The Curbed Cup, our annual award for the Miami neighborhood of the year, is kicking off with 8 areas vying for the prestigious (fake) trophy. This week we'll have two matchups per day, and all the results and the full tournament bracket will be reviewed on Friday. Voting for each pairing ends 24 hours after it begins. Let the eliminations commence!
Just like Beverly Hills, or New York's Fifth Avenue, Coral Gables has always been a great place to live since its founding a hundred years ago. Other areas have had ups and downs, but Coral Gables is, well, Coral Gables. This year the art of Dale Chihuly returned to Fairchild Garden, plans were finalized for a Miracle Mile makeover, and lots of homes sold for obscene amounts of money. New residential buildings like Merrick Manor are being built with access to the Metrorail. Plus Coral Gables has places like the Biltmore Hotel and its Al Capone Suite which, frankly, are almost perfect just the way they are. The weedy underside of the Metrorail may get a fabulous new linear park called the Underline.
South Beach is another very well established Miami neighborhood, but unlike Coral Gables its had some very dramatic ups and downs. Lincoln Road is getting renovated, and always seems to be getting new stores, like a huge Apple Store. There's also new midrise infill development happening all over the place. South Beach is where Zaha Hadid lives (for now). South Beach is the center of Miami's very exciting hotel scene. And even though cool local kids may act like they resent this tourist-overrun god forsaken sandbar, with its tacky T-shirt shops and fourteen dollar well drinks, they still love it enough to start wars over things like the historic preservation of the Miami Beach Community Church's courtyard.
· Curbed Cup 2014 coverage [Curbed Miami]
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