Miami leaders ensure Underdeck engages the community
When Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, it marked the largest public works and infrastructure program in U.S. history. It promised 41,000 miles of interstate highway development to connect cities and the nation’s growing population. Implemented between the late 1950s and the early 1970s, nationwide, more than 475,000 households and more than a million residents and business owners were displaced because of federal roadway construction.
It was Miami’s Overtown community, known as the “Harlem of the South” that suffered the displacement ramifications of I-95’s expansion — 87 acres of housing and commercial property were destroyed, and only 20% of the estimated preconstruction Overtown population remained after construction was completed.
While it is productive to look toward the future with a spirit of optimism, it is also prudent to bear in mind the admonition; “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In the case of Miami’s generational municipal project, The Underdeck, the Miami Commission has done both. It has facilitated an ambitious public space project beneath the reconstructed I-95/I-395, while addressing the egregious damage of the past with an intentional activation of community engagement.
As planning for the Underdeck was in its earliest stages, the commission had the foresight to sanction a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) establishing the Underdeck Committee, a diverse group of community stakeholders responsible for facilitating community engagement and collecting communitydriven recommendations on how the future Underdeck should be designed, governed, maintained and funded. While the people and interests of Overtown never were considered in the highway expansion project of the 1960s, today’s commission has activated our communities in an unprecedented manner to provide a grassroots blueprint for this greenspace.
While it may be novel for a municipality to hold a few public hearings for the sake of civic posturing, the collaborative efforts of the city’s administration and the
Underdeck Committee have been far more than just lip service. As documented in the publicly accessible Report of
Recommendations submitted to the city manager and a summary 2022 Year in Review, community stakeholder engagement for this project has been significant and quantifiable.
Just for some context, there are 124 members in our five working groups.
Last year there were 34 in-person and three virtual community meetings that involved more than 350 attendees. The local outreach by community liaisons yielded more than contacts. The naming and branding-focused community engagement alone produced over 2,000 survey responses supplemented by seven community focus groups that involved over 135 local attendees.
The effort to empower community voices has provided an extended benefit as the Florida Department of Transportation and the city of Miami have submitted a proposal to secure federal funding earmarked to repair the damage predicated by the 1956 Act of Congress. As part of the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan, the Reconnecting Communities Program has dedicated an average of $200 million a year until 2026 to projects designed to reconnect communities that were previously cut off from economic opportunities by transportation infrastructure.
By their sanctioning of the Underdeck Committee and the significant efforts made to involve the community in the planning of this project, the City Commission has ideally positioned the Underdeck to be a competitive recipient of this federal grant.
What’s next? The Report of Recommendations has been submitted to the city manager with a vote to consider these recommendations taking place in the next few months. As members of the Underdeck Executive Committee, we encourage the entire city to celebrate and commend the Miami Commission for its commitment to ensure that the Underdeck is truly a project of the people, by the people and for the people of Miami.
Visit our website, www.underdeckmiami.com, to get involved and offer your support for this generational project. As a collective community, we should all be proud of this impactful private-public sector collaboration.