Miami BeachCity Guide

Miami Beach is a 7-mile barrier-island city of about 82,000 residents, incorporated on March 26, 1915 — two years after Carl Fisher's Collins Bridge first connected the sandbar to the mainland. Today it sits across Biscayne Bay from downtown Miami via three causeways (MacArthur, Venetian, Julia Tuttle), and roughly 93% of its land area is mapped inside a FEMA flood zone, which has shaped almost every infrastructure decision the city has made in the last decade.

Three districts, three different lives

South Beach (south of 23rd Street) is the dense, walkable, Art Deco half — 800-plus pastel buildings from 1923 to 1943, Lincoln Road's eight-block pedestrian mall, the Sunset Harbour and South of Fifth (SoFi) sub-neighbourhoods, and Ocean Drive's nightlife. Mid-Beach (roughly 23rd to 63rd Street) holds the Faena District, the Miami Beach EDITION, the Fontainebleau, and the wide single-family streets behind Indian Creek. North Beach (north of 63rd Street) is lower-rise and quieter, with Normandy Isles, North Shore, and Biscayne Point — the neighbourhoods most longtime locals point to when they say Miami Beach still has a small-town side.

Median household income is about $73,000 and the median age is 42.9 — older and lower-income than people expect from a city associated with luxury hotels. About 53% of residents are foreign-born, with a strong Hispanic majority (52.5%) and significant Brazilian, Argentinian, and Eastern European communities. The homeownership rate is 41%, meaning the majority of the housing stock is rented or owned as second homes. Buyers comparing options usually start with homes and condos for sale in Miami Beach.

What ties the districts together: the Beachwalk. A continuous paved path now runs more than 7 miles from South Pointe Park up through Lummus Park, Indian Beach Park, and North Shore Open Space Park to the Bal Harbour line — one of the longest uninterrupted oceanfront promenades in the country, and the closest thing Miami Beach has to a single shared front yard.