Glass towers close in as you enter Brickell, Miami's financial district and perhaps the most dramatic example of the city's transformation from resort town to international metropolis. Through most of the twentieth century, Brickell Avenue was a quiet residential street of Mediterranean mansions occupied by Miami's Anglo elite, nicknamed 'Millionaire's Row' long before that term migrated to Miami Beach's Collins Avenue. The cocaine boom of the late 1970s and 1980s brought the first wave of financial activity — legitimate banking followed the drug money, and Latin American capital discovered Miami as an offshore financial center.
International banks opened regional headquarters. By the 1990s and 2000s, the residential mansions had been replaced entirely by glass towers. Today Brickell is a vertical city unto itself: residential skyscrapers, hotel towers, the Brickell City Centre mall, and dozens of international bank offices.
The population is overwhelmingly Latin American and international. It looks more like a piece of São Paulo or Bogotá than a piece of traditional American urbanism, which is exactly what it is: a piece of everywhere that chose Miami as its North American address.