2 guides on the southern half of the city, along the bay and the limestone ridge behind it. Coconut Grove was a settlement with a post office before Miami was incorporated in 1896, was annexed in 1925, and has kept a distinct identity and an unusual tree canopy ever since. Coral Way and the Roads, inland from it, are banyan-lined 1920s streets laid out in the first Florida land boom, some of the oldest planned residential fabric in the city.
The physical fact that matters here is elevation. The Miami Rock Ridge runs through this part of the city and gives it the highest ground Miami has. A difference of only a few feet, which sounds trivial and is not: it is the difference between a mapped flood zone and no mapped flood zone, and therefore between an insurance quote you can live with and one you cannot. It also means mature canopy, which changes what a summer afternoon feels like more than any amount of air conditioning. Two checks. The flood zone and elevation certificate anyway, because the ridge is narrow and the bayfront below it is not on it. And, in the Grove, whether the lot is in the Village West area, where the historically Bahamian community that built the neighborhood is being priced out and the displacement argument is live and specific.
2 communities, guide by guide
Coconut Grove
Older than the city that annexed it, sixteen feet up on the Miami Rock Ridge, and the one neighborhood here where tree canopy rather than air conditioning shapes the summer.
- 16.4 ft
- Elevation at the neighbourhood's reference point, USGS 3DEP point query, 2026
- 1873
- The first permanent settlement at the Grove, more than twenty years before Miami is incorporated
Coral Way
Banyan canopy over 1920s Mediterranean Revival on the Miami Rock Ridge, and the closest thing the city has to a single-family suburb inside its own limits.
- 7.3 ft
- Elevation at the neighborhood's reference point, USGS 3DEP point query, 2026
- Zone X
- FEMA flood zone at the reference point, outside the Special Flood Hazard Area, City of Miami flood layer, 2026
Photographs: Coconut Grove by Gary Miotla, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
