That I-95 rule is very true. It’s actually a valley effect — really nice places on the beach and intracoastal, progressively depressed as you move to I-95 (and in Broward extending in many cases to the Turnpike), then things slowly get better again the farther west you go. We moved from one end to the other when we had kids — from South Beach all the way out to the SW Broward ’burbs. My wife would have nothing to do with anything in between, even though it would have been closer to work for me.
I still find it hysterical when people refer to suburbia. To THIS New Yorker, ALL of South Florida is suburban. Even the urban areas are tract homes and strip malls.