 Welcome to Coast to Coast. My name is Lily Weinberg. I'm here joined by my colleague, Raul Moaz. How's it going, Raul? Hey, Swing, well, how are you? I'm doing well. How is quarantine life treating you this week? It's good. We just started a learning pod, and today was our data host, so we had some kiddos over in the morning. And was it loud? Was it active? I'm sure that the kids are thrusted. I'm really, I'm holding off on thinking about number two for a while now. We've got one kid, he's three years old, he's adorable, and he's so much more adorable when he's by himself. I feel you. I think a lot of people feel that way. And of course, as you know, as a parent, it's been a challenging time, and I know many of our audience members have felt that way. It's just such a, it is such a dynamic time with COVID-19, and we're dealing with so many issues, right? And that's really the point of Coast to Coast, is really looking at the future of cities and really bringing real life, topical issues to the forefront for our community of practitioners across the country. And so last week, we looked at what does civic engagement look like during a pandemic, which was pretty interesting. What are those different models of in-person engagement versus virtual engagement? And this week, we are talking with one of my favorite leaders and projects in Miami. So can you tell us a little bit about what we're gonna chat about today? I'm super thrilled to be part of this. So first of all, thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be chatting with a dear friend, who's also the CEO and founder of Friends of the Underline. And so Meg Daly is the vision behind transforming kind of this underutilized kind of land 10 miles of underutilized land below Miami's metro rail, the M-Path, and turning it into a world-class kind of world-leading public park, urban trail, linear park, transit corridor. And so I love it for multiple reasons. One, she's an amazing person. Two, she saw something that others hadn't seen, and that M-Path had been there for 30-something years more, and she saw something, and then she went for it, right? And it's to me, so Miami, right? When we kind of put the hashtag so Miami, usually used in a derogatory term, but this is so Miami, right? That in Miami, folks who have vision, folks who see something and want to build it, can go for it and can do it, because in our community, the barriers for that kind of change are a lot lower than in other places. So Meg, welcome. We're thrilled to have you with us. Happy to be here. I'm also with two of my favorite people. So I love sharing time and space with both you and Lily. No, we appreciate that immensely. So just to kind of teed up for those who are joining us, we're gonna have a conversation with Meg for about 15 minutes, and afterwards we're really gonna save a lot of time for Q&A. So if you have any questions, feel free to put them into the Q&A box here directly in Zoom, or you can, if you're watching on Facebook, you can drop them in Facebook as well, or if you're on Twitter, you can use that as well. So different platforms, different ways to kind of put a question out there, and you can also use the hashtag night live to help us track that down. After our discussion, Lily's gonna jump in, she's gonna be curating these questions, and we're gonna have a discussion with Meg on the things that you all elevate for us. So Meg, if you're good for it, let's drive in. I think the first thing is just to kind of help us set the context. Can you give us a little bit of a sense of what is the underlying, first and foremost, really kind of quick synopsis there? And then when you think of resiliency, how do you define that? What does it mean to you as it relates to you as a leader, but really you as the underlying, you as this public space and this reflection of Miami. So what is the underlying and how do you think of resiliency in the work you're leading? So what I love about Zoom is I can have this picture behind me, and this is one of the renderings of the underlying, which is a 10-mile linear parking trail below Metro Rail. Right in the urban core, those 10 miles are very different by neighborhood. So I can be in Brickle, or I could be in Coconut Grove West Village, or I could be in Coral Gables, and the underline is sort of meant to be many things to many different people it serves. Why didn't we start doing this? Because Miami has some challenges in transportation and safety. It's one of the most dangerous places to walk and bike in the country, and we wanna be part of the solution for that. And then you asked about resiliency. So we are really, this is all about sustainability. This is an urban reforestation project. Trying to encourage people to take mass transit as well as walk and bike and make a beautiful experience for that. And then also I think gathering people together is really important, I think for the resilience of a community, something that we've all been struggling with as we've been in isolation. And then I think resiliency of an organization is just a whole different conversation. There's this, I love what you said there about as we've been in isolation. I've never heard so many folks talk about and speak about public space as a determinant of social health, of community health, nearly kind of in terms of a human right at the peak of social isolation here. How has that kind of, what has that meant for you, right? So what has the pandemic meant for you all in terms of resiliency, but there's downside to that for sure. I'm curious about how you're mitigating and managing against the headwinds and the downside, but also the tailwinds, like what has this kind of elevated, what has this accelerated, especially kind of in the public consciousness around people seeing public space in a different light? So I think a lot of us love our public spaces, but rarely put themselves in a situation of advocating for them. The pandemic has showed us that this is not just nice