The MacArthur Causeway, three and a half miles of road between downtown Miami and South Beach, is flanked by two examples of the region’s struggles to build.
At the western end sits the I-395 Signature Bridge, six concrete arches that were meant to “redefine the Miami skyline.” The state awarded the contract to build in 2017; the project is now expected to be completed sometime in 2029. Over this period, the price has climbed from $802 million to $866 million. The contractor is suing its own designer and insurer for $400 million. A worker died on the job in March, two months after six others were hospitalized. Only four of the six arches are standing.
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At the eastern end, a developer promised Miami Beach a $30 million footbridge that was offered in exchange for permission to build the tallest tower in the city. The tower opened in 2024. The bridge is still just a hole in the ground; the developer now says it cannot be built.
Both projects failed for the same reasons: too many parties, no single owner of the outcome, and a lack of accountability. Both are an indictment of a region that has spent six years announcing itself as the next great American economy—Wall Street South, the capital of capital.
Every Sun Belt boomtown will eventually confront the question Miami faces: Can a city that got rich by importing wealth turn that wealth into sustainable economic growth? And can a government built by real-estate developers, for real-estate developers, build anything else?
So far, the answer is no. Miami charges Manhattan prices with a quarter of Manhattan’s economic output. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Miami’s cost of living is 14.1 percent above the national average. New York’s, by comparison, is 12.5 percent. Miami’s economy produces roughly $534 billion a year in GDP, while New York produces $2.3 trillion in GDP.
Cities become more expensive in two ways. Some do so by being enormously productive, yielding sky-high salaries. New York, San Francisco, and Boston fit this model. Others get more expensive through the importation of outside wealth, which bids up land, housing, and services faster than the local economy grows.
The 2020 exodus to Miami went the second route. Exiles from New York, Greenwich, and Far Hills arrived to escape state income taxes. But they didn’t bring new businesses. A hedge fund relocating 40 people to Brickell bids up 40 apartments, for example, without creating 400 jobs with wages that help locals afford the higher rents.
The result is that Miami struggles to attract, much less keep, 25- to 40-year-olds: the cohort that founds companies, staffs hospitals, writes software, teaches school, and takes entrepreneurial risk. Such people are increasingly priced out, given both rising costs and the lack of jobs with adequate compensation.
This is all happening in part because Miami suffers the sclerosis of any one-party state. Not one of the traditional parties: Miami-Dade has been governed by both Republicans and Democrats. County offices are formally nonpartisan, and even partisan alignment often doesn’t tell you what a candidate thinks of rezoning.
Rather, the “party” is real estate. For 40 years, Miami has been run by a tight circle of real-estate moguls, lawyers who finagle zoning changes and concessions, and officeholders who do their bidding.
The Miami Beach footbridge is a perfect illustration of this dynamic. The private part of the project was built and sold to the benefit of its developer. The complementary public benefit never materialized.
Another example can be found in the city’s severe housing shortage. In 2024, the Miami metro authorized about 16,600 new units for 6.5 million people. For comparison, Austin authorized 33,500 for 2.6 million. That’s five times Miami’s per-resident rate. Austin’s policy has been to build more. In Miami, what gets built is only what developers want to build: luxury towers, not mid-priced supply.
A lack of accountability deepens the problem. The Signature Bridge was built by the Florida Department of Transportation, the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, the Archer Western–de Moya Joint Venture, and HDR engineering. None ended up uniquely responsible for the result.
If Miami really wants to be the next New York, it needs to stop catering to developers and start getting serious about an economy that yields real growth.
First, the city needs to build more housing. It could start by upzoning the corridors along Metrorail and Brightline. It could also use county-owned land near transit for workforce housing that Miamians could actually afford.
Second, stop subsidizing firms that don’t help the region. In 2019, Kansas and Missouri ended a decade-long war in which they spent more than $300 million paying companies to hop the state line within the Kansas City metro area without creating any new jobs. Though not battling any particular state in this regard, Florida is doing the same thing, handing out abatements for no returns. Such incentives should instead be conditioned on local employment. A fund that opens a research floor, for example, should get more favorable treatment than one that does not.
Third, the city needs to recognize what it’s good at. Miami specializes in certain fields: hemispheric logistics and trade finance; medicine and medical technology, anchored at the University of Miami, Baptist, and Jackson Memorial; and financial technology for Latin America. It should strengthen these, rather than trying to be all things to all people.
Fourth, build the public assets before the private ones. No more towers that open years before the amenities that were promised to justify them. If a developer commits to building a bridge, a road, a park, or a school, it must do so before the tower opens, not after the condos get sold.
Fifth, stop building monuments. Madrid extended its subway by 80 miles in eight years at unprecedentedly low costs. The metro’s president, an engineer named Manuel Melis Maynar, had a simple strategy to keep the project’s price tag affordable: no signature architecture, no custom anything. Miami named its highway project the Signature Bridge.
Lastly, publish a scorecard. In the 1990s, New York forced police commanders to account for their crime numbers every week, with each commander accountable for the results. The Miami-economy version would measure GDP per capita, median wages against the price index, business formation excluding relocations, and the net migration of 25- to 40-year-olds. That would give the public a clear way to measure success or failure.
If productivity, wages, and business creation rise alongside the cost of living over the next decade, Miami will have done something no American city has managed in a generation: turned imported wealth into a working economy. But if costs keep outrunning productivity, Miami will become a place where it is impossible to build a life or a company.
Miami wants to be the next New York City. Right now, it’s the city of mega-projects that never materialize. Those are two different cities. Only one of them works.