South Miami Suburb Revitalization
South Miami, needed a change and a facelift. It is a suburb of Miami that was once a desirable place full of stores and busy streets. Now, these stores are empty and the streets look like parking lots with wide lanes. The suburb has lost its appeal. So, the firm Dover, Kohl & Partners decided to give South Miami its much needed makeover, creating the “Hometown” 20-year plan. The plan gave the suburb an extreme “diet,” making it a very desirable location for residents of the area to frequent once again.
In a video provided by the firm, we learn about the strategies they used to revitalize this suburb, which sound very similar to strategies included in our White Flint Sector Plan. These strategies are:
1) Build walkable streets
2) Require street-oriented architecture
3) Embrace a mix of uses
4) Share parking with garages
5) Embrace transit
This is a great example for White Flint as we can see that the changes have certainly paid off. Check out the video and look for the similarities to the redeveloping happening here in the White Flint district.
Miti Figueredo
As a Miami girl, I can attest to the positive impact of these changes in South Miami over the last few decades… South Miami is an island of walkability and compact urbanism in a vast sea of sprawl. Now if they can just figure out how to retrofit the rest of the Miami-Dade area!