On March 18, 2020, at the request of the sponsor Vice Mayor Samuelian, City Commission approved Item C7 AE Resolution 2020-31217, directing the city administration to develop and launch an inspirational resiliency vision campaign to envision what Miami Beach will look like in thirty years or longer.  The campaign should illustrate the city’s resilience efforts, the fight against sea level rise, and the planned mitigation and adaptation measures the city envisions for the future.  

Miami Beach has recently participated in visionary resilience efforts with respect to sea level rise and mitigation and adaptation measures, including the 2018 Harvard Graduate School of Design three year study entitled: South Florida and Sea Level- The Case of Miami Beach, the 2018 Urban Land Institute Stormwater Resilience Program Review that encouraged a robust communications plan,  the University of Miami graduate Isaac Stein’s visionary plan for Miami Beach, the Southeast Florida Climate Change Compact Resilient Redesign design charette that explored future scenarios, and the UM School of Engineering Senior Capstone course focused on redesigning select city properties to be resilient in a future landscape, which all embraced the concept of “living with water.” 

Building on the city’s partnership with FIU, an inspirational vision campaign proposal was provided by the Florida International University’s Extreme Events Institute, Sea Level Rise Solution Center, and Miami Beach Urban Studios (Attachment 1 summary and Attachment 2 full proposal).  Overall, the proposal is for an inspirational long-term vision campaign that would be a global competition of alternative visualizations looking out 50+ years that will engage local, regional national and international stakeholders in public discussion.   This would include public forums and community outreach.  The end objective is not to select one single ‘winning vision’ of a city that can flourish and adapt to its nature-based challenges, but perhaps a subset of 3-5 finalists.  FIU proposes to raise funding to assist with the campaign and the award.  Planning would take place through the reminder of 2020.

The Chief Resilience Officer, Environmental and Sustainability Director, and the Marketing and Communication Director met with FIU and reviewed this proposal.  The proposal will require staff resources to implement the campaign, which would need be defined in the coming months. Staff will meet further with FIU to assess roles, develop a timeline and tasks, approval processes and to examine staff resource needs to define this new resilience vision campaign.  

The administration welcomes feedback from the Land Use and Sustainability Committee.  A formal Memorandum of Agreement will need to be developed and presented for the City Commission for approval.