West 8 Urban Design and Landscape Architecture

Miami real estate is booming as never before—but rising sea levels driven by global warming might mean a major bust. The mayor, climate scientists, West 8 and other experts are tackling the dilemma reports Vanity Fair.

“With its Dutch roots, West 8 knows a thing or two about resilience.” Especially considering that much of the country lies below sea level, and is protected by a series of dikes and dams. West 8 has been working in the Miami area since 2009 and is and has been involved in a number of resilient landscape and urban design projects, such as SoundScape Park and Miami Beach Convention Center.

Nevertheless, the bigger picture demands bigger solutions, since even a conservative estimate of two to three feet of sea-level rise by the year 2100, would still have a devastating impact upon the city of Miami Beach as it currently exists. West 8 together with other design professionals explored these in the symposium Miami 2100, earlier this year in a panel entitled "Designing the Resilient City".

More realistically, the city of Miami Beach will have to take radical, massively ambitious measures to preserve itself. West 8 New York employee Isaac Stein’s senior thesis tackled this very subject on a city wide scale. Stein’s Miami Beach plan proposes not only mitigation measures similar to those the city is already pursuing but also some bold adaptation strategies, such as raising entire neighborhoods on stilts, bringing in streetcars to replace automobile traffic, and cutting into the west side’s broad north-south avenues to create canals and culverts; channels into which the encroaching seawater could flow without overwhelming the city.

Stein’s project and the article continue ongoing debate on how to nurture innovation and build resilience against climate change and sea level rise at Miami Beach. A subject West 8 continues to engage with both through professional practice and academic discourse.