Wynwood, the arts district you have entered, is one of the most-cited examples of arts-led neighborhood transformation in the United States, with all the complications that phrase implies. Through the mid-2000s this was a Puerto Rican working-class neighborhood transitioning to warehouse and light industrial use, with vacancy rates climbing as manufacturing left. Art Basel Miami Beach, launched in 2002 at the Miami Beach Convention Center, began to attract galleries and collectors looking for cheap space.
Developers and gallery owners, led by Tony Goldman, began converting warehouses into art spaces and commissioning street murals on the blank exterior walls. The transformation accelerated rapidly. By 2015 Wynwood had boutique hotels, farm-to-table restaurants, cocktail bars, and retail rents that had displaced most of the original community.
It is a neighborhood that now exists primarily for visitors to photograph. That tension — between cultural vitality and displacement, between art as catalyst and art as instrument of gentrification — is one of the defining urban stories of our time. Wynwood didn't invent it, but it performed it at remarkable speed.