to have, it's need to have. We have in Miami closed ocean drive to making it pedestrian friendly, something that local advocates were really publicly wanted for years. It just wasn't until we got in crisis that we actually said this would be good for the community. We've seen streets in New York be closed. We've closed parking spaces so people can spill into the street and eat dinner. Something also we never thought would happen. And then we also have some metrics. You talked about the empath when we started, that's currently the path below Metro Rail. Of course, the underlying will completely transform that, but that little counter has been measuring more than double the people using that little path because you have your family. How can I get outside? How can I move? I don't have my gym. So this is really, this people are saying they're clamoring for open spaces and we heard a great expression recently, which is the outdoors is the new indoors. This is the one safe place that we can be. And then, so will we advocate for these changes in lifestyle and mobility and the way that we connect with each other? Will they be long-term changes that leadership embraces? Especially, kind of looking forward, there's some really tough decisions that lie ahead for communities, regional governments, municipal governments in terms of budgets. Budgets absolutely gonna be under strain. In Miami, so much revenue comes in through tax dollars, kind of hope to occupancy dollars that are driven by tourism. And that's taken a huge hit. And so when we think of organizational residency, which we had touched on originally in the face of, anticipated kind of budget cuts, anticipated kind of headwinds of that sort, at the same time that community is saying, we need this more than ever, right? We've got these countervading forces that are pushing up against each other, hard decisions, budgetary decisions, community is saying, we want this, we need this. How are you all thinking about that? How are you all thinking about positioning yourselves and to be resilient in the face of budget cuts, to be resilient in the face of increased demand? And I think that that's something that we always face, but more now than ever, so our county, our partner, that we're building on county land and the county transit department and now parks department will be working, helping us with our governance once we open the underlying and we have quite almost all public funding for construction and then a combination of private and public funding for ongoing maintenance and management. I can give you and your team a shout out. The Knight Foundation was one of our very first early believers when we opened our basketball court, that will be in part thanks to your organization believing in our vision. So I think that brings us to this tension of money and desire. We want so many things, but there's only so much that can be paid for. And what I hope for is that when we come out of the pandemic and it's safe again to gather that people where you remember this moment, that they felt safe outdoors and they will continue to demand it. And I know that Lily and I have talked about this a lot, like where do you take your kids to play? And are we gonna take our playgrounds for granted now that we haven't had them for so long? And then in terms of these budgets, I mean, there are significant shortfalls both at the county and the municipal level. I have to give a shout out to those leaderships to make a lot of things happen in these difficult times. I think we're going to recover. The stock market already thinks so. And once we recover, we have to remember our priorities. And our priorities are designing and building cities for people first. And once you embrace that, a lot of those decisions become very easy. Yeah, there's, so Kudos, thank you for all you do. Kudos to our team and partners and friends in government. I think oftentimes don't get enough credit for enabling and supporting this kind of work. So Kudos, because I think this has actually been an exemplary kind of public-private kind of partnership that I hope inspires more and it's kind of kind of generative in that sense. You and I were together the other day at the underlying checking out construction. I hadn't been in that part of town in a few months since quarantine started in March. And I can understand the difficulties in quarantining and socialization because I was like, oh man, like I really want to stay here forever. I want to be outside of my house for hours. I almost didn't go home for a few hours. My wife was texting, she's like, where are you? I need help with the kid. But it was incredible to see it, to actually see the underlying coming into fruition. So I guess one of the questions I left with that day was like, I wonder what's gonna happen to the psyche, the psyche of community. Now they see that there was a promise made. They want this kind of public space more than ever before. And it's actually happening in the fall. Sometime in the fall, we'll be having phase one of the underlying opening up. And so have you gotten any early feedback from community as kind of the landscaping has gone in, as it becomes real, as to kind of, oh wow, like this is changing my view of what it means to live in the urban core in Miami and what's potential, what the potential is of that? Yeah, there's actually a number of buildings that directly connect to the underlying the first phase, which is from the Miami River to Coral Way. Buildings like Neo Vertica, Reach and Rise. There's a development by Pinnacle as well, Mary Brickle Village. And all of those were sort of looking out their windows. They're seeing more and more green every day as the plants fell in. So the biggest surprise to me was our area called the River Room, which is right by the river in Southwest 7th, which is sort of meant to be this sort of soft, loamy green space for you to walk your dog. And we had plants, so many plants that attract pollinators and