What will miami look like in 50 years?

[Miami High Rise]

Wow, my post really got this one going again. Miami really is a goofy city, I've never seen a city subdivided into such small, tiny little districts and sub cities. It makes it so the city itself is no bigger than rochester new york in population. Well not anymore on rochester's end as the population has nearly halved, but that actually makes it sadder, for nearly half a century ago Rochester had the population Miami has today. Miami is a huge city, but Miami, Miami is almost non existant.

[Toucano]

Originally Posted by URBANITY REPORTS

They turned a building into a parking lot WOW

Agreed. Ridiculous.

[spellbound]

I've never understood why the physical size of the city---it's political boundaries---seems to matter so much to some folks.

Miami being smallish in that regard is not uncommon or unique. Other big cities like Minneapolis, Boston, and Atlanta are similar in that the size of those respective cities themselves is relatively small in comparison to the metropolitan regions they represent.

I think MSA size is the much more accurate barometer of how "big" a place is and as such it's doubtful that many people view, say, Jacksonville or San Antonio as bigger cities simply because their physical boundaries are much bigger and thus contain more people within the actual city limits.

Besides, I think it's good to remember that folks like us with an interest in such things are relatively few. I doubt most people even think (or care) about the size of city limits or how it affects 'rankings,' etc. We are the geeks that do.

[Miami High Rise]

Originally Posted by spellbound

I've never understood why the physical size of the city---it's political boundaries---seems to matter so much to some folks.

Miami being smallish in that regard is not uncommon or unique. Other big cities like Minneapolis, Boston, and Atlanta are similar in that the size of those respective cities themselves is relatively small in comparison to the metropolitan regions they represent.

I think MSA size is the much more accurate barometer of how "big" a place is and as such it's doubtful that many people view, say, Jacksonville or San Antonio as bigger cities simply because their physical boundaries are much bigger and thus contain more people within the actual city limits.

Besides, I think it's good to remember that folks like us with an interest in such things are relatively few. I doubt most people even think (or care) about the size of city limits or how it affects 'rankings,' etc. We are the geeks that do.

If it takes a geek to have enough interest to be a part of a forum like this, I must be a mega-geek for all the time I've wasted on Wikipedia.

But am I? I doubt it.

But yeah, it's true that 99% of people could not possibly care any less about the things that are extensively discussed and disputed here. But it's a good place to find a lot of under construction pictures and some neat historical pictures.

I actually used a thread on here as a reference one time and got away with it (by that I mean it's probably still there) because the skyscraper related parts of wikipedia are a barren wasteland of outdated information made by the few enthusiasts who had temporary obsessions with it when things were happening around them. If you guys are such geeks you should add to some of the many poor wikipedia articles, which have the ability to provide a neat, well presented, entry on buildings. Even just adding some good photos, which there are tons of here, would help.
Look at this article that I basically redid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brickell_World_Plaza
Look at the history before I touched it, it was half done and worded for 2008, now it's bigger and more well written than the Four Seasons Hotel & Pencil, I mean Tower, article. Every Miami related SS article is like that, messy and with information unchanged from 2007 and 8. Yesterday the Capital at Brickell page still said that it was UC and to open in 2011. I chose to fix that one (Brickell World Plaza) and use it as an example because it was the only big UC project in Miami, making it easier to find stuff on it. Plus it is a somewhat unique office building that had some bumps in its history.

If I were not from Miami but decided it was my turn to be interested in buildings, I would have no idea that nothing had broken the 800 foot mark in the city, yet on here I could find every last shred of news and PR about every aspect of the development, the developers, the architects, the geeks, the over enthusiasts, everything.

And PS by the way I don't think anything will ever be over 800 feet in Miami, there's a reason if you drew a line connecting all the skyscrapers from Brickell to Omni it would be almost flat. Don't lecture me about how just soooooo many buildings were approved and would have happened if the economy didn't crash. Here's the thing, tons of buildings were built in 2007 and 2008, but none of the tall ones happened. Probably not a coincidence.

[spellbound]

Please understand that I use the term "geek" in only the friendliest way. I'm fully calling myself one as well!

I'd say the odds are good Miami will break that height barrier eventually. It may well not be something like OBP that we all hope for, but eventually the combination of desire and economics (i.e. enough real demand) will make it happen.

There probably won't ever be a large number of really tall ones due to Miami's small window for it because of FAA height restrictions, along with the city not being a major corporate HQ's locale, but I would venture the city could see a couple that size (800 feet or more) in 15-20 years time. Maybe more.

