Local Diagnosis (Miami)

In Miami, the urbanism situation is similar to Phoenix and Los Angeles. Miami has a low population density, low urbanization, and no definable border for growth; environmentalists still struggle to keep the Everglades from being destroyed even more. 

From a bird’s eye view, there are the frustratingly curvy streets which appear to bring the driver nowhere in particular. Then there are the flat-roofed houses that go on for miles with no escape until suddenly a four-lane street parallel to shopping centers and parking lots pops up.  This brings us to the question of whether or not Miami is actually a “city”. The "city" spreads from the coast to interior wetlands with no way for us to tell if there is even a center (except for some sky-scrapers; and though I must admit that Miami has a beautiful skyline, it's too bad the streets below are not very attractive for leisurely pedestrian activity). The fact that The New York Times named Florida the most dangerous state for pedestrians is now self-evident (Winter). This city, not including downtown, Coral Gables, and Miami Beach, looks like it’s been built according to automobile scale. Initially it was not so, until repeated waves of immigration caused the sharp increase in population, giving city planners no time to think and so, they created sprawl. Now Miami is no longer a metropolis, but instead, it belongs to a specific group of newly planned and built cities: megapolises.

from Miami Real Estate Attorney Blog

Miami, not surprisingly also has a high ecological footprint per capita as well. The Miamian household uses a lot of resources and produces a lot of carbon dioxide to air-condition an often energy- inefficient, unsustainably-built house-- many Miamians see unnecessary living space as a norm And considering that each adult household member must drive their own car to get around, Miami has a higher average ecological footprint per capita than many other American metropolises, like New York City and Philadelphia.  It’s understandable though that people want to enjoy their privacy, their own back yards, and their freedom to design their homes whichever way they please. At the same time, Forbes labeled Miami the most miserable city for 2012, after  it “surveyed 200 of the nation’s largest metro areas, rating them on violent crime, unemployment rates, foreclosures, property and income taxes, home prices and political corruption” and including other factors such as “daily commute times, weather and how the pro sports teams fared” (Madan). While this tag has been controversial, especially because many do not know if the reporter was referring to Miami-Dade County or the City Of Miami, the traffic congestion and the large economic gap often resulting from urban sprawl or poor city planning would contribute to this. In order to create a healthier, more communitarian life style in the United States, which we will need to cope in a difficult century, certain sacrifices are necessary—that means taking cul de sacs, huge parking lots,  and abandoned malls and turning them to pedestrian-friendly areas. Once this is done, our distorted American Dream will be restored, and our negative creations will become positive environments.  

Let's Look at the Facts: 

We could begin by looking at Miami and seeing what’s wrong with it. In Miami, almost the entire population relies on a car to go anywhere. To buy cereal, go to a friend’s house, use a treadmill, we need a car. We have no effective transit system. Most buses come only weekdays and the one and only Metrorail comes every 15-30 minutes. We have to make a “voyage” to complete every single task.  Therefore, our neighborhoods also remain dull and dead. Streets are usually just driven on, never interacted on. Much of Miami consists of so-called bedroom communities.

1. Problem one is the singular purpose of neighborhoods. Jane Jacobs claims that what keeps neighborhoods alive (she uses Morning Side Heights, New York City and North End, Boston as examples) is having both businesses and homes in a neighborhood— in other words, creating mixed-use neighborhoods. Rarely will you find places for recreation, residence, and work in the same place in Miami. Most residential neighborhoods are close to, but separate from uniform strip malls that contain a Staples, a Big Lots, and a Publix. The neighborhoods are always come-and-go rather than stay-and-converse. With Miami’s great weather and entrepreneurial potential, a variety of businesses both small and large, could thrive in different corners of the city. Having a variety of small and large businesses underlies a strong economy because these businesses begin to specialize and become more interesting to more people. Mixed-use neighborhoods increase walkability, and walkability can have economic benefits, for example on the housing market.

Notice how the majority of The Village of Cutler Bay's zoning is reserved for single-family homes and how residential neighborhoods are clearly separate from commercial areas (from Cutler Bay government website).

