An interdisciplinary team of faculty members at the University of Miami is launching a new project to create an interactive timeline highlighting the historical relationship between urban growth and environmental change in South Florida.
Using environmental data and historical narratives, University researchers will help the public to understand the environmental impacts of Miami's past, and participate in creating impactful solutions, thanks to a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
The University was recently awarded $500,000 to delve into this project, titled "Miami as Ground Zero: Tracing the Magic City's Environmental History and Future," through the Office of Civic and Community Engagement (CCE). Led by Robin Bachin, the Chalton W. Tebeau associate professor of history, the initiative will feature the region's major environmental milestones. The University's project was among just 30 selected from the Mellon Higher Learning program's 2024 Open Call, and it was one of only 10 selected in the environmental justice studies category. The Foundation received over 470 submissions from 260 institutions.
"This project is about understanding the environmental past of South Florida and how urban growth and development have impacted the natural landscape and what kinds of policy decisions and planning outcomes have led to transformations of our regional environmental conditions," Bachin said.
As part of the three-year project, Bachin will work closely with faculty and students from various departments across the University addressing environmental change, as well as Béatrice Skokan, head of manuscripts and archives management at UM Libraries, to select the most critical moments in Miami's environmental history, from the 1800s to its current circumstances. Utilizing primary sources from across the state, she hopes to highlight events such as:
- The Seminole Wars of the 1830s and 1840s, which compelled the Indigenous people to seek refuge in the Everglades
- The 1850 Federal Swamp Lands Act that enabled the draining of the Everglades
- The construction of the Florida East Coast Railway by Henry Flagler that set the stage for Miami to become a major metropolis
- Marjory Stoneman Douglas' efforts to preserve the vitality and beauty of the Everglades and her role in creating the national park in 1947
- The coalition of conservationists, hunters, and Indigenous people who came together to quash the creation of a jetport in Big Cypress Swamp
- The creation of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan in 2000 to restore water flow to the "River of Grass" and bring back its native bird populations
- Investigations into the "Old Smokey" trash incinerator in West Coconut Grove
- Current grass-roots efforts to promote adaptation to climate impacts, including sea level rise and extreme heat
This project also will center the voices of local residents and organizations working to address environmental sustainability. Through traditional public history methodologies like oral history, and technological tools including data visualization and GIS mapping, CCE will expand upon its longstanding engagement initiatives with community partners to develop an interactive online environmental history timeline, as well as a physical and digital climate resilience exhibition, to connect local history and heritage with environmental awareness and stewardship.
Bachin said this grant will also help the University to create an environmental humanities cognate—or a set of three courses that can fulfill an undergraduate requirement—for students interested in learning more about environmental studies. The new cognate will provide opportunities for students to develop interdisciplinary knowledge and explore the intertwined relationships between human culture and the wider natural world. In addition, the University's Center for the Humanities will host a three-credit seminar for students doing capstone projects as part of the cognate, she added.
Bachin herself teaches a course called "Nature and the Environment in American History." And she is working with colleagues across the College of Arts and Sciences to develop courses related to Indigenous cultures, food, animals, environmental writing, and religion and the natural world, as those topics relate to the environment.
"Whether it is extreme heat, storm surge, or loss of natural habitats, these are not concerns we are thinking about hypothetically in Miami, so we