The prognosis is not good. The scientific community is in near unanimous agreement: By the end of the century, Miami will be affected by sea level rise. Just how bad and how fast? It’s hard to say. But as Charles Waldheim, a professor at Harvard University’s graduate school of design, puts it, “If Miami chooses to persist, it’s going to be living with water in a whole variety of ways.”
For the last few years, Waldheim and a team of 50 Harvard graduate students have been taking a close look at the city of Miami and various ways we might be able to adapt to a rising ocean. He and his team even gave a presentation to the Miami Beach city commission this past April which, you may be pleased to hear, did not solely consist of one Powerpoint slide with the word “RUN” on it.
“I’m not of the people who argue that we should begin to pack up and retreat,” Waldheim says. “I frame this as more of a cultural choice. The physics are not trivial, but we built Miami artificially and we can decide to maintain it.”
What, exactly, might that maintenance might look like? It’s hard to point to one simple solution. Even though places like Venice or the Netherlands have shown remarkable adaptability when it comes to living with water, Miami is unique due to its foundation of porous limestone. Think of us as a city built on a sponge. Build all the levees you want but the water can still seep up underneath our feet.
So longterm fixes in Miami might not come as one sweeping solution, but instead be a series of tiny Band-Aids. Waldheim and his team offered some crafty ideas to the commission, like utilizing giant concrete water-holding cisterns throughout the city to capture rainwater. These massive bowls, Waldheim suggests, could be thoughtfully designed to double as public art, placed on roofs and parks around the city. Miami may also become very green in the future—literally. More mangroves and other strategic greenery planted around town would help soak up water. Canals may need to be dug deeper and roads elevated. Again, not “trivial,” as Waldheim says, but possible.
Good old ingenuity may also help us live in areas unable to be saved from the rising sea. Nicolas Derouin founded Arkup with his partner Arnaud Luguet two years ago. The concept: take a luxury house and make it float. Their prototype, which they’re building in Miami, is pretty stunning. You can drive it around or hit a button and four “studs” dispatch into the ground to create a stationary home capable of rising up and out of the water. The concept aims to be self-sustainable too, running on solar power and utilizing purified rainwater. They hope to have their first “livable yacht” finished this year.
Rendering: Courtesy Arkup
“This may not be the only answer, but it can be part of the answer to issues related to climate change and sea level rise,” Derouin says. “By showing what can be done with Arkup, this will open doors with developers to work on floating communities. That’s really the idea.”
If there is one clear solution to Miami’s wet future, it’s that we’ll need to get on the same page eventually and punch up a game plan.
“If there is the economic will and the cultural desire for it, Miami will be there,” Waldheim says.