The answer is manifold:

The Real Estate Market:
Recently, I had a lunch in the vicinity of a wealthy Brazilian who dreamily spoke about buying his condominium in Miami Beach, like so many of the nouveau riche of Brazil in recent years having done the same. The problem with buying property in South Florida is that the buyers have no intention of ever moving to South Florida, they simply want their cheap pied-a-terre in the sun. One plausible reason, for instance, is that they have no intention relocating their families because what few private schools that give their children a chance in the wider world are not immediately available to them. There is no driver to improve on these services. So their properties languishes most of the year, empty, with no one adding to the local economy except that initial hit of the sale with the oncoming payments going to a bank elsewhere.

Industries That Add Little to No Intellectual Capital to the Surrounding Region:

Here, this is where I’m going to have to piggyback off of Dustin Thaler. Tourism is main “industry” in South Florida and tourism is a form of economic crack. Tourism is not production. When your economy is predicated by money methadone doses of disposable income via IV drip, you leave little room and incentive to develop any other means of production and innovation–except to create more production and innovation for tourism.

Lack of Prestigious Institutions of Higher Education:

The University of Miami. It ends there. Where else would a serious academic find work in that area? Where? The majority of major and metropolitan cities have multiple academic institutions of note in their vicinity.One can look at cities like New York City (Columbia, NYU, Hunter and Baruch Colleges), or Boston (Harvard, MIT, Berklee) or San Francisco (Stanford, University of California-Berkeley) and see the direct opportunities and their attendant satellite institutions to able to develop and reside in these cities on a permanent basis. Outside of CENTCOM, where else does Miami sport a concentration of thinking beings that could be called a think-tank?

Disincentive for Retaining Those in the Arts & Sciences:

I have said for many years that South Florida experiences a problem usually indigenous to the developing world–that many of its best and brightest leave South Florida and never return because the intellectual infrastructure does not support their development, or (most importantly) the salaries commensurate to their education and experience level. This “brain drain” continues unabated even to the time of this writing. Ashley Miller hit upon an observation that made me leave home for good and made me come up with a sort of corollary to it: that there were more tattoo parlors than there were bookstores when some fifteen years prior, the inverse was true.

Outside of the American Meteorological Society, what else is there for the scientist?

The City of Miami designated a section of the city to be its Design District. Ostensibly, it is a high-minded concept but the trouble is, Art is never designated, Art isn’t neatly corralled into quandrangular zones. Art isn’t fixed, it isn’t Cartesian, it’s organic. The city planners in their hubris, totally obviated this from their thought. Even their attempt to create a bantustan for artists has essentially transformed into a large-scale attempt to sell high-end furniture. Artists flee the city in response, not necessarily to the attempt but the lack of foresight on the part of the city planners to set something aside to allow them to CREATE, and attract art lovers and attract still more intellectual and artistic capital.

The “Wild West” Atmosphere Fostered By the Narcotics Trade of the 70’s & 80’s:

It goes back to a phrase many of us from South Florida take a perverse pride in: “South Florida, a sunny place for shady people”. I remember running around with my dad at age four and seeing 18-wheelers jammed to the ceiling and to the gates with black 30-gallon garbage bags filled with Marijuana. Weed, folks. Weed. That is more several human beings could probably smoke in a lifetime, I would think. And this was a common sight. Miami was such a lightly defended drugs transshipment point for such a long time–of course it would be an El Dorado for all the scumbags who came forth! Scarface and Miami Vice didn’t help things either. Old-timers in South Florida still speak of the 80’s with dew in their eyes.

Not to say the shady aren’t thinking people, more often than not, they are. When  an environment attracts a mass of individuals who live by their wits and fiat of brute force, there is little play for intellectual development. Money has to be hustled and made, thoughts and art take a backseat. But so much of the infrastructure is more blatantly tilted towards those who cheat, not create; those who hustle, not build. After several decades of an influx of miscreants–how could any intellectualism survive?

The Local Media:

The emphasis on the tacky, the sensational, the superficial pervades everything there. I am happy to leave this point undefended and leave myself at risk of nausea. All one needs to do is tune into Channel 7 news.

As we can clearly note, no Fulbright scholars here on the green screen.