[Miami High Rise]

Oh look wikipedia does have a SSC entry.... in Italian
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyscraperCity
If you have Google Chrome it will translate it to english for you.
It says:

"SkyscraperCity is a website based on a forum mainly focused on the construction of skyscrapers and urban development as well as on their discussion. The site is supported by vBulletin , a forum management system created by Jelsoft Enterprises . Some of the features of the site are represented by a weekly competition of photos depicting urban landscapes, various polls and a list of skyline the most significant of the world. The motto is SkyscraperCity In urbanity we trust (in Italian, we believe in urban development ).
[ edit ] Trivia

SkyscraperCity.com was created the ' September 11th 2002 .
The administrator of this forum is the ' Dutch Jan, who founded the site and the user # 1."


And it's also available in seven other languages. That's very rare for something to have an entry in so many languages (eight: Italian
‪Беларуская (тарашкевіца) ‬
Nederlands
Polski
Português
Русский
Slovenčina
Українська)

with none of them being in English.

The Polish translation states:

In November 2010 the website had over 455,000 registered users, 622,000 topics and more than 38 million messages. Polish section on the forum (Forum of Polish Skyscrapers) is the largest national department on SkyscraperCity.

[spellbound]

I've almost never posted elswhere on SSC than the Miami forum but it's fun to poke around the other threads (and can be quite time consuming if you're not careful!)

Plenty of interesting stuff from all over the globe. I particularly like some of the transit-related stuff because that's of the most interest to me.

Also funny how busy some threads are in comparison to much larger places, but I think that's a result of many bigger cities having multiple and/or city specific websites out there dealing with these topics.

For instance, Buffalo (of all places) seems to have some of the most intensive photography/discussion threads on a pretty constant basis...some of it fascinating.

Only thing I really dislike is when a thread devolves into "city versus city" bashing. So juvenile and pointless. Fortunately, the moderators are pretty good at shutting down that nonsense.

[URBANITY REPORTS]

Originally Posted by spellbound

I've never understood why the physical size of the city---it's political boundaries---seems to matter so much to some folks.

Miami being smallish in that regard is not uncommon or unique. Other big cities like Minneapolis, Boston, and Atlanta are similar in that the size of those respective cities themselves is relatively small in comparison to the metropolitan regions they represent.

I think MSA size is the much more accurate barometer of how "big" a place is and as such it's doubtful that many people view, say, Jacksonville or San Antonio as bigger cities simply because their physical boundaries are much bigger and thus contain more people within the actual city limits.

Besides, I think it's good to remember that folks like us with an interest in such things are relatively few. I doubt most people even think (or care) about the size of city limits or how it affects 'rankings,' etc. We are the geeks that do.

+1

For its size, Jacksonville is literally deserted... I don't think it can even be considered a town. But they think of themselves as "city people" and see Miami as a small town... wtf??

Dallas- "the city" - has 8 million people, but to anyones surprise, the only city you'll find there is located in the CBD. I MEAN, WHAT CITY ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT?? I passed by there once (I was 11 and new to the country), and I don't recall seeing anything... I remember my mom saying " we are in Dallas", to which I responded " huh, where is it?"...

Yet, they think they are from a "city" just because of political boundaries. By that logic, you could say people from Jacksonville are "BIG CITY PEOPLE" compared to Manhattanites... after all, Jacksonville is BIGGER THAN and as populated as Manhattan.

well, Manhattan is just a small town, it's like nothing for us "BIG CITY PEOPLE"... I'm from Jacksonville and that city is huge. You can only compare us to Tokyo, Sao Paolo, buenos Aires, Istambul, and huge cities like that

[Hia-leah JDM]

Originally Posted by URBANITY REPORTS

+1

For its size, Jacksonville is literally deserted... I don't think it can even be considered a town. But they think of themselves as "city people" and see Miami as a small town... wtf??

What?! Jacksonville is a large city, no matter how spread out it is. It's metro population is over a million. There's no going around that. A big city, with industry, business, crime, traffic, and a growing and diversifying population.
Also, nobody up there thinks of themselves of some sort of cosmopolitan crowd or that they're in a bigger city than Miami, it's actually the complete opposite. People tend to downplay just how big Jacksonville is. If you mention you moved up from Miami, they'll question you like you just moved from Manhattan.

Originally Posted by URBANITY REPORTS

Yet, they think they are from a "city" just because of political boundaries. By that logic, you could say people from Jacksonville are "BIG CITY PEOPLE" compared to Manhattanites... after all, Jacksonville is BIGGER THAN and as populated as Manhattan.

well, Manhattan is just a small town, it's like nothing for us "BIG CITY PEOPLE"... I'm from Jacksonville and that city is huge. You can only compare us to Tokyo, Sao Paolo, buenos Aires, Istambul, and huge cities like that

Where do you get this from?