butterflies. And you go in there and it's like magic. It's like nature at work. Well, we were all staying home. Nature was reproducing and very happy. So you experienced it. You saw the butterflies, the bees, the birds. I mean, people who said there's no way that nature can grow underneath train tracks. It absolutely does. And so when we bear child tropical botanic garden as one of our partners, I remember asking them, what's the success rate of our planting is going to be? And they said, you know, man, we're not really sure. Everything you're doing is an experiment. So kudos to being a 10-mile lab. I love it. And thankfully it's working. And that's what people are really excited about. Miami-Dade County doesn't have a lot of dog parks available to people, particularly in the Brickell area. They're very excited about that. We've planned the first dog park in Coral Gables will be on the underline. But it's also just this green space to connect, to walk, to bike, and this rendering behind me. This is the area that connects to Southside Elementary, one of the oldest schools in Miami-Dade County. Those 800 kids can cross the street safely and get into the underline. You know, maybe even take Metro mover, Metro rail home. You know, so the promise that we made to the community to see it growing and coming to life is really inspiring to me. I left, there was multiple kinds of sub-questions to when I left the world. The first one was like, I don't think I ever recall seeing a monarch or any sort of butterfly in Brickell. And I saw a ton, right? Second of all, your milkweeds are exceptional. Arjun like totally dried out and not looking great. But yours are really looking good. So that was like the first thing that came out. I was like, oh wow, like there's actual life here. Like this is the native species that are coming back. And then the second was like, you all know, it's not just the actual public space and the landscaping, but there's crosswalks now. I think it feels a lot safer across East street at the empath than before. So it's also, it's not just kind of beautifying the space. It's actually enhancing the spaceport pedestrians. Well, thank you for that because the crossings are probably one of the more difficult implementations that we have. You know, let's all be honest. Our city was built, it was a modern city. It was built for people to drive. And how do you retrofit that kind of hardware? And so our proposal is these very wide, bright green, no traffic movement as people are walking and biking. And we have a couple of little demonstrations, not little, they're substantial in Southwest 16th, 17th and 19th along US one. And people are getting really excited. Like this could actually change not just the underlying but other areas that can throughout our county that can be safe to walk and bike as well as be greener. So there's a lot of areas that are deserts and hotspots. And so going back to resiliency, that's a very important part of our formula. But before we run out of time, I did just wanna talk about one things that I don't wanna forget. When we open this fall, we're probably the largest park of our scale opening during a pandemic. So there are a lot of things we have figured out but a lot of things we still need to figure out. So what's that 50 foot dining table gonna look like? How are we gonna sit next to each other? How are we going to feel safe? Because we'll still be under pandemic conditions. And that's actually really increased the cost of maintenance if you're constantly sanitizing to the tune of 20%. So again, you talked about this issue of budget shortfalls and constraints and also increased cost. So talk about that tension. That's something that we're really trying to figure out and also remain within our operating budget. I can imagine you're better at keeping time than I am. This flew by. I did wanna kind of touch on one thing. Lily will kill me if I go over time. I do want to touch on one thing that's really important. And that is when we stick with resiliency. That means different things to different folks, especially based on socioeconomic status. You mentioned that the underlying goes through very different kind of neighborhoods and it does to go from all the critical all the way down to the south. Could you give us a little bit of a taste of a couple of things? One kind of the neighborhoods at the underlying is through they're not homogenous. So who is affected by it? Who has access to it? Who can benefit from it? That's the first and the second piece is as you think of resiliency, as you think of how Miami bounces back, as you think of equity in resiliency and equity kind of being integral towards resiliency or not being resilient. Could you give us a taste of what you're all thinking is for the benefits of the underlying being enjoyed by more people? And so does having a world-class public space in a neighborhood kind of further gentrified? Does it increase development displacement? How might we think of helping folks who are longtime residents in a neighborhood that now all sudden is hot because it has this amazing kind of amenity next to it? How might we think of keeping those folks in place? So resiliency through the kind of vis-a-vis equity and who does the underlying kind of serve? So to me, accessibility is equity. And if you don't have access, then that's excluding people. And there's history throughout the country of policies so that people don't have access. And that's another show that I'm sure you guys are going to have in the future. If you haven't already, I'm sure you've already explored that. We've touched on them on a few episodes, yeah. Yeah, and so connectivity is very and very important. One of the things we've looked at, and we are part of the High Line Network and we spend a lot of time looking at what the unintended consequences are of not planning for potential gentrification. But since this project goes through eight transit stations, which are county-owned properties