A Streetscape Change Scheme Visualized in Miami Beach’s Buoyant City Guidelines. Source: Allan Shulman et al. 2020. Buoyant City: Historic District Resiliency & Adaptation Guidelines, Miami Beach.
Miami Beach is a city with both iconic architectural heritage and great climate vulnerability. While gifted with 4 National Register Historic Districts and 14 local historic districts, 93% of the city’s buildings are located within the 1% floodplain. As a national leader in flood adaptation planning and resilient infrastructure construction, Miami Beach has in recent years elevated streets in low-lying urban sections, and published a series of studies and plans on climate resilience (see for example, the 2018 Stormwater Management and Climate Adaptation Review, the 2019 Miami Beach Strategic Plan, and the 2040 Miami Beach Comprehensive Plan). In 2015, Greater Miami and the Beaches (GM&B) — as a coalition between Miami-Dade County, the City of Miami Beach and the City of Miami — was selected to join 100 Resilient Cities, a global initiative pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation. This initiative led to the creation of the Office of Resilience and the Chief Resilience Officer position in the City of Miami Beach, as well as regional studies (for example, Resilient 305) developed on GM&B scale. Recent efforts on regional flood resilience planning also include Miami-Dade County’s Sea Level Rise Strategy, published in 2021.
Miami Beach’s latest historic preservation response to the discourse on climate resilience and flood adaptation is found in Buoyant City, the city’s guideline for historic district resiliency and adaptation. Published in 2020 as the result of an interdisciplinary policy-making effort led by architect Allan Shulman, Buoyant City may in many ways be regarded as one of the most progressive and experimental guidelines of its kind made across the country. Advancing from existing design studies and flood retrofitting guidelines, Buoyant City features not only adaptation solutions on individual historic buildings, but also richly illustrated design strategies proposed on block and historic district scales. It also envisions changes in streetscape and street section brought by flood adaptation, and touches on the urban form impact of potential zoning incentives — such as ground-up additions and rooftop additions — that can be used to stimulate adaptation projects.
Ms. Debbie Tackett is the Chief Historic Preservation and Architecture Officer for the City of Miami Beach. During her time with the city, she has been responsible for overseeing the survey, research, and historic designation of 6 local historic districts, 3 National Register historic districts, and numerous historic sites and single-family homes; she has also guided new development projects within all 14 of the City’s historic districts. As a member of the city staff, she was closely involved in the making of Buoyant City.
This interview was carried out on Feb. 3, 2023 over Zoom. For more information on flood resilience planning in Miami Beach, please visit www.mbrisingabove.com. Further details of the Buoyant City guideline may be heard in “2100 and the Buoyant City,” a podcast featuring a panel discussion among those who are involved in the development of the guidelines.
“While historic preservation can’t be the full solution to climate resilience, it can be part of it."
Ziming Wang: Miami Beach is known as a city associated with both iconic architectural heritage and great climate vulnerability. What threat did recent flooding events pose to the city? Are there any specific challenges faced by Miami Beach’s local building types — such as urban cottages and art-deco hotels, as characterized in the Buoyant City guidelines?
Debbie Tackett: We have actually been very lucky with major hurricanes. Hurricane Irma of 2017 went through Miami Beach, but didn’t cause much flood or damage. More serious flooding is caused when king tide and major rain event happen at the same time — this “perfect storm” typically leads to both coastal flooding and standing water coming from underneath buildings. In the past two or three years, I’ve probably seen such combined flooding events around a dozen times. The multiple and interconnected causes of flooding remind us that it’s not enough to only look at sea level rise projections, and that our local resilience strategies should always take a wider range of climate risks into account.
Like New York City, Miami Beach has many unique urban building types. And yes, it can be hard to find existing flood adaptation guidelines that are tailor-made for historic neighborhoods with dense urban fabric. So we are on our feet to develop localized design strategies — and clearly, with such a great diversity in building types and styles, there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. The 1930s Art-Deco hotels are built before air conditioning became common, so they tend to have high ceilings and first floors above street level — which give them a head start and more flexibility in flood adaptation; without these features, flood adaptation may be trickier for buildings built after air conditioning became standard. Topology is another factor at play: The city’s section is in the shape of a bowl, with historic hotels along Ocean Drive residing on higher grounds, and those in the city center sitting a little bit lower.
