Miami

Miami sits on a low, flat coastal strip in far southeastern Florida, wedged between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic on one side and the vast wetlands of the Everglades on the other. The youngest of America's big cities — incorporated only in 1896 — it rose on a ridge of limestone barely a few feet above sea level, the highest dry ground in a region of marsh, mangrove, and water.

The city is built on porous limestone over a shallow aquifer, with barrier islands like Miami Beach lying offshore across the bay. Its truly tropical climate — the only major U.S. city with one — and its position as the gateway between North and Latin America made it a center of trade, tourism, and immigration. That same low, flat geography makes it one of the most exposed major cities in the world to hurricanes and rising seas.

Miami anchors a dense metro of more than six million strung along the narrow strip between the Everglades and the ocean, a bilingual, subtropical hub facing the Caribbean and Latin America.