The Community
Our neighborhood study background report began from a shared concern among Mellon project faculty and our community partners that conventional approaches to resilience-building in Miami were increasing vulnerability and insecurity among Miami’s most marginalized communities. We worked with our partners to reflect on their years of experience advocating for social, environmental and climate justice throughout South Florida, to identify the major problems facing the communities in which they work—Allapattah, Homestead, Liberty City, Little Haiti, Overtown and Coconut Grove—and the resources community members have drawn on to address these problems. The result is a unique vision of resilience that reflects the priorities, concerns, capacities, and needs of vulnerable communities and social and environmental justice advocates on the front lines of the climate crisis.
Our neighborhood study background report began from a shared concern among Mellon project faculty and our community partners that conventional approaches to resilience-building in Miami were increasing vulnerability and insecurity among Miami’s most marginalized communities. We worked with our partners to reflect on their years of experience advocating for social, environmental and climate justice throughout South Florida, to identify the major problems facing the communities in which they work—Allapattah, Homestead, Liberty City, Little Haiti, Overtown and Coconut Grove—and the resources community members have drawn on to address these problems. The result is a unique vision of resilience that reflects the priorities, concerns, capacities, and needs of vulnerable communities and social and environmental justice advocates on the front lines of the climate crisis.
The report’s findings draw out the importance of working with marginalized communities to identify and define resilience in terms of the everyday vulnerabilities and insecurities they already face, rather than assuming that resilience is only a problem of future environmental shocks (such as tropical storms) and stressors (such as recurring sunny day flooding and extreme urban heat). Instead, these communities are already dealing with slow-moving emergencies of disinvestment (which leads to poor public and private services and degrades quality of life), displacement (which erodes community cohesiveness and inhibits wealth generation), and the extraction of labor and land value (which reinforces poverty while transferring wealth to absentee landlords and detached employers). At the same time, community members have long histories of resisting these dynamics and creatively utilizing their economic, social, cultural, and environmental resources to construct their own spaces apart from the toxic environments of daily life.
The report’s findings draw out the importance of working with marginalized communities to identify and define resilience in terms of the everyday vulnerabilities and insecurities they already face, rather than assuming that resilience is only a problem of future environmental shocks (such as tropical storms) and stressors (such as recurring sunny day flooding and extreme urban heat). Instead, these communities are already dealing with slow-moving emergencies of disinvestment (which leads to poor public and private services and degrades quality of life), displacement (which erodes community cohesiveness and inhibits wealth generation), and the extraction of labor and land value (which reinforces poverty while transferring wealth to absentee landlords and detached employers). At the same time, community members have long histories of resisting these dynamics and creatively utilizing their economic, social, cultural, and environmental resources to construct their own spaces apart from the toxic environments of daily life.