rather than this one.
This is the clearest sourced example on this site of a planning decision creating a housing market: before 2015 you could not build apartments in Wynwood, and now most of what is under construction there is apartments. It is also where the phrase "climate gentrification" was coined about a real place. Little Haiti and Liberty City sit on some of the highest ground in Miami-Dade, five to ten feet above the coastal neighborhoods, and investment has followed that elevation in a way residents identified before researchers did. Two checks. What the zoning actually permits next door, because in the NRD-1 area it is probably more than what is there now. And the age of the building: this area holds both brand-new construction on the current wind code and unreinforced pre-1960 stock, and an insurer treats them as different countries.
5 communities, guide by guide
Edgewater
A half-mile of bayfront towers between Wynwood and the Julia Tuttle Causeway, the fastest-building part of Miami and among the lowest-lying.
- 6.5 ft
- Elevation at the neighborhood's reference point, USGS 3DEP point query, 2026
- 212
- Edgewater buildings on the City's 40 year recertification list, 45 of them still pending, 2026
Liberty City
The neighborhood the City files as the Model City NET area, built around Liberty Square, the first public housing built in the American South for Black residents, and now being rebuilt in place.
- 10.2 ft
- Elevation at the neighborhood's reference point, USGS 3DEP point query, 2026
- 1937
- Liberty Square opens, the first public housing built in the American South for Black residents, Miami-Dade County, 2026
Little Haiti
Lemon City renamed, the largest Haitian community outside Haiti, and the place where Miami's argument about elevation and displacement is loudest because it sits high on the ridge.
- 12.8 ft
- Elevation at the neighborhood's reference point, USGS 3DEP point query, 2026. Among the higher neighborhoods covered on this site's Miami pages
- Zone X
- FEMA flood zone at the reference point: area of minimal flood hazard, no base flood elevation, City of Miami FEMA 2021 layer, read 2026
Upper Eastside
Four miles of Biscayne Boulevard motels and bayfront blocks north of the Julia Tuttle, protected as the MiMo Biscayne Boulevard Historic District and the only part of Miami where mid-century modern is the regulated style.
- 7.6 ft
- Elevation at the neighborhood's reference point, USGS 3DEP point query, 2026
- 2006
- The MiMo Biscayne Boulevard Historic District is designated, resolution HEPB-2006-59, City of Miami, 2026
Wynwood
A warehouse district that a single 2015 zoning change turned into a housing market. The clearest sourced case on this site of a rule making a neighborhood.
- 14.6 ft
- Elevation at the neighbourhood's reference point, USGS 3DEP point query, 2026
- 2015
- The Wynwood Neighborhood Revitalization District is added to the Miami 21 code, permitting housing
Photographs: Bacardi Building Biscayne Boulevard Miami Florida by PhillipPessar, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · North of the river by Paul Sableman, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · A street in Little Haiti by Paolo Gamba, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · Little River, Miami, FL, USA by Sebastian Carlosena, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.