The race is almost over, and just two great Miami neighborhoods are left in the running for the 2012 Curbed Cup. The neighborly pair are Midtown Miami and Lincoln Road. Voting for the cup starts now and lasts through New Years day, and the winning neighborhood will be announced, nay, heralded to the city planning gods far and wide, on January 2nd.
Midtown and Lincoln Road are a tough match. Both pedestrian, both urban, and both lively, they have much in common. And yet they don't. While Lincoln Road has developed over decades, risen and fallen in popularity, been converted from a vehicular road to a pedestrian one, and gradually added architecture of widely varying styles and eras, Midtown is essentially all of that on super-fast-forward. Midtown was designed in one sweeping blow, partially executed, left incomplete in the real estate crash, and almost as gradually made exciting again with people, art, street life, and picture perfect urbanity. And yet despite its pleasentville-meets-Manhattan impression, Midtown's urban vitality has become real. Lincoln Road, as authentic as it gets, is also heavy with tourists, threatening that very realism, some might say.
· Curbed Cup 2012 coverage [Curbed Miami]
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