The past year has served to reconfirm the importance of a robust, nature-rich public realm that is welcoming to all. From health and wellbeing to environmental and economic resiliency, our parks, trails, libraries and community centers are critical civic infrastructure that provide multi-faceted benefits for communities. Today, the eighth in our series of photo essays reflecting on public space efforts in cities across the country, features The Underline in Miami.

Washington has a consensus: American infrastructure is overdue for capital improvements and maintenance. The most fervent debates on this topic have focused on how much funding should be allocated. But the most important discussion, even when it comes to hard infrastructure (e.g., rail, bridges, roads, and sidewalks), should be about how funding should be spent.

Until recently, the land under an elevated Metro line in Miami was little-used, wasted urban space. Now it’s becoming a park, with the first stage of the Underline—a 10-mile-long space for bikes and pedestrians in a car-centric city—having opened.

In 2013, Friends of The Underline founder Meg Daly had a bike accident and broke both of her arms. Unable to drive herself to physical therapy, she began taking the Miami Metrorail, an often overlooked means of transportation.

When Meg Daly fell from her bike and broke both of her arms seven years ago, it may have been the most fortuitous accident of the last decade for Miami.

The first section of The Underline, a long-awaited 10-mile linear park in Miami, is opening on November 16. The walkway is designed by the same firm that oversaw New York City’s now-famous High Line and is regenerating the spaces below Miami’s Metrorail system to a destination for urban hikers and art lovers.

The Underline was always an ambitious concept, a $120 million 10-mile linear park that will weave through several municipalities, invigorating the space beneath the Metrorail.

I’ve heard the same refrain from both friends and strangers, over and over, ever since the pandemic hit: “COVID has upended life as I know it. But I’ve found peace along the Detroit Riverfront.”

Miami’s downtown has become home to nearly 100,000 residents and more than 100 residential towers. As more buildings go up and more people decide to live in the dense, vibrant neighborhoods of downtown and Brickell, residents’ call for more parks and open spaces could become all the more acute.

Ambitious plans for construction of the Underline, a 10-mile-long “linear park” for people on foot and on bikes that would run beneath the elevated Metrorail tracks, got a significant lift with the announcement Wednesday of a $22.3 million federal grant for the project.