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Old Posted Sep 18, 2019, 1:38 PM
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pj3000 pj3000 is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Pittsburgh & Miami
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Originally Posted by dave8721 View Post
Palm Beach is definitely not a suburb. Its not like people live there and commute to work somewhere else in large numbers. Boca and Hollywood I would say are "suburbs", at least as much as Brookline is. I used to live in Brookline and lived walking distance to the Prudential Center in Boston. Do people consider Fenway to be a suburban stadium? It is a couple of blocks from the Brookline border. If Boca and Hollywood aren't suburbs then neither is Coral Gables. Most of the suburbs that people have mentioned aren't true "suburbs" in that many are at least someone functional on their own.
Coral Gables was a master-planned community, built as an exclusive enclave for the growing city of Miami. It was envisioned from its beginnings as a wealthy suburb, where the University of Miami would be located. I don’t know how it could be considered anything else but a suburb.

Boca is just suburban by nature in its layout, but it’s not a suburb of Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, or West Palm. Hollywood fits the ‘suburb’ bill more accurately, as it’s a beach town that has just been engulfed into the whole Miami-Ft. Lauderdale mass. But no one who lives in Hollywood would ever say, “I live in a suburb of Miami” or “I live in a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale”. Hollywood’s it’s own thing. South Florida is just unique in its multi-nodality, with its largest city Miami not really being the hub for the area, given its location at the “end of the line” and the fact that all the cities were established and grew around the same time without any of them being dominant over the others.

It’s just different there. Many residents of the “Miami” metro area wouldn’t even say they are from or live in Miami, when asked. People who live in Boca or Ft. Lauderdale or west Palm wouldn’t say they are from Miami. Maybe they’d say South Florida. Whereas if someone was from Coral Gables, they would definitely (and rightly) say they are from Miami.

Last edited by pj3000; Sep 18, 2019 at 1:49 PM.
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