Karin Dryhurst

Not Just a Ghost Town for Count Basie

Just arrived back in New York after a weekend at home in South Florida. People often ask me what it would take for me to move back there. More mass transit and places like Michael’s Genuine. Less I-95 and strip malls.

The issue with the Miami area is a familiar one. Local leaders have allowed downtown Miami to crumble and decay while the suburbs and exurbs sprawl ever outward into the Everglades.

The Miami Herald’s Andres Viglucci just profiled a pair of entrepreneurs in the Overtown neighborhood—an area with a vibrant cultural history but a median household income of around $13,000. The business owners have begun patching the roads and landscaping the rubble with their own money. Sure, there is a clear profit incentive for these property owners to increase the value of the land. But Brad Knoefler lives and works in a mixed-use building he renovated in the neighborhood, making him a little different than an international developer like Related Companies.

The pair wants the bulldozed Miami arena lot to become a park complete with community gardens and solar-powered art studios and wants the old railroad tracks to be landscaped. But the local community redevelopment agency has yet to sign on.

Viglucci goes on to mention other cities with activists taking redevelopment into their own hands but raises Cleveland as an example of a city encouraging its residents to reclaim its neighborhoods.

If the recession has taught us anything, it’s that suburbs aren’t immune to blight and the other problems commonly associated with cities. And central cities can innovate and flourish if the right investments are made, like Harry says in his Chronicle piece.

Meanwhile, studies from Brookings and the Harvard Business Review show people and businesses moving back to central cities. On an anecdotal level, even my most sun-loving friends have left or are considering leaving South Florida suburbs for cities like Washington, D.C., and New York.

Miami has the potential to be more than a beach mecca for tourists and wealthy snowbirds with a desolate and forgotten inner city. If only Miami was as willing to reinvigorate areas like Overtown as it is to invest in splashy condos on the coast. Well, I might just move back there.

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Posted at 3:11 PM, May 11, 2010 in Community Development
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