[URBANITY REPORTS]

Obviously you'll never understand what I'm saying.

[Hia-leah JDM]

Please try to at least explain.

[URBANITY REPORTS]

Nothing to explain really, because I wasn't explaining anything to begin with. I was simply telling past stories of mine.
I'm curious as to what you want me explain.

[Dale]

Looking at the historic photos reminds me: my gg-grandfather was living and working, in Miami, around 1900. While there, he was run over and mortally injured by a horse-drawn wagon ... thankfully after having had my g-grandfather.

[spellbound]

Originally Posted by Dale

Looking at the historic photos reminds me: my gg-grandfather was living and working, in Miami, around 1900. While there, he was run over and mortally injured by a horse-drawn wagon ... thankfully after having had my g-grandfather.

Wow! Sad story but those are some SERIOUS Miami roots considering how tiny the place was back then.

I thought I was pretty good in that regard with having family there going back to the 1920's but you got me beat by a mile. Those are true pioneer roots, Dale.

Funny thing is that here in Philly (a city obviously obsessed with history) I'll always be a little bit of an 'outsider' considering I didn't grow up here but actually have family roots in this area going way back to the 1840's.

[Gone Drinkin']

Originally Posted by betto8677

exactly!! Those train lines were heading to the port, in this old picture we can see that the port was right in the biscayne boulevard and the train!


Also near the freedom tower there was a greyhound bus terminal, i don't know if that still exists.

That greyhound terminal is long gone. There was one here, http://tinyurl.com/4tupv7m but now that one is gone too. Now you have to go all the way near the airport for a greyhound bus.

[spellbound]

Originally Posted by Gone Drinkin'

That greyhound terminal is long gone. There was one here, http://tinyurl.com/4tupv7m but now that one is gone too. Now you have to go all the way near the airport for a greyhound bus.

The 'Chinatown' busses here in the Northeast are pretty funny (as I'm sure our Boston posters are aware of). Dirt cheap travel between DC, Philly, NYC, and Boston with an exotic mix of hipsters, shoppers, tourists, students, Central American immigrants, and needless to say Chinese laborers. All speaking a dozen languages. I once rode it to New York wedged between an Amish family, a well-behaved parrot, and a man who appeared to be eating dried, miniature shrimp from a bag. All for 8 bucks.

And that's why I love America.

But I digress...

[DShoost88]

Originally Posted by spellbound

The 'Chinatown' busses here in the Northeast are pretty funny (as I'm sure our Boston posters are aware of). Dirt cheap travel between DC, Philly, NYC, and Boston with an exotic mix of hipsters, shoppers, tourists, students, Central American immigrants, and needless to say Chinese laborers. All speaking a dozen languages. I once rode it to New York wedged between an Amish family, a well-behaved parrot, and a man who appeared to be eating dried, miniature shrimp from a bag. All for 8 bucks.

And that's why I love America.

But I digress...

Megabus all the way! $2.50 between NY and Boston, roundtrip!
They should have megabus go between Orlando and the MIC; I bet that could be a popular root. Especially if they have similar price points as the northeast.

But I, too, digress...

[Miami High Rise]

Originally Posted by Gone Drinkin'

That greyhound terminal is long gone. There was one here, http://tinyurl.com/4tupv7m but now that one is gone too. Now you have to go all the way near the airport for a greyhound bus.

Speaking of stuff that's "long gone" one thing I don't think you've considered in this thread with you predictions of the skyline in 50 years is the fact that not everything that's here now will be here in 50 years. You think the Freedom Tower of the MD Courthouse has another 50 years left in it? In my opinion the courthouse already looks out of place in downtown and look how worn and faded it looks around the roof and stuff. And metal buildings like the Miami Tower will be such rusty POS's by then.

And how about the great Historic Miami Post Office in downtown that they can't even fill:

image hosted on flickr

mixed use, office, and retail

[Hia-leah JDM]

Originally Posted by URBANITY REPORTS

Nothing to explain really, because I wasn't explaining anything to begin with. I was simply telling past stories of mine.
I'm curious as to what you want me explain.

I don't know. You just said I'll never understand. Understand what?! You rambled on about Jacksonville and tried to convoy other people's perceptions on cities. I just thought your post was completely out of whack.

[URBANITY REPORTS]

Ok