Miami's most important New Year's resolution should be to improve its image as a serious world city to the rest of the United States.
It is one of Miami's most peculiar qualities: to be considered a premium city abroad while not being taken very seriously at home.
I have given lectures on Miami as a world city at universities in South America, Europe, and Asia.
Almost without exception, Miami's stature in those continents is self-evident, even if the audiences' actual knowledge of our city is limited.
But, behold irony, when I speak about Miami inside the United States, I often find myself up against prejudice and bias.
One reason lies in Miami's unique geography.
It is the only city of its kind to have risen to international - indeed, global - prominence before it has become a major city within the country.
Another reason lies in the recent nature of Miami's transformation. Thus, while we take Miami's world city status almost as a matter of fact, to the north many people just haven't got the news yet. In the rest of the United States, old stereotypes of Miami live on.
Since the early 1960s, Miami's image in the United States has hinged on issues of Cuba politics, immigration, drug trade, crime, and tourism.
The widely popular and internationally acclaimed TV series from the 1980s, Miami Vice, added glamour and zest - and helped put in place another caricature.
More serious depictions of Miami, in the scholarly and popular literature, almost all focus on Miami's unusual ethnic composition and its qualities as a 'foreign' place.
Take, for example, three prominent books on Miami from the last seven years: Portes' and Stepick's City on the Edge (1993), Garcia's Havana USA (1996), and Muir's expanded edition of her original 1953 book Miami USA (2000).
All these accounts point to ethnic relations as the defining characteristic of Miami.
The problem is that these accounts obscure a more gradual, even stealth-like transformation of Miami into a world city.
The story of "Havana, USA" is so catchy that it overshadows the unprecedented emergence of Miami as a central city in a large international economic region, Miami as the first global city of its kind in the USA.
Isn't it ironic that northerners often view Miami as a parochial place in which ethnic politics are the only show in town, the kind of 'local' place that is out of synch with the rest of the world, or at least the rest of the country.
Unfortunately, events in the past year have not helped. The almost farcical roles of Florida and Miami in the presidential elections were an aberration. No one here was to be blamed and it could have happened anywhere else in the country - but it still hurt.
Much more damaging, and partially self-inflicted, was another episode earlier in the year: the Elian Gonzalez affair.
As some commentators said, it was "the story that would not go away."
Apart from the terrible human drama of the story, it set this city back several years in terms of its image as a serious world city. Divisiveness, petty politics, populism, narrow-mindedness, yelling and screaming, flag-waving, the ways local politicians presented themselves on national TV, all of that served to reinforce that old image of Miami as a weird place, out of control, and out of touch with the rest of the country.
And when we finally thought it had gone, the story made a final reappearance just before the end of the year. Local and state politicians hinted that the appointment of Donna Shalala as the new president of the University of Miami - a terrific appointment, by any standard, and of great value to Miami-Dade - might have negative repercussions because she is a member of the Clinton Administration that was responsible for handling the Elian affair.
Let's get serious. Miami faces important challenges and it is a city with enormous opportunities. In a world city, there is no room for parochialism.
Jan Nijman is professor of Geography and Regional Studies at the University of Miami.