Miami, Florida Population 2024

Miami is the county seat of Florida's Miami-Dade County and the most populous city in the Miami metropolitan area. Miami is the most populous metro region in the Southern US after Washington, D.C. It is also one of the largest urban areas in the country, and a global city with the largest concentration of international banks in the United States.

Miami is broken into several areas: the North, South, West, and Downtown. Downtown Miami, located on the eastern side, is the heart of the city and includes Brickell and the Port of Miami, which is known as the Cruise Capital of the World. It's also the central business district for all of South Florida. South Beach is located to the east across the Biscayne Bay. Northwest of Downtown is Civic Center.

Southern Miami includes Coconut Grove and Coral Way, which is a historic residential area that was constructed in 1922. Coconut Grove was established in 1822. The west side of the city includes Flagami and Little Havana, and it's home to many traditional immigrant neighborhoods from Central America and Cuba.

Miami Population and Diversity

The city proper of Miami has 1 in 13 residents of South Florida, and 52% of Miami-Dade County does not live in an incorporated city.

In 2000, the most significant ethnic/national origin in Miami was Cuban (34.1% of the population), followed by Nicaraguan (5.6%), Haitian (5.5%), Honduran (3.3%), Dominican (1.7%) and Colombian (1.6%). The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) also ranked Miami first in terms of its percentage of foreign-born residents at 59%, followed fairly far behind by Toronto at 50%.

Miami Population Growth

Miami's tremendous growth has been driven by internal migration from other areas in the country through the 1980s, along with immigration. Immigration to the city has slowed a great deal in the last decade, and now Miami's growth is due to a fast urbanization rate and high-rise construction, which has increased its population densities in inner city regions, most notably Downtown and Brickell. In one area of Downtown Miami, there was a 2,069% increase in ten years.

Nearly 32% of Metro Miami's growth in 2011 was foreign-born, and more than half went on to become US citizens. While South Florida's population has been relatively stagnant for a decade, it's starting an unexpected shift upward, with Miami-Dade's population growing 2.1% in one year. It's now the 6th fastest growing region in the United States when it didn't even make the top 50 from 2000 to 2010.

It's possible that Miami's metro population will top 7.5 million by 2040, although projections do show this population will be disproportionately older.

The Miami region was inhabited for thousands of years by indigenous people of the area, most notably the Tequestas, who occupied this region for 1,000 years before Europeans arrived.

In 1566, an explorer named Pedro Menendez de Aviles claimed the area for Spain, and a mission was built just a year later. Great Britain and Spain then alternated control of Florida for years until Spain ceded it in 1821 to the United States.

The United States constructed Fort Dallas in 1836 to remove local Seminoles, and it became the first major city in the country conceived by a woman, a local citrus grower named Julia Tuttle. For much of its early history, Miami was known as Biscayne Bay Country, and it wasn't until the very end of the 19th century that its potential was seen.

Miami was incorporated in 1896 with just 300 people, but it began to attract many people from the north, and it grew massively during the 1920s. By 1940, Miami had a population of 172,000, and the wealthy Cubans who left after Fidel Castro came into power in 1959 further boosted the city's population. In just 110 years, Miami and its metropolitan region grew from 1,000 to 5.5 million, and it's been known as a popular resort destination for nearly as long.