2. Another reason many neighborhoods in Miami remain “negative” and unsustainable is the inconvenience of walking or biking. The only way to get people out and about is to provide a manageable way of getting there. Places that serve for entertainment like movie theaters, malls, and cafes are not walking distance from homes, as one could see in the zoning map above. Even if the average Miamian would be okay with walking a lot, they would soon grow tired of it. Distances in Miami seem longer than distances in New York because streets are longer, sidewalks meander so inconveniently, and sometimes they disappear—again, Miami’s infrastructure problems will cost more to repair the longer we wait. Sidewalks switch sides of major roads like US1 or the more scenic, but often congested Old Cutler Road. Distances also often feel longer because of the predictability of the building types. Only single-family homes are in sight. After a fifteen to thirty minute walk, the pedestrian finally reaches a place somewhat commercial. For now, the separation between commercial and residential areas keeps people off the streets. Residential neighborhoods are like ghost towns—people leave during work hours. Commercial areas on the other hand, like downtown neighborhoods, with only banks and offices are dead during the afternoon to night because they serve no other purpose than for work. And in other commercial areas, with restaurants and bars, we find the mix of people, but also only after work hours. 

Jane Jacobs suggests that instead of having this polarization of negative and positive places, neighborhoods need mixed primary uses. While Miami has so much of what it takes to become a sustainable metropolis with its cultural and ethnic diversity, neighborhoods separate people from different socio-economic backgrounds. For example, Coconut Grove, though it’s one of Miami’s oldest communities, is separated into the poorer, African American neighborhood and the much wealthier white and Latino neighborhood. Even so, Coconut Grove can boast a small urban center. However in many other neighborhoods, like Cutler Bay or Palmetto Bay, farther south and closer to rural Homestead, there is no actual urban center--only a cluster of strip malls and convenience stores here and there. Florida in general lacks the traditional corner stores (they did exist once, in South Miami, for example) which would draw some pedestrian activity; instead it has convenience stores where people park, buy, and drive off. With all of the parking lots often engulfing these convenience stores to make them look like little islands, pedestrians find it more difficult to walk to them. Safety becomes a big issue for those who want to walk because cars speed by so quickly that it’s unnerving. Looking closely at the “commercial” area of my neighborhood, Cutler Bay, the sidewalks border the streets. In a city you find the sidewalk separated by a safe distance from the street and often with an extra corridor of parallel parked cars in between. In Cutler Bay, besides switching sides of the road or walking on the grass or dirt when the sidewalk disappears, pedestrians fear being hit by a car when walking or biking. And why bother walking or biking if it just becomes a hassle. 

What also keeps our neighborhoods uninteresting is the lack of diversity in building types. Jacobs asserts that building diversity keeps people drawn in a distinct area. In South Dade, you do not find any subtleties in architecture, nor in building purpose. US1, the only actual commercial area spans for miles, with no hope for pedestrian activity. Most walking is done within strip malls which only contain restaurants or banks. Within one strip mall, you will not find a boutique and a pizza parlor side by side. Instead you will find an ice cream shop, a big box grocery store, and a Best Buy. And the strip malls often copy each other. A difference in architecture age doesn’t exist. Most buildings side by side are new and identical looking. Urban planners with knowledge of what makes a healthy city know that different building ages allow for different businesses to move in. Small businesses which do not have the money to pay rent for a newly furnished building, and big businesses which do, stand next to each other. However, in Miami, gentrification often allows Wal-Mart and Target to take over.

 In residential areas on the other hand, especially newer ones, identical homes are built by the hundreds each day. They just pop up one by one and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference which one was built first (because of our tendencies to storm-scape. They attract the same people from the same socio-economic background, and so it is expected that when there’s one foreclosure, dozens of others will follow. This cookie cutter crisis contributes to further standardization of city architecture and to every urbanite’s fear: The Great Blight of Dullness. While neighborhoods often become generic, inhabitants of those homes also become unexposed and isolated. Lennar Corporation developments keep building out west. On 157^th Avenue (almost as far west in South-Dade County as it gets), little progress is being made. Empty fields have been built on with cookie-cutter homes and occasionally, a separate CVS accommodates the residents. Separate from the neighborhood is the park: an empty grass field. Even the park has not been spruced up like Jacobs would recommend. It serves one purpose only, for joggers and dogs to play. A park should have well-defined borders in a neighborhood for emphasis. The park itself, in order to bring a variety of people to it, should have different amenities. A park close to my home, Coral Reef Park, has served its purpose well because it has walking paths, beach volleyball "courts", tennis courts, baseball fields, a playground, picnic tables, a meditation garden, benches, and outdoor exercise machines. The park is also surrounded by homes, fairly crowded streets, and an elementary school (and a bus which stops once in a while across the street!). Many parks in Miami will not contain such diversity, and therefore they attract one type of visitor only. These parks are abandoned and become convenient hang outs for derelicts instead of being surrounded by interesting buildings. They also become this because they are separate from homes. Neighbors should serve as the police force, but this can’t happen when no one’s there during the evening. If three areas, the residential, the recreational, and the commercial, are kept separate due to the lack of diversity of purpose and building type, how can safety actually be assured? 