Echoing your research, I would also say that streetscape is one of the most critical issues in the flood adaptation of historic urban built environment. In the making of Buoyant City, we studied a number of existing flood adaptation guidelines from other municipalities, which are mostly developed for detached houses on a building-to-building scale. However, in an urban historic district, the most significant impact brought by flood adaptation on local urban experience may not lie in architecture at all. More often, it lies in a building’s relationship with the ground — in other words, how it interacts with the sidewalk, planters, patios, and other elements within the public realm. So in our local design reviews, we’ve been paying much attention to these issues, which may come down to small but important details such as railing design; in the Buoyant City project, there are studies on how side yards may be adapted along with buildings, to continue to serve as semi-publics spaces that promote social interaction.
Ziming Wang: In the face of rising waters, how many historic buildings in Miami Beach have been rehabilitated for flood resilience?
Debbie Tackett: There are a total of around 2,600 buildings in our historic districts, and in Florida, we have relatively strict codes for flood resistance. According to the State Building Code, buildings are required to comply with current flood-resistant construction standards when they go through substantial improvements (any renovation that costs 50% of the building’s market value or more) — and this rule applies to historic buildings as well. Typically, the Building Code would require a residential building’s finished floor level to be located above 9ft NGVD, and a non-residential building’s finished floor level to be above 8ft NGVD; historic building owners may file for waivers on floor elevation requirements so they don’t necessarily have to raise their buildings, but up-to-code floodproofing treatments must be done.
Besides floodproofing measures that are universally carried out under the Building Code, in the past, we’ve seen a few applications on physical elevation. Some historic building owners chose to raise their interior finished floor, and some else would lift their buildings by a mild height (say, 3 feet). There are probably less than 10 physical elevation cases in total, but they are actually happening here.
Ziming Wang: Miami Beach is regarded as a national leader in climate resiliency policy-making and resilience infrastructure construction — and I noticed that there have been a great number of plans and studies done on the local and county level as well as on the GM&B scale. So how does your position fit in the city’s framework for climate resilience?
Debbie Tackett: My role as the Chief Historic Preservation and Architecture Officer is nested under the city’s Planning Department — which is one of the major actors in the city’s climate resilience initiatives, and has been involved in the development of the city’s Resiliency Code and 2040 Comp Plan. City officials are pretty collaborative here: we at the Planning Department are in constant connection with our Chief Resilience Officer Amy Knowles, and I’m fully aware that while historic preservation can’t be the full solution to climate resilience, it can be part of it.
One interesting project that I’d like to let you know is that echoing the city’s large-scaled street elevation efforts in Sunset Harbor, Palm Island and Hibiscus Island, there is one street section in a historic district that has been raised: 11th Street from the west of Jefferson Avenue to the east of Euclid Avenue in the locally designated Flamingo Park Historic District. If you check it out on Google Street View, you’ll see that building entrances are now several steps of stairs below sidewalk level. While raising the streets, the city is also installing new drainage and pump systems; so we really look to it as a potential long-term solution.
Another aspect of my work connects with local residents, who may reach out to us and the city’s Historic Preservation Board to express opinions on things like new pump stations in historic districts.
Ziming Wang: The Buoyant City guidelines stemmed from a collaboration between local planning, preservation and resilience officials, architects, and consulting engineers; in the “2100 and the Buoyant City" panel conversation, you also had a university professor join the conversation. I think the project has showcased a quite unique and diverse coalition of local professionals towards heritage resilience — and I wonder how did that kind of coalition come into place?
