Curator: Alexandra Faciu
Montréal, Canada
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Why we recommend it: A strong adaptation plan does not guarantee resilience. A decade after the ULI Advisory Services Panel set out a comprehensive strategy for the Arch Creek Basin, the area is still waiting for the transformation originally envisioned. The ideas proved durable: informing county policy, shaping two additional Adaptation Action Areas and helping unlock significant grant funding. However, implementation has lagged. Fragmented ownership, reduced federal support and new political constraints have slowed delivery, even as vulnerabilities continue to intensify. The Adaptation Action Area framework remains one of the county’s most effective tools, but the article makes clear that unified governance with a clear mandate is the prerequisite for turning technically sound plans into resilient, functioning places.
Key takeaways:
- A decade after the Urban Land Institute’s 2016 Advisory Services Panel proposed a comprehensive resilience strategy for the Arch Creek Basin, the area offers a clear illustration of why climate adaptation in South Florida advances more slowly than the risks it seeks to address. The basin, a 2,838‑acre drainage area in northeast Miami‑Dade County, had long faced repetitive flooding, FEMA losses and chronic vulnerability to king tides, sea level rise and extreme rainfall. Miami‑Dade designated it as its first pilot Adaptation Action Area and asked ULI to recommend ways to manage water, improve housing affordability and reduce storm exposure.
- The panel’s core ideas, building transit‑oriented development on higher ground, restoring natural drainage through a “city slough” park, and using transfer of development rights to shift density out of flood‑prone zones, proved durable. They shaped county policy, informed two additional Adaptation Action Areas and helped steer tens of millions of dollars in grant funding into neighboring watersheds. Yet the decade since has underscored the gap between having sound technical concepts and having the institutional capacity, governance structures and political will to implement them.
- Miami‑Dade’s resilience leaders describe the Arch Creek effort as ambitious from the outset. The panel organized its recommendations around four themes: social resilience for vulnerable populations, higher‑ground transit‑oriented development, restoration of historic drainage systems and coordinated governance across multiple municipalities and county land. Central to the vision were a future Tri‑Rail Coastal Link station at NE 125th Street and a large stormwater‑absorbing park.
- Many of these concepts migrated into the county’s 2021 sea level rise strategy, which adopted complementary adaptation approaches such as building on fill, creating green and blue neighborhoods and expanding green stormwater infrastructure. Several of these approaches trace directly to the Arch Creek recommendations. The Adaptation Action Area framework itself proved resilient: Little River followed Arch Creek, unlocking an estimated USD 50 million in grants, including septic‑to‑sewer conversions and green‑infrastructure‑based affordable housing redevelopment. Biscayne Canal became the third Adaptation Action Area in 2022/2023.
- Improved data has strengthened vulnerability assessments. The South Florida Water Management District notes that average sea levels near Arch Creek have risen roughly eight inches since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the G‑58 water control structure in 1959, prompting a study of how to replace it. Yet better data has not resolved the core challenge: fragmented ownership. Multiple agencies hold pieces of the resilience puzzle, but no single entity has the mandate to integrate them. This lack of unified governance remains one of the most significant barriers to implementation.
- Funding constraints have also slowed progress. Federal grants available during the Biden administration are no longer accessible, and Florida has enacted legislation limiting references to climate change in certain planning contexts. The Tri‑Rail station anchoring the transit‑oriented development vision is now targeted for completion in 2032—six years later than originally hoped—leaving a major component of the plan on hold.
- Miami‑Dade plans to revisit the original study to identify new opportunities for implementation. The lasting impact of the 2016 report may lie less in completed projects than in a shift in mindset: climate considerations are now embedded in every major decision. The basin has not yet become the resilient, transit‑connected neighborhood envisioned, but its four pillars, social resilience, high‑ground development, natural systems restoration and coordinated governance, now frame adaptation planning countywide.
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Alexandra is President of Alexandra Capital, an advisory firm providing consulting services in asset and portfolio management for real assets across Canada, the US and the UK, and the Founder of SAM Curated. Alexandra and her practice combine practical experience with research‑based insights on sustainable investing, asset and portfolio management, valuation and next gen, drawing on current studies and on original research and content they publish regularly to deliver tailored advice to their clients. She is frequently invited to speak at industry conferences and sits on the RICS Governing Council.
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