MIAMI-DADE COUNTY: FUTURE READY

BY DANIELLA LEVINE CAVA

The theme of the 2022 Smart City Miami Expo, “Sustainable Growth, Climate Action, and Resilient Infrastructure,” ties in with Miami-Dade County’s new economic development strategy, which it calls “Future Ready.”

Miami-Dade County is the most diverse and dynamic place on the planet! The theme of this year’s Smart City Expo Miami— Sustainable Growth, Climate Action, and Resilient Infrastructure—ties in with our new economic development strategy, which we call Future Ready. The idea is that we want to create an economy that is innovative, inclusive, equitable, resilient, and collaborative, and we are addressing these issues in our community head-on. Miami has the greatest promise but also some of the greatest challenges. We’re a learning laboratory for everyone.

We are collaborating with our wonderful academic institutions and have some great learning opportunities for our young people and for reskilling, upskilling, and getting ready for the economy of the future. Our focus is on the very challenges we have here: climate tech, health tech, FinTech, and more.

Miami-Dade County is one of the most recovered economies in the nation. We are on a meteoric rise, on an exponential growth pattern. With all that, we passed the lowest tax rate in the past 10 years and our county’s history. We also invested $500 million in the biggest challenge we face in the short term, which is the lack of affordable housing.

In October, I was in Buenos Aires for the C40 summit. Those are 40 cities that are most involved in sustainability and resiliency. In November, I joined mayors at the Resilience Cities Network to talk about innovations worldwide.

Miami-Dade County is working on the next breakthrough thing, like zero waste. We have limited space and landfills. We don’t want to just burn things. We don’t want to just move them out of our community by truck. We need to reduce, reuse, and recycle. We want to be much more thoughtful about our waste.

We also are working on heat. Two Aprils ago, we created the world’s first Chief Heat Officer. People kind of laughed at us. Why heat? It’s a silent killer, and we need to address it. We have our Extreme Heat Mitigation Plan and will be moving forward with our Compact Energy Efficiency Action Plan. We’re also collaborating across Southeast Florida for the Regional Climate Change Compact and moving forward with new greener solutions, cooler roofs and streets, and helping people survive in this heat. For example, we just retrofitted all county-funded public housing with air-conditioning units, which is not a federal requirement or funded by the federal government. We saw the opportunity to purchase 1,700 air conditioning units that are being installed.

We have Resilient 305, a Sea Level Rise Strategy, and a Climate Change Strategy. We will increasingly improve our transit, reduce our energy use, and help homeowners retrofit their homes. We are waiting with bated breath to hear whether we’ve been awarded a federal grant to turn our port into a net-zero port more quickly. We have a mega grant application pending, and we are moving to shore power in the coming year so that our major cruise vessels will be plugging in instead of belching fumes.

Those are some of our initiatives. All of this requires smart city innovators to make our communities more sustainable in the future. Thank you to everyone who is helping bring these policies to the forefront.

Daniella Levine Cava was elected Miami-Dade County’s first woman mayor in November 2020. She entered the office following a 40year career as a relentless advocate for South Florida families in public service and elected leadership. She oversees a metropolitan government with nearly 30,000 employees serving 3 million residents and managing an annual budget of $10 billion. Her administration is focused on building a stronger, more inclusive, more resilient MiamiDade by prioritizing reforms to make the county safer, reinvigorating an economy that delivers security for businesses and families and attracts new industries, protecting the environment, and engaging with residents to make local government more responsive, transparent, and accountable.