Priced Out of Paradise
Reconsidering Cooperatives, in Response to Climate Gentrification in Miami’s Communities of Color
Miami, Florida
Our current global health crisis has clearly rendered how a lack of stable housing, access to care, and the effects of climate change, disproportionately affect our communities of color. Contemporary development patterns demonstrate the inadequacies of unchecked neoliberalism, and its adverse effect on the development of equitable housing. Within this context, Miami presents itself as a vulnerable coastal city exemplar. A growing city, Miami struggles with an endemic affordability crisis, and the long lasting scars of segregation, redlining, and urban renewal in its most vulnerable communities. Today, the city’s muddled past has been compounded with its uncertain future.
Despite palpable climate change, construction continues along the Miami waterfront, fueled by foreign investors who park capital in luxury real estate. For local residents, both low and mid income, the cost of living continues to rise along with sea levels. Miami, outwardly marketed as a tropical oasis, is now regarded as one of the country’s most inequitable cities.
This thesis takes issue with the commodification of housing, and its adverse effects on the vulnerable communities of greater Miami. While Miami’s surplus of luxury real estate swells, climate change and speculative development have combined to threaten the stability of the city’s multi-ethnic core.
Instead, it re-considers the cooperative, and the collective ownership of housing, as a mechanism by which communities can reclaim agency within hostile markets, and open up access to stabilize housing in response to climate gentrification, as well as opening up access to other forms of social and financial capital. This thesis works to re-contextualize the cooperative ownership of housing within the Miami context, considering its deployment as an architectural response who’s programming and spatial organizations respond to both collective use and collective need.
The ground floor is programmed to address both social and lifestyle needs, for both residents and the larger Overtown community. A cooperative market, child care facility, library, fitness and recreation space, as well as a venue for local business and healthcare facilities, anchor the dwelling units above. These programs, are intended to serves as an extension of the cooperative community, enabling residents to reclaim agency and strengthen self-sufficiency. The market and child care center, work to address questions of labor, and access. Creating opportunities for stable access to food, in an area lacking many options, while also creating opportunity to foster collective care, and support.
Additionally, the reservation of space for local business, can work to preserve opportunities for community members, who would face difficulties maintaining a business in a neighborhood context that is rapidly gentrifying, and replacing long standing business (often renters) with luxury apartments or larger commercial developments. The creation of a community garden, and well as available roof spaces and green house space for growing and maintaining food supplies, work in tandem to strengthen food security and build community responsibility.
