By MELENA RYZIK

NEW YORK - To be perfectly clear, Lin-Manuel Miranda did not grow up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, the physical and spiritual setting of his musical “In the Heights, which opened on Broadway last month. He was raised in Inwood, an area some blocks north with a similar landscape of immigrants, Spanish speakers and urban decay softened by panoramic vistas.
Why not stage a musical there?
“Washington Heights is hillier, it’s more climactic, it’s more well known, it’s more iconic, Mr. Miranda, who wrote the music and stars in the show, said.
But Mr. Miranda, 28 and a self-described nerd, did not hang out in the barrio depicted in movies like “Shaft. Instead he grew up commuting to the elite public Hunter College schools on the Upper East Side and making videos on his own. They were pursuits that his parents - Luis Miranda, a community-activist-turned-ticalconsultant, and Dr. Luz Towns-Miranda, a psychologist - supported. The neighborhood kids, he said, “would chill on the corner, and I would see them when I took out the recycling on Fridays.
He also spent summers with his grandparents in Puerto Rico, where he learned Spanish. At home he was looked after by Edmunda Claudia, a surrogate grandmother who was once his father’s baby sitter. A compulsive gambler, she let Lin- Manuel pull the arm on the illegal slot machines at the bodega. She appears in the show as Abuela Claudia .
The world of “In the Heights, which had its debut Off Broadway last year, is like that: an amalgam of personal detail and creative license, grounded in an environment that is as much pan-immigrant as it is pan-Latino, a familiar American dream set to a salsa and hip-hop beat. And so on a recent morning, Mr. Miranda offered a tour of a neighborhood that is half real and half invented. First stop: El Nuevo Caridad, at Broadway and 172nd Street.
“The Caridad is like the McDonald’s of Washington Heights, Mr. Miranda said . “There’s one every five blocks.
Mr. Miranda lived uptown for most of his life; after college at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he earned a degree with honors in theater studies and began writing “In the Heights, he shared an apartment at 212th Street and Broadway with two roommates. A rent increase, coupled with his theater schedule, recently drove him downtown, where he lives alone for the first time. But he still spends a lot of time above 170th Street, with his girlfriend or his parents, who still live in Inwood.
Next stop: J. Hood Wright Park, on Fort Washington Avenue between 173rd and 176th Streets, where Mr. Miranda was immediately recognized. “We just saw the show, a woman playing with her child shouted. “It’s so great to see you up in the ‘hood.
Grinning, Mr. Miranda was quick to say that this kind of thing never happens. “I think most people think of Washington Heights as the place where Jay-Z goes uptown to get his drugs processed in his songs, Mr. Miranda said on his next stop, a private park behind a co-op complex where his girlfriend’s parents live. “That wasn’t my reality growing up.
Looking out over the Hudson , he added: “Most people, when they think of Washington Heights, they don’t think of views like this. They don’t think of quiet.
Criticism that “In the Heights glosses over harsher realities doesn’t bother him. “I think it’s accurate, Mr. Miranda said “But you know, it’s a musical.