The Good Neighbor Stormwater Park is a community park that functions as a stormwater retention basin to reduce flooding for the neighborhood. The park design was the winning design of Van Alen’s “Keeping Current” competition to reimagine the use of North Miami’s “repetitive loss properties,” or flood-prone residential lots.

With input from community members and residents, the Good Neighbor Stormwater Park was developed as a localized floodplain management approach that integrates green infrastructure and community-oriented open space. The central basin exposes the shallow water table while providing additional storage space for stormwater. The new walking path winds around the central basin and moves through a demonstration garden of several South Florida habitats, including pine flatwoods, hardwood hammock, marsh, and cypress slough. In addition, an oversized blue pipe serves both as a play structure and seating and conveys flood water to the central basin.

Finally, Dept. collaborated with Miami-based artist Adler Guerrier to create public artwork and signage that draws attention to the fluctuating water levels in the central basin as well as calls out relevant flood hazard information. The park therefore benefits the city’s Community Rating System and proposes a model for alternative land use of flood-prone vacant land in at-risk communities.

The project was completed in 2020 with contributions from The Rockefeller Foundation, Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Miami Foundation, Target, and Terra Group; as well as The Nature Conservancy and Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

 Van Alen Institute, Urban Impact Lab, Adler Guerrier, Andrew Aquârt, Forerunner, Inc.


North Miami, FL

Good Neighbor Stormwater Park

Dept. is a landscape architecture and urban design studio that provides creative, useful, and adaptive design responses for the public and the environment.