Would the World be a better place if we all stopped paying attention to New York City? Yeah, probably. It’s bad enough that every city is Brooklyn now but even before the rise of the Williamsburg Hipster, NYC pulled a real neat trick on the rest of us.
I’m referring to the transformation of SoHo from a disused industrial area to an artists’ haven to one of the country’s riches zip codes where celebrities become NIMBY’s.
That series of changes took several decades, but with the blueprint laid out Miami’s popular and touristy Wynwood neighborhood has made a speed run to late-stage gentrification.
Is Gentrification Bad?
It certainly wasn’t bad for SoHo, which I think it’s safe to say would have become what it is eventually even without the help of artists. It’s not bad for cities as a whole which benefit by increased business activity, additional residents, and sky high new land value assessments. To say a gentrified neighborhood is bland or soulless is a subjective value judgement. Objectively, more people benefit from gentrification than stagnation.
The dominant narrative in liberal circles is that gentrification hurts longtime minority residents through forced displacement. This might be more true in some cases than others but in the main corporate America and big developers aren’t falling all over themselves to buy up land in Black neighborhoods. If anything they’re averse to it. While some residents are displaced, and some of those cases are pretty sympathetic, that’s also life in the big city. Poor people don’t sign 100 year leases.
Like SoHo, Wynwood is a formerly industrial area and the displacement involved in making it what it is now was minimal or nonexistent. Similar to lower Manhattan, by the 1970’s residents living around Wynwood were beset by crime, drugs and unemployment.
Wynwood, Miami and Tourism
Whether the gentrification of Wynwood is good or bad for Miami isn’t for us to answer here. This is a travel blog and when I’ve visited Wynwood it’s been as a tourist. In my considered opinion it’s an overrated attraction and not worth the hassle of going.
I want to like Wynwood. I really do. You can’t say the murals are bad or uninteresting. They’re all pretty good. But at this point you sort of have to wonder what the politics are behind who gets to paint where and what’s actually put up. One thing is certain: this isn’t an organic expression of graffiti culture. It’s painstakingly curated. Not just the Wynwood Walls ticketed exhibit but the whole area.
But Wynwood has become like every other overhyped influencer-bait attraction in the world: a place you have to wake up at sunrise to see if you won’t want hordes of clueless tourists waving their phones around constantly and posing in front of every wall.
Everything That’s Not a Mural is Boring
If Wynwood was ever a place where artists and tastemakers gathered for cultural exchange that brief window has long since slammed shut. That much is obvious a simple vista.
National chain taco shops, Warby Parker, the Moxy Hotel and a damn Sweetgreen? What are we doing here? Without the murals this place is as sterile and soulless as the Navy Yard in DC.
The artists remain in Wynwood… because someone is paying them to show up and paint. But there’s no genuine street culture here. There’s not a bit of the magic that made SoHo the cultural capital of the world for a couple decades. There’s just commerce and consumers. Brands and people whose identities are tied up a little too much in branding.
Even something you might think is interesting, like a food truck park, is really just a corporate activation of a lot that’s being land-banked for future development. The curious little shop on the corner is full of Peter Max prints and the same tired bear bricks and Funko Pops found in malls all over the world.
If you’re visiting Miami as a tourist your time in the city is limited. There’s so much to see and explore in the rest of the city and at the beach. Unfortunately a trip to Wynwood in 2025 is just fighting crowds and eating mediocre tacos. It hasn’t even got the fantastic views you’ll find at Comuna 13.
