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.
One guide 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 Allapattah, Overtown and Liberty City inland, which have absorbed less of it so far.
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.
