After sunset, when the sky over Miami turns from indigo to black, the city’s downtown high-rise buildings are lit with neon strips of tropical blues and greens, giving Miami’s skyline a distinctive pop that seems to say, “Notice me.”

For a city in the business of pleasure ever since 1896 when Henry Flagler extended his Florida East Coast Railway to the present site of Miami, getting noticed was essential to Miami’s survival. Despite the challenges — disastrous hurricanes, real estate boom and bust cycles, the normal folly of urban politics and a nagging crime rate — Miami’s expanding educational, cultural and financial institutions; its numerous sports facilities (including the snazzy new Marlins Park baseball stadium); and a big increase in international trade have done wonders for the city’s reputation. With 410,000 year-round city residents — an almost 2.5 percent increase in the past decade — Miami is the economic and cultural powerhouse of Metro Miami/Dade County, with its overall population of 2.5 million Floridians.

Tourism, still the dominant industry in South Florida, is no longer the only large revenue producer. International trade and banking, especially with South American and Caribbean markets, has been a driving force in Miami’s economic development; thousands of multinational firms, almost 100 foreign consulates and scores of international trade offices opened in Miami in the past two decades.

Business travelers can start the day by awakening on the 40th floor of the new Hotel Beaux Arts and pushing a bedside button to open the room curtains, revealing the cream-colored office towers of downtown Miami and the blue-green expanse of Biscayne Bay. The 44-room Beaux Arts is an exclusive boutique property occupying the top three floors of the JW Marriott Marquis, constructed in 2011. With a Bang & Olufsen entertainment system in the room, you can pump up the Latin jazz or Verdi opera while watching Miami begin its day.

A few blocks south of the Beaux Arts, in the Brickell Financial District, is Edge Steak and Bar, the newly named and renovated restaurant at the 70-story Four Seasons Hotel and Residences, the tallest building in the city. Surrounded by many of Miami’s major corporate offices, including HSBC and PricewaterhouseCoopers in the same building, Edge is spacious and light-filled. The large, fully landscaped terrace, protected by a trellised canopy, is perfect for a power breakfast, Miami style. With soft Brazilian music in the background and fresh-squeezed orange juice, French toast, cereals and eggs on the menu, the venue offers a casual elegance without the high cost usually associated with Four Seasons dining. The large, eye-catching, black metal sculptures in the hotel lobby are by noted Colombian artist Fernando Botero.

Miami is a city where business meetings can be held in hotel and convention center conference rooms or within corporate boardrooms, but with dozens of attractive waterside neighborhoods and eclectic arts and cultural districts, it is just as likely business groups will get together at outdoor cafés, on nearby golf courses or in beachside restaurants.

The Design District — located between N.E. 36th and N.E. 42nd streets, from N.E. 2nd Avenue to N. Miami Avenue — has become known as the center for Miami’s interior design, furniture and architectural firms. In 1921, when early resident T.V. Moore converted one of his pineapple plantations to a commercial district by opening Moore’s Furniture Co., he turned a former agricultural region into a distinct Miami neighborhood. Like many inner-city neighborhoods, good times didn’t last forever, and by the early 1990s this close-to-downtown area was filled with derelict buildings.

Local developer Craig Robins, who was involved with the revitalization of South Beach, began purchasing many of these “eyesores” and restoring the neighborhood to its earlier function as a center for innovative design and home furnishings. The arrival of Knoll Furniture in 1998, Holly Hunt Design in 1999 and the move in 2003 by the Latin Academy of the Recording Arts and Sciences (the organization that hosts the Latin Grammys) to the Design District helped entice other firms to move here. Today, more than 150 wholesale and retail showrooms, galleries, antiques shops, creative service firms, restaurants and bars are testament to Mr. Robins’ vision.

Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink, opened in 2007, is a lively and popular bistro in the center of the Design District, offering fish and chicken grilled in a wood-fired oven, sandwiches and salads. Owner Chef Michael Schwartz, winner of the James Beard Best Chef South Award in 2010, also runs Harry’s Pizzeria a few blocks away, where a wood-fired oven serves some of the best thin-crust pizza in the city.

The mural at an auto repair shop in the Wynwood Arts District I Photo: © Ron Bernthal

Another new Miami neighborhood for entertaining clients or business partners is the Wynwood Arts District, located between N.W. 20th and N.W. 36th streets, from I-95 to N. Miami Avenue, just south of the Design District. While the Design District offers a traditional-looking landscape, Wynwood is definitely more eclectic, where street art is encouraged and amazing visual juxtapositions are around every corner. On the fringes of the district, dozens of long-established apparel and shoe importers share streetscapes with art galleries, colorful wall murals and hip coffee shops.

After many years of neglect following the closing of the area’s warehouses and small factories, developer Tony Goldman, also involved in the revitalization of South Beach and New York’s SoHo and Wall Street financial district, stepped in to purchase about two dozen buildings in 2004 and invited well-known street artists to decorate his buildings with colorful graffiti and murals. Art galleries, restaurants, photography studios, small museums and film and music businesses — all attracted to the lower rents and burgeoning art scene — followed, and developers of new residential lofts and mixed-use office/commercial buildings are responding to the demand for more space.

Wynwood Kitchen & Bar, along with the adjacent Wynwood Walls art park, opened in 2011 with Miguel Aguilar as executive chef and offers visitors an interesting indoor/outdoor restaurant for Latin-influenced small plates and dinners. The 20-foot paintings that hang in the restaurant and the graffiti-centered Walls art project outside are exciting to look at and reflect the artistic food and creative, artist-inspired cocktails served by the friendly staff.

A few minutes’ drive from Wynwood is The St. Regis, opened earlier this year, in the posh Bal Harbour neighborhood. The resort’s J&G Grill brings Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s classic menu to a beautiful dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean, another good place for that important business lunch.

The hottest place in town may be the new SLS Hotel at South Beach, which exudes sex appeal, decadence, great food and design all in one swoop. How could it not with Philippe Starck, José Andrés and Lenny Kravitz on the creative team? For a power lunch near the beach or afternoon cocktails among string-bikinied hotel guests, dress casually and reserve a table at the hotel’s Hyde Beach. Although not directly on the beach (two hotel swimming pools are adjacent), Hyde Beach’s bar, lounge and restaurant are hip and stylishly designed and will definitely impress whomever you bring.

You won’t find suntanned bodies at City Hall the Restaurant, but this Biscayne Boulevard property, opened in 2011, has become a lunchtime gathering spot for attorneys, court officers, real estate deal makers and city politicians. Opened by hospitality veteran Steven Haas, this friendly and casual place feels more like a small-town diner while looking like an urban brasserie. With artist Andrew Reid’s 80-foot light box mural on one wall and a menu selection that includes everything from fresh fish and steaks to pastrami sandwiches and mac ’n’ cheese, City Hall offers the best of an old-time Miami business restaurant.