I’m still thinking about that description of Miami as “aesthetically vulgar,” probably because I find the metropolitan area stunningly attractive, both the “old” – the orange tile roofs of Coral Gables, the ficus-draped lanes of Coconut Grove, the egg-white hotels of Miami Beach – and the new: the glass towers rising along the river and Biscayne Boulevard. Its parking garages are more dazzling than most cities’ skyscrapers. (The New Yorker wrote a glowing review of the Herzog & de Meuron one on Lincoln Road.) And much of the beauty – the causeways, the palm trees, the palatial islands – is reflected in subtropical water.
Like most cities, Miami has its unglamorous sections, though one of these, Wynwood, has been turned into a tourist attraction through a proliferation of brilliant murals. Other neighborhoods, like Little Havana, make up for in interest what they may lack in beauty. A Sunday morning drive through Little Haiti will produce an assembly of elegant hats.
