By Next City's Rachel Kaufman, March 2, 2016Coming sometime soon to Miami? The Underline, envisioned as a 10-mile-long, 110-acre linear park, could bring green space to a part of the city that lacks it, increase mobility options and connect the city’s booming financial district with South Miami and beyond.Meg Daly, leader of Friends of The Underline, says the first section, the Brickell Backyard, will likely break ground in early 2017 and be completed in two years. Around the same time, the group will break ground in front of the University of Miami, about four miles south; eventually, construction will fill in the gaps and extend as far south as the last stop on Miami’s metro, Dadeland South. Master-planned by James Corner Field Operations, the landscape architects of the High Line, the park will have two trails, one for cyclists and one for pedestrians, with destination parks — or as Daly calls them, “candy” — scattered along the route. Crossings will be improved to increase pedestrian safety and hopefully dispel Miami’s dubious honor of fourth most dangerous U.S. city for pedestrians.Daly got the idea for the park after she broke both elbows in a cycling accident and couldn’t drive. Annoyed by having to get a ride to physical therapy, she started riding the metro and walking the rest of the way under the tracks.“It wasn’t that hot because [I was] in the shade. It’s huge, it’s 100 feet wide, and I was the only person out there — and that’s when I said, ‘Why aren’t we doing more with this?’”Click here for the rest of the story.
