Future street

This book seeks to identify future street typology in the City of Miami for better adaptation to sea-level rise, hurricanes and flooding. Based on the current transportation system, streets in Miami could be improved and be more resilient during natural disasters and be more navigable after disasters have passed. Currently, urban streets in Miami always confront failure during and after hurricanes and flooding. Because of rising sea levels, these problems are going to increase in severity, which could have an even greater impact on people’s daily lives and recovery after disaster. Consequently, improving urban street typology in Miami could have the potential to ameliorate the problems and to provide a resilient urban street life example for other coastal cities. During phase one, the research will focus on identifying the current infrastructure issues, developing a comprehensive understanding of the origin of these problems, laying out any adaptation already in progress in Miami, suggesting additional adaptation, and defining the most vulnerable neighborhoods in Miami. During phase two, the research will focus on current street typology in the vulnerable neighborhoods in order to understand the specific issues within each layer of the selected streets and to study the precedents in the United States and in the Netherlands dealing with sea level rise and flooding issues. For phase three, the research is interpreted and absorbed into the design process. New street typologies with hierarchy will be developed, and it will be determined which issues can be improved and which cannot. The outcomes of this investigation will be a deeper understanding of Miami’s flooding streets, and typological methods that can be used to deal with similar problems elsewhere in the world