In an age of harder storms and volatile markets, a street that drains during a downpour, a usable sidewalk with shade, and a block a young family can call home are not the finishing touches of a prosperous city — they are the foundation.
The South Florida my generation inherits depends on whether we can still build that foundation. The good news: The answer is within reach, one citywide standard for how we grow — LEED for Neighborhood Development. Root the place, and you root the economy. The future we spent a generation planning for is already here.
On April 12, 2023, two feet of rain closed Fort Lauderdale, flooding homes and leaving families with bills they could barely carry. That was not misfortune but failing infrastructure, and a preview of the $1.6 billion it will cost to protect the city. Much of it is avoidable: The natural systems that manage water (marshes, trees, open ground) do it for free, until we pave them over and pay for weaker substitutes.
Aida Nesimi is a science teacher turned real estate professional specializing in sustainable development. (courtesy, Aida Nesimi)
Our problem is not a shortage of money, talent or plans. There is no clear direction because we have failed to align across party lines. For years, I have sat on every side of the table, with residents, developers, advocacy groups and City Hall: people of the same goals and goodwill, still unable to turn ideas into action. Bridging that gap is my work.
Sunshine laws keep commissioners from working as a team, so decisions vanish into deferral after deferral, and more data rarely changes the outcome. The process is outdated, with items voted on out of context while residents sit in the back row, powerless to influence growth.
LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is the U.S. Green Building Council‘s certification for green buildings; you may have seen their “LEED certified” plaques in office lobbies, letting visitors know that building was constructed with energy saving and the environment in mind. LEED’s neighborhood version rates the blocks around that building: whether streets connect; whether a family can walk to work, school and groceries; whether rainwater has somewhere to go. Those criteria are published before an application arrives.
Developers spend hundreds of thousands on traffic, drainage and community-impact studies; they have every reason to build well. When approvals take years and cost a fortune with no guarantee, ambition becomes a gamble few survive, so the safe, generic project wins and we inherit soulless, cookie-cutter blocks. The fault lies with the system, not the builder, and no one should pay for a deadlock they did not create.
One standard can change that: adopt the LEED criteria, reward the projects that meet them with faster approvals, and the sustainable path becomes the fastest to build. The Live Local Act chased that speed by overriding local government, as if community input and progress were enemies. They are not: Rules set in advance let developers move quickly while residents keep their voice. Then business, government and people build one city instead of three, where good design is the rule rather than the first thing cut from a budget, where public spaces stir us instead of numbing us, and where culture turns a place we tolerate into one we refuse to leave. Sustainability stops being a cost we weigh against housing and jobs and becomes how we produce them.
Ignore sustainability, and we lose ground: When the future feels uncertain, the young and ambitious leave first, and a region that loses its next generation loses its workforce, its customers and its tax base. Local jobs pay off twice: a parent who works 10 minutes from home gives those hours back to their children, and families that stay keep their energy and insurance bills low. Ending the turnover, not chasing the next boom, is the real economic engine.
Protecting South Florida and paying for it were never opposites. Neighborhoods people stay in, jobs that last, and a tax base strong enough to survive what comes next — that is a South Florida the world would copy, not a cautionary tale. My generation is ready to build it. The work starts now, and takes all of us.
Aida Nesimi is a trained science teacher turned real estate professional specializing in sustainable development. She lives in Fort Lauderdale.