Van Alen Institute, in collaboration with the City of North Miami, announce the release of a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for an interdisciplinary design team to reimagine public uses of the City of North Miami’s current and future portfolio of flood-prone vacant lots, known as repetitive loss (RL) properties. The competition asks: How can we reimagine underutilized communal spaces to bring the community together and adapt to climate impacts over time? How can these sites be repurposed to reduce the cost of flood insurance for communities?

Through a two-stage, 7-month competition, Van Alen and the City will select three finalist teams and will ultimately award a winning team $80,000 for masterplan development and pilot design implementation at one RL site. The RFQ deadline is May 26, 2019. To download the RFQ solicitation documents and learn how to prepare a submission, please visit the link here.

Repetitive Loss Properties builds off both Van Alen’s work through Keeping Current, a multi-year initiative to identify and implement innovative solutions to sea level rise in the Greater Miami region, and the organization’s previous competition Future Ground, a project to activate vacant lots in New Orleans. For Repetitive Loss Properties, Van Alen is focusing on the management of flooding impacts to inland communities through the innovative use of vacant lots.

Van Alen is spearheading this initiative, leading the process from competition desi