East Grove vs. West Grove

East Grove vs. West Grove

One of the top definitions of Miami in the website Urban Dictionary is “The city to be if you want to get your shine on.” Further along the site, it states, “Miami is known for its wild nightlife, beautiful people, flashy cars, bums who stand on the street corners with signs begging for your cash flow…” The overall feel the city of Miami gives is a fast paced social class life where partying with attractive people happens every night. Despite all the exclusivity and extravagance that Miami seems to exude to the outside world, the real Miami life is predominantly made up of the lower and middle class with the upper class actually being a very low percentage. There is a physical and intangible division that has been gradually growing between the social classes, which is blatantly clear in neighborhoods like Coconut Grove.

To the tourist, Coconut Grove means Cocowalk and the surrounding area similar to it. However, to the local inhabitants of Miami, Coconut Grove consists of two locations: East Grove and West Grove. The East Grove is the part of the Grove that people associate Coconut Grove with: the rich living in homes like the Cloisters on the Bay, spending as much money they can at their leisure. Audis and Porsches are a common sight to see on the street as well as college students drunkenly roaming around at night after a long night of drinking. To the astonishment of many tourists, there is a section of the Grove called the West Grove, which is a neighborhood that is on a complete opposite spectrum of the East Grove appearance wise. The West Grove is made up of dilapidated houses, some of them abandoned and deteriorating, with the streets dead at night. It’s known by locals as the part of the Grove to avoid at night. These two locations starkly contrast each other but even so, they are in very close proximity to each other where one can literally take a few steps to be on either sides of the Grove. There is no gradualism between the East and the West; there is a shrouded but definite line where the locations split. The dichotomization between the social classes in Coconut Grove has grown exponentially that it has become a neighborhood fragmented into two sub-sections: the upper class neighborhood and the lower class neighborhood.

A very noticeable detail of the East and West Grove is that it is uncommon to see someone from the West Grove in the East and vice versa.  You will never see someone from the Grove walking on the streets of their respective counterpart. The closest it will ever get is that people from the East Grove will drive through the West Grove to reach US1. Both sections of the Grove have a fair amount of people occupying their area; however, for the East Grove, it is mainly due to commercialism and for the West Grove, it is just people loitering and hanging out. In spite of the many differences that each location has, both Groves seem to agree on one thing: to ignore this social division. The East and the West Grove have glaringly physical differences but both seem to choose to ignore the other’s way of life. People from each section live life as if the other doesn’t exist and refer one as the “rich section” and the other as the “bad section”. Coconut Grove should refer to only one place, not two sections. This division is due to the fact that each section chooses to disregard this gap that is continuing to widen even further, causing this issue of social disjunction to develop. This separation has grown to be so bad that finding a solution to resolve this issue is almost to the point of being impossible – that is, unless an idea can be thought of soon to alleviate this social issue.