The FDOT study for the redesign of Miami’s Calle Ocho
corridor is reaching crisis proportions
Every time FDOT has a new meeting on the world-famous and
historic Calle Ocho corridor, it introduces plans that run more counter to
complete streets.
Iffy stats contribute to the feeling that the community is
being ignored.
Dozens if not hundreds of American cities large and small
have torn down highways, shrunk lanes, widened sidewalks, built Transit
Oriented Development and introduced a host of design guidelines aimed at
mobility equality for human beings -- on foot, on bike, in wheelchairs, on
public transit.
Every measure of the future suggests mobility via individual
car ownership will decline.
Yet FDOT seems hellbent on ignoring its own
complete streets guidelines and turning existing "Highway Ocho" from
bad to worse.
It couldn't come at a worse time.
Visionary developers, realtors and activists are doing
everything they can to re-invigorate Little Havana with adaptive re-use,
human-scaled infill and curated, mom and pop tenants.
An overwhelming majority of renters and home owners north
and south of Calle Ocho want a safe street to cross and development oriented to
humans, not cars.
Yet every indication, from very questionable analysis
numbers to drawings, shows that FDOT is intent on making the beloved Calle8
corridor nothing more than a streamlined highway into and out of
Brickell/downtown Miami.
Lots of urban advocates read this blog.
Please, get involved in advocating for complete streets and
human scale.
If you are local, come to a meeting and call an elected
official.
If you are national,
share this with the lists you belong this, make this part of the agenda of your
organization.
If you do not, you will forever be lamenting the passing of
Calle Ocho and Little Havana -- just like we mourn the passing of the Original
Penn Station decades later.
--I am posting this an individual, not as an affiliate of any for profit or non profit entity. My wife and I -- nearly 20 years ago -- bought and rehabbed an about to be razed 1920 house just blocks for Calle8. We love the corridor and want to preserve it.
