New Tool Puts Miami Development Opportunities on the Map

Rene Rodriguez and Sarah Moreno share news of a new mapping tool by researchers at the University of Miami that locates vacant and underutilized land in Mimi-Dade County.

Rodriguez and Moreno share the data illustrated by the mapping tool as counter evidence to claims by local developers about land scarcity in the county. According to the new Land Access for Neighborhood Development tool (LAND), "there are actually 500 million square feet of vacant or underutilized land scattered across Miami-Dade County. The land is either publicly or institutionally owned."

The LAND tool is the work of the Miami Housing Solutions Lab at the University of Miami's Office of Civic and Community Engagement (CCE).

"The program, which is free to use and available to the public, collects and visualizes data from the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser," according to Ridriguez and Moreno. "It allows users to apply various filters to searches, so they can distinguish vacant, available city lots from county-owned land previously used but no longer needed by government agencies. (They’re called surplus lots.)"