Safety is a huge problem that has also contributed to Miami’s lack of pedestrians. Not only is there a culture of fear here due to media as there is all over the country, but the emptiness of neighborhoods through so much car use. The car becomes the safe haven, but as a result sidewalks are empty. When sidewalks are empty, crime goes unnoticed. The lack of safety in suburbia becomes a positive feedback loop. Now, the trend that used to be typical for the rich and famous has become a ritual even for the middle class—residents lock themselves in glamorously named gated communities—Serenity, Cutler Cay, Three Lakes to name some local examples. The situation has increased the overall lack of trust in our fellow city dwellers, as was recently seen in the case of Trayvon Martin, whose death, which has been linked to racial tension and gun control, could have also resulted from our fear of others as a result of our suburban isolation. Profiling results from a lack of contact with another “type” of person and societal separation, especially as seen in gated communities which create this atmosphere for their residents. Sidewalks are also continuously abandoned as a result. However, more dangerous is how children in Miami and suburban America become dependent on adults. Suburbia is a perfect example of an overly matriarchal society which puts children at risk of being confined and growing up in a “bubble”. The lack of contact between children in a neighborhood inhibits the child’s social skills. Mothers constantly have to chauffeur their children, and in the end, everyone is trapped. What a parent thinks may be beneficial for the family isn’t. 

 Pedestrian activity is of course dangerous in Miami because of the risk people face when crossing three-lane streets, and highways which often block paths. This is something that can only be changed through retrofitting and setting true boundaries on sprawl-like growth. South Florida’s roads are “dangerous by design” leading to preventable deaths on “streets engineered for speeding cars with little or no provision for people on foot, in wheelchairs or on a bicycle" (Winter). Each of Florida’s cities, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville were ranked among the worst for pedestrian activity in the “Pedestrian Danger Index” administered by Transportation for America. It comes to no surprise that  in 2007 and 2008, more than 9,000 pedestrians died after being hit by cars and trucks reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and that three bikers’ deaths have occurred in the last three years due to hit-and-run accidents (Winter). 

Compactness and density play huge roles in the success of a healthy urban place. In Miami, cookie cutter neighborhoods and gated communities have in fact become compact, leaving only ten feet between homes, however, the compactness does not serve the purpose it should. Family 1 on the second floor of its house could easily peer into the backyard parties of Family 2. Concentration is key, but privacy still becomes an issue. Also, compactness is useless if a small number of people live in each building. There are not enough people in a given area for there to be any social interaction. 

More specifically, my “village”, Cutler Bay, is a severely automobile- dependent community due to Euclidian zoning regulations, the traditional zoning law which initially was designed to prevent overcrowding, now allows for sprawl. If you look at the above map of Cutler Bay, the majority of the area is marked in yellow because it only allows for one housing type. Compare this map to Portland’s and you will notice how much more mixed-use (colorful) it is. This not only separates socioeconomic classes through the type of housing in each area, but commuting by car is often necessary and unfortunately also complicated. Many streets are no through streets; the cookie-cutter neighborhood and the central shopping center in front of it are kept separate by zigzagging streets. The majority of the zoning also permits for single-family homes only. Parking lots engulf all businesses so that what is next door takes much longer to get to. As a result of this zoning, the few convenient streets are overused, and therefore always traffic-congested. Traffic patterns are on the whole, slow and heavy. Surprisingly no bus route passes through these streets, so people living nearby, but not next door, must take a car to get to a business and getting out of the village becomes a hassle too. Also, being a pedestrian in these parts is not recommended, as crosswalks are nearly invisible, sidewalks are only on one side without a curb and too close to the road, and in order to get to the businesses, one must cross an often bustling parking lot. Valuable corners are given away to gas stations. Many lots are empty fields of grass in between businesses. Some businesses have windowless walls facing the street or sidewalk. Because little pedestrian activity can be expected here, the area becomes deserted.