An astute observer of the history of Greater Miami once insisted that its story be told in short paragraphs since change came rapidly, and in dramatic fashion.

Clearly, this is the case of the five Miami-Dade neighborhoods we are journeying through today: Little Haiti, downtown Miami, Miami Beach, Hialeah and Kendall.

They are each rich in history and marinated with their own flavors, imbued with culture, architectural richness, immigration stories and natural beauty. And the “Miami By Air” drone video series, a special project of the Herald, captures their streetscapes in a unique drone’s-eye view.

Here, then, let’s explore:

Before there was a city of Miami, there was Lemon City, a grandiose designation for a settlement that was never a city.

Vast, sparsely populated Dade County had little in the way of settlements and settlers in the period following the Civil War, when new arrivals, taking advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862, created a rising farming community six miles north of the Miami River on the edge of Biscayne Bay. Named for the lemon trees on the property of John Saunders, a Bahamian, Lemon City was home to many residents, white and Black, from the Bahamas.

Lemon City spread in three directions from its original center on Lemon Avenue, today’s Northeast 61st Street, and Biscayne Bay, becoming by 1895 the largest settlement on the southeast Florida mainland, with 350 residents.

By the 20th century, farming gave way to other endeavors, and Lemon City, with its railroad station, school, library, light industry and retail sector, was annexed by the City of Miami. The community experienced sharp demographic changes in the second half of the century, as “white flight” opened the neighborhood to Haitian refugees, whose numbers rose sharply in the late 1970s and thereafter.

By then, it was known as Little Haiti, a name given it by Viter Juste, a Haitian businessman and community leader. The presence of industrious people embracing opportunities denied them in their homeland brought great energy to this rising immigrant community.

Lemon City’s historic downtown, running along Northeast Second Avenue between 54th and 62nd streets, soon hosted a variety of small Haitian-owned and operated businesses, including laundries, restaurants and book, variety, clothing and food stores.

Churches also arose along Northeast Second Avenue. The beautiful Caribbean Marketplace opened on the street in the late 1980s; two decades later, the adjacent cultural center, an alluring complex offering art classes, an art gallery and various activities, opened to broad acclaim. More recently, the new, picturesque Notre Dame d’Haiti Catholic Church arose on the former site of a girls’ Catholic high school.

In the meantime, the quarter’s growing population has expanded along the northeastern corridor into the Little River neighborhood, parts of Miami Shores, North Miami and North Miami Beach. Little Haiti continues to hold out hope for an industrious population chasing the American Dream, even while its core area faces gentrification pressures as large, ambitious mixed-use projects are planned for it and nearby areas.

What threatened Lemon City’s primacy as the largest, most important settlement on the southeast Florida mainland was the rise of the new City of Miami in 1896.

Just one year earlier, the settlement counted only nine residents living along both banks of the Miami River near its mouth. Among them was Julia Tuttle, who lived with her two children on the north bank of the stream and who convinced Henry Flagler, the oil and railroad baron and developer of Florida’s east coast, with promises of choice land, to extend his Florida East Coast Railway south to the Miami River.

Miami grew quickly following the railroad’s entry and incorporation in 1896, with its retail, financial, institutional, entertainment and residential base downtown. Centered on Flagler Street, downtown remained “ground zero” for a rapidly growing area through the early years following World War II.

This status began changing in the century’s middle decades with the rise of suburbia and the attendant growth of shopping centers and malls as more people moved away from the area’s historic center. By the latter years of the 20th century, downtown had declined sharply from its glory days.

In the past two decades, however, as part of a national trend, many residents and institutions again have moved to the center city. Today’s downtown Miami is budding with many elements, some new and others older.

Many of the county’s most important institutions and attractions reside there, be it a vast system of courts, the Wolfson Campus of Miami Dade College, the FTX Arena, Adrienne Arsht Center, new science and art museums, a revitalized Bayfront Park, a rising railroad network and a stellar cultural center hosting HistoryMiami Museum and the main county library.

New residential condominium towers hover over every area of downtown, and new investment continues to flow into the area.

Miami Beach is a “child” of the City of Miami, as early Miamians swam in the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Miami-based developers began building residential communities south of today’s Fifth Street.