Debbie Tackett: Well, speaking of the Buoyant City project, we had Allan Shulman as our head consultant. He’s both a practicing architect and a professor at University of Miami’s School of Architecture, and has an extensive experience researching and designing Miami Beach’s architecture. He assembled the whole project team after winning the governmental RFQ, and the city helped coordinate public outreach for the project. One impressive thing about Buoyant City is that it won unanimous support from local residents, developers, and historic preservation organizations — which is a quite rare achievement.
Flood adaptation and climate resilience are heated design and research topics in local architecture schools. I don’t teach at university, but I’ve spoken to students at Florida International University and University of Miami many times. There is a design studio at Florida International University’s School of Architecture, where students take a block in Miami Beach every semester and propose its resilient future — it has been really fun to see these projects. It’s exciting to see Miami Beach as a lab for innovations in resilience, and I always tell students that there is no wrong answer. We also have to keep an eye on advancements in technology — maybe hydraulic lift systems and floating houses will be able to enter into mass production and application in the future.
Ziming Wang: In the panel conversation, you mentioned that Miami Beach accounts for more than half of all Federal historic preservation tax credits received in Florida. How have these tax credits — as well as other financial incentives — helped the flood adaptation of historic resources?
Debbie Tackett: The Federal historic tax credit program helped tremendously in the preservation of historic buildings in the private sector; and with our Building Code, flood resilience is normally a part of substantial improvement projects. One case that I can think of is Fontainebleau Hotel: its multi-million renovation in 2009 generated a substantial amount of tax credit incentives, and that project also spurred other investments in its immediate vicinity. Increased property values in historic districts would also increase our tax base, which may indirectly benefit local residents.
Ziming Wang: There are of course many things revolutionary about the Buoyant City guidelines — from creative building-scaled adaptation solutions to extensive design studies on urban form change and zoning incentives. In your eyes, what’s the most unique thing about Buoyant City that other municipalities and policy-makers may learn from?
Debbie Tackett: Buoyant City is indeed a guideline first of its kind; and I believe its uniqueness lies in the fact that it wasn’t fearful to propose changes. We value our historic built environment, but we never wanted to turn Miami Beach into an outdoor museum that looks frozen in time. As a city, we have always embraced changes and flexibility; with that mindset, we have adopted a preservation strategy that welcomes contemporary infill developments in historic districts.
Why do we tolerate formal and physical changes so much? Because heritage tourism has always been an important component of the local economy, and the city’s financial values grew primarily because of built environment changes that happened over the years. For example, the mid-century Fontainebleau Hotel that I just mentioned was developed on the site of Firestone Mansion built in 1916; it is because of the successive flow of new developments and new architectural styles that we now have a rich collection of historic resources from single-family mansions to art-deco hotels and Mimo (Miami Modern) buildings. Now, it may be time to see even more changes — we’ll allow for the flexibility, but also approach our historic built environment with sensitivity. I believe that flood adaptation interventions on local historic buildings will eventually become a critical part of the understanding of their historic significance; as we add, alter, or modify our historic buildings, these interventions will also be a valuable resource for public education on climate resilience.
Ziming Wang: How would you image Miami Beach’s future waterfront historic streetscape?
Debbie Tackett: That depends on how you would define future — there are a lot being proposed, and only time will be able to tell how our city will be transformed. Miami Beach has a great number of climate resilience initiatives going on that range from recycling and intermodal transit to green & blue infrastructure and living seawalls; you may check them out at Miami Beach Rising Above, the city’s portal for its climate initiatives.
Ziming Wang: And it comes to our final question — could you give me some idea on the next steps that the city is taking at the intersection of historic preservation and flood adaptation?
Debbie Tackett: There has been a recent discussion on heightening the seawall by Collins Canal for Palm View historic district — by engaging in that conversation, we are trying to think more proactively and work more closely with infrastructure projects as preservationists. Another issue that the city has been facing is that after streets were raised in Sunset Harbor, street-level businesses are recategorized as “basements” by FEMA because they now reside slightly lower than sidewalks. This re-categorization gives FEMA the right to reject flood insurance claims; the city is actively working with FEMA in the hope of developing solutions to set this issue straight.
* This interview text has been transcribed and edited based on the interviewer’s notes.
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