While Florida has marketed sun and beaches for generations, no other area has distilled this into the jazzy cosmopolitan styles of Miami, Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale and other nearby communities constituting a metropolitan population of 3.5 million. These cities’ many roles and images as capitals of the new Caribbean, trendsetters for youth, retirement havens for the elderly and glamorous celebrity resorts have nevertheless clashed with ethnic and racial divisions as well as the fragility of the Everglades ecosystem, which development continually threatens.

Miami’s 1920s boom was crushed by a hurricane and the Depression, but the city rebounded after the Second World War as a resort for the urban Northeast. Among the diverse communities which expanded its Southern African American and white populations were Jews from New York City, NY and underworld figures with links to Cuba. In the winter season, entertainers as well as poorer “sun-birds” enlivened the beaches and palm-lined streets of the city while elite enclaves took shape on exclusive islands and northwards in Palm Beach.

Castro’s triumph in Cuba transformed Miami with the arrival of large numbers of Cuban Americans in the 1960s and again in the 1980s. These Cubans and their descendants have richly contributed to culture, music and politics while galvanizing other Latin American communities. Haitians also arrived in great numbers, complicating the racial panorama that trapped many native African Americans in ghettos and dead-end jobs beside the booming service-sector city Miami style—combining the art-deco buildings of South Miami Beach, the luxuriant foliage and tropical colors of homes and the cultural diversity of old and new populations—was distilled in movies like Scarface (1983), television’s Miami Vice (1984–9) and crime fiction from John D. McDonald to Carl Hiassen. Despite an emphasis on problems of drugs, crime and ethnic tension, the fast-paced, transnational style these showcased underscored Miami’s continuing attractions for celebrities, tourists and new migrants. With the popularity of Fort Lauderdale for college vacations and the continuing elite renovation of areas like Palm Beach, Lake Worth and Miami’s Coral Gables, this maps social and cultural complexity onto the still straining ecology of South Florida development.