In 1915, the “Beach” incorporated as a municipality. Thirty years later, it stood at the pinnacle of America’s resort communities before experiencing a malaise that set it back for a few decades. This problem did not, however, detract from the rich residential community that continued to occupy large portions of Miami Beach.

The nonpareil renaissance of a blighted South Beach in the final decade of the 1900s was the catalyst for a stunning turnaround in the fortunes of the island. The old neighborhood with its Art Deco jewels now became the “go-to“ place for the beautiful and famous, and seemingly everyone else.

The success of this Ocean Drive-based presence rippled south to the tip, northwest to Lincoln Road, and north along Collins Avenue to the Fontainebleau Hotel and beyond. Struggling desperately to remain relevant prior to the ascendancy of the Art Deco District, these tired hotels and restaurants began to bloom again with new investment and increased patronage taking them forward.

Although far north of the Art Deco District, North Beach also contains many attractive offerings, including open beaches with lush landscaping, a compact downtown with stores and restaurants, and easier “navigability” for the ubiquitous automobile than cramped South Beach.

Far inland from the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean is the blue-collar, immigrant community of Hialeah, whose origins are as unique as any of the others under study here.

Hialeah was a product of early 1900s Everglades drainage, becoming the first city in Dade County to emerge from the swamp. It was also the beneficiary of the vision and largesse of Glenn Curtiss, its earliest developer and the possessor of early world speed records in automobile racing. He also attained the first pilot license in the United States and invented more than 300 airplanes or aircraft components.

Created in the 1920s as Florida was on the cusp of an unprecedented real estate boom, Hialeah, said to be a Seminole term for “Pretty Prairie,” quickly became the seat of industry in Dade County, as well as a city of “firsts” with dog racing, horse racing, jai alai, movie studios and an airfield.

Indeed, it was aviation and the nearby Pan American Field, the future Miami International Airport, that contributed greatly to the business and industrial activity of Hialeah. The city became the home base of major airlines, like Pan American Airways, Eastern Airlines and, later, National Airlines.

Most people outside of the area, however, knew of Hialeah for its eponymous horse race track, with its grand infield and its willowy flamingos.

The city’s affordable housing and small factories made it an ideal place for thousands of industrious Cuban refugees, who poured into the area, displacing a population with a strong Southern basis, following Fidel Castro’s ascension to power in 1959. With 95 percent of its population of 235,000 claiming Spanish as a first language, Hialeah can claim the highest percentage of Hispanics of any large city in the United States.

The city continues to morph, as yesterday’s aircraft parts and garment factories have given way to electronics and technology industries. The recent addition of a sparkling new campus of Miami Dade College filled with cultural offerings, the rising Leah Art District, dazzling boutique art galleries, and a robust wall art program have helped redefine this community as an art center.

Twenty miles south-southwest of Hialeah is vast, sprawling Kendall.

Known as late as the 1950s as “horse country” for its ranches and farms, Kendall’s story of growth since then has been meteoric. By the 1970s, Kendall was Dade’s fastest-growing community.

This trend accelerated in the 1980s and beyond as Kendall moved ever more deeply into western farmland. Giant housing developments with appealing names and a wide array of amenities arose in former tomato and strawberry fields.

This sudden growth resulted from the rush by developers to take advantage of a strong demand for affordable housing and the area’s convenient access, through new roadways and transportation corridors to other areas of Dade County. By the late 1970s, Kendall claimed more highways and expressways within its environs than any other area of the county. Soon after, Metrorail appeared, with two stops in Kendall.

Recent federal census data indicates that this sprawling community with its ill-defined borders contains more than 275,000 residents. Since the 1960s, its burgeoning population represented a huge retail market, which propelled Dadeland Mall into the ranks of the busiest shopping malls in the United States. Burdines, today’s Macy’s, was the largest suburban department store in the nation as the 21st century unfolded.

At the same time, planners and architects were reevaluating the suburban ethos of the area with a determination to create a “downtown” across broad North Kendall Drive from the Dadeland Mall. Since the early 2000s, Downtown Dadeland has offered residential accommodations, restaurants, offices and a retail sector while delivering to the community a long-sought urban core.

Paul George, Ph.D., is the resident historian at HistoryMiami Museum. A Miami native, he was a history professor at Miami Dade College, has written 15 books and served as president of the Florida Historical Society.

Aerial view of the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami. Photo by Matias J. Ocner, mocner@miamiherald.com