Tagged: Miami

A conference looking at how Miami can become a nebula for technology start-ups is taking place Wednesday at the New World Center on Miami Beach.

Called Start-Up City: Miami, the conference is in part the brain-child of urban studies expert Richard Florida who lives part-time in Miami Beach.

Florida is a senior editor at the Atlantic and runs an institute for the study of economic prosperity at the University of Toronto.

When Florida sued to overturn the Affordable Care Act, lawmakers targeted a piece of the law that would have forced Florida to make Medicaid available to more than a million uninsured Floridians.

The U. S. Supreme Court upheld most of the act but it made Medicaid expansion optional.

Now some Florida lawmakers who originally opposed Medicaid expansion are seriously considering that option.

The Overtown section of Miami was the heart and soul of music during the early to mid-1960’s.

It developed as Southern and Bahamian blacks relocated to Miami area to work on Henry Flagler’s railroad.

As they prospered, so did the club and performing arts scene.

Other venues included the Rockland, Palace, the Harlem Square Club, the Cotton Club, the Ritz Theater, the Mary Elizabeth Hotel and the Sir John, to name a few.

Is Miami the city of the future? What economic challenges does it face going forward? Jeremy Hobson hosts a roundtable discussion with Paola Iuspa-Abbott, a reporter with the Daily Business Review, Andrea Heuson, a professor of finance at the University of Miami, and Dan Grech, formerly of Marketplace and now the news director at WLRN Miami Herald News.

One of the questions Marketplace asked: What is the biggest economic problem in South Florida right now? 

Florida we love you, but not the way you drive.

That about sums up the audience reaction to something that Marketplace Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson mentioned on Wednesday morning.

Miami is a city made up of people from all walks of life. No one knows that better than Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado.

"Miami is one of the most diverse cities in the world," says the mayor. "Sixty-some percent of people living in Miami were born outside the United States."

Regalado is one of them. Born in Cuba, he came to the United States at age 14. After a distinguished career as a journalist , Regalado was elected mayor in 2009.

Marketplace Morning Report will spend the first week of President Obama's second term broadcasting from Miami and demonstrating what some of the president's inaugural themes mean in real life.

The raw materials for show host Jeremy Hobson and his production team of three are Miami's huge immigrant population, its great wealth and crushing poverty, and the enormous empty space between those economic extremes.

For the second time in less than five years, Miami-Dade County is looking to take its zoo to the next level - assuming the next level is possibly a Main Street USA theme park.

The Miami Herald reports that the county invited developers to propose plans for the vacant land surrounding Zoo Miami. "Basically," writes the Herald,"an open-ended plea for bright ideas, conceptual schemes and - this is key - private financing," 

The Miami Dolphins' proposed deal to use state and local tax dollars to renovate Sun Life stadium is getting some big endorsements.

But the  benefits a renovated stadium would bring  the county are questionable, some economists say.

It's election year in the region's largest city and the race for Miami mayor has just become a little more interesting. City Commissioner Francis "Frank" Suarez, 35,  will officially announce a challenge to incumbent Mayor Tomas Regalado today.