and redevelopments, two of the stations already, Douglas and Coconut Grove, have substantial opportunities for affordable housing, workforce housing baked into them. We go through these very beautiful bedroom communities. Shenandoah, Silver Bluff, the roads and those single-family residential areas need to feel like the underlying servicing and then not threatening them. But I think the connector points, making sure that people coming off, from Rickenbacker down 27th, feeding in Grand Avenue down to South Miami, which as we go now through two CRAs, that it's not just about looking at the green space, but how things are built next to it. And that's really another project unto itself. One of the challenges we have as we go through those three municipalities, which their zoning codes, each one of them are very different. So we're really looking at how do we be part of making not just green spaces in our cities better, but how allowing more people to live alongside them. Our first thought, and I know I have to sort of summarize here, is to really look at something called soft density. So at the transit stations, we have very tall, upzoned areas connecting to these single-family homes that we think if you can sort of phase into them sort of quietly from the height into the lower buildings, it's much like Little Havana did, which has worked for a very long time. So two, four, six, eight-story tops that phase into those neighborhoods so people don't feel threatened by height and density. I appreciate that, thank you. So that's such a nuanced and kind of custom, kind of view as it should be, right? There is no one says if it's off for a friend of this work. Lily has been curating some awesome questions for us. I want to bring her back into this. Where should we go next, Lily? What are pressing, burning questions folks have? Maggie dropped a bunch of gems here. Yeah, and this is such a good conversation. I mean, we've touched upon so many topics and including around the equity piece and the engagement piece. So I want to dig a little bit deeper there and on a couple of levels. So there was a question around operations and maintenance and kind of what that looks like. And there's also a question around the value increasing around which role you pointed out. And so how are you thinking about capturing that value, Meg? Can you comment a little bit about that for the underlying? So there's a lot of things that go into that. I mentioned the High Line Network and those organizations, all infrastructure reuse projects throughout North America have said we know that green spaces create value. I mean, look what happened at Central Park. I mean, all these great parks, the High Line, the values go up and everybody sort of hindsight 2020, what we failed was not capturing the value that we create in terms of not just economic activity but real estate value. So we would like to do that. And it takes time. It's a very involved process considering the complexity of our makeup which is municipal and county. But we have some partners in place that will help us explore that. But I did want to just ping back on the question of equity because I think equity is a commitment that's long term and taking care of not just the people who live alongside the underlying but the people who work for us. The organization that will be managing and maintaining will have a living wage of over $17 an hour. We have SBA which is small business, disadvantaged business requirements for the organizations that work with us. So we've been very self-reflecting how are we taking care of ourselves, of the people who work for us in the community that we serve? That's right. So equity goes, there's lots of arms and legs to it. And value capture that you mentioned is very important because there are very few foundations, people, families that wanna pay for operations and maintenance for a green space. They love to have it but they really feel like that's the realm of the public sector. So really the only way you can get that very expensive but they're a very necessary piece paid for is through value capture, just capturing a sliver of the value that you've created and directing it back to operations. And putting it back into the community. So that's right. And putting it back into the underlying and maintaining which is really, really hard to fundraise for. A couple of comments there, Carol Coletta, when I interviewed her, she said the exact same thing Meg where she said, equity has to start with your organization, making sure that you're reflective of the community and that you're treating your employees right, which will be incredibly important when we build out the management organization. And then the second part that I thought was really interesting, two weeks ago I talked with Dan Biederman who of course is an expert in activating public spaces and value capture. And he said that he believes post pandemic that that value capture piece will be more important than ever because we're seeing the demand for green spaces at astronomical levels and that will continue. And the private sector will be willing to pay for that. So just interesting thought there. So a couple of other questions I wanna get to. There's a question around how you're thinking about leveraging the arts for the underlying and the activation there and the engagement piece there. So the underlying is many layers. What you see behind me is trail. You see I see the greenery and landscaping as another layer. We haven't talked about the technology piece, which we're very excited about. That's a layer that's connective tissue for the project. And we see art and we've had on our own, we did a little copycat thing called Miami Voices because we were so inspired by coast to coast. And we had a great group of artists talking about how treating the underlying is a 10 mile outdoor art gallery with a combination of local, national and international artists. The curator for that is Jimena Caminos from Fayena. I have to give her a shout out. She's also a pro bono as am I. I'm a full-time volunteer. So I think it really shows the power of our volunteerism, but the artists came into our project early through a grant from Art Place America. We had four installations that were temporary. We had so much excitement around that because there was no one who sees the world like an artist does. And the way they express a space is so different than I would see the world or the two of you would. And so they are baked into the vision of the underlying is that 10 mile outdoor gallery. Great, right. The arts piece is just gonna be fantastic. And of course there's overlap with the technology piece too. So, Meg, there's a question around building upon this momentum with the underlying. I mean, of course the underlying has been one of the most premier public space projects in Miami-Dade, arguably also in the country thanks to your leadership. But there's also a question about what about other green spaces? What about the, you know, we can think about it as a corridor, but also a spine, you know, and how can we, and a network for other green spaces. And I do wanna say before you answer this question, what I think you've done such a good job of when we talk about the underlying is is that this isn't a zero sum game that we can think about investing in the underlying and also elevating, you know, green spaces all over Miami-Dade. So we'd love to hear your thoughts on that. First about the Miami-Dade County, the Parks and Recreation Master Plan. And the underlying was one of the many trails that they've mapped for the county to really improve county wide access for walking and biking. And they had a couple of great articles, but one specifically about their blueways or those greenways. Meg, we lost you for a second. Okay. I think we might have roll, can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay, first. I thought I did something. I was like, I don't mind looking at that. I probably couldn't get out of it. Yeah, I think we lost Meg. We are one minute short of 130. But to me, this has been a really, really fantastic conversation that really makes me so proud of what's going on in Miami. And I think a lot of organizations can learn from what's happening. Any takeaways that you had? I couldn't agree more. I think I feel a sense of pride seeing it. I was a really awesome privilege the last couple of weeks I was able to kind of see kind of this intermediate phase where it's at. So it's actually real, it's happening. I think it's going to do a ton for the city and for community in terms of changing the psyche. And I think the other takeaway, I think we're going to get greedy in a good way. I think community is going to say, this is what world-class public space does, how it feels, what it means to us and how it changes our community. And I think in the same way that the arts and the investments Miami has made in the arts for the last two decades have changed the way that community appreciates the arts and wants more of it. I think the underlying is going to do that for public space. I think this is going to be the reference point that a lot of folks point to in the coming years and say, no, we want more of this. This is the level of excellence that we expect in our community. Absolutely. Meg, I asked a rule, what was his favorite thing that he learned today? Did you have any closing? Did you want to finish your thought and then we can close out our conversation? Sure. I'm back, right? Yes, you're back. This is the reality that we live in. I'm sure everybody forgives us. We do this five times a day. Yeah, so there are big visions. Implementing a big vision is very difficult. It's also very expensive. And I want to go back to investment. And I think we need to look at the money we spend that is an investment and not just an expense. One of the questions I have is, why would we invest all this money for construction if we don't have an investment plan for ongoing operations and maintenance? So that's back to your value capture. But I think that the speed and the momentum of this project has really inspired and sort of lifted all these other great projects up, including Ludlam Trail, which we connect to on the South End, the Miami River Greenway, the Baywalk, the Rickenbacker Project called Plan Z, and then all the many spurs off of that. So people are, oh, there's also a great project Commodore Trail. So this is not, so our sandbox has gotten much bigger. The demand for these projects, I think our voices are louder. And I hope that that continues. We inspire this throughout the community that a champion, one champion, but can do a lot, but more can do more. And so I think all of us need to sort of lead the charge. I would say that we do have this, if you haven't seen our really cool underline mask, they were designed by Hamish Smythe of order design. And if anybody makes a donation of $50 or more, you'll get an underline mask. They're very comfortable. And you can get one at the underline.org forward slash support. And we just linked to it in our chat, in our Q and A chat box. So folks can get it there. With that, we are over time. Thank you, Meg, and thank you, Raul. This was a great conversation. And I think that, like I said before, I think our audience really learned a lot about what it takes to continue to be resilient during this pandemic and also post pandemic. And I'm just so excited to use the underline very soon this fall. So thank you again for joining us. And next week, Raul, I think you're gonna be really interested in this one. We'll be talking with the leading experts on leveraging public spaces and park spaces for schools. And how we can be thinking about, yeah, I know. Can you take my toddler? Yes, yes. And so how we can really keep our schools open but really leveraging public spaces. So I'm excited about that conversation. And we'll see you next Tuesday at 1 p.m. Eastern. Take care. Thanks, guys. Take care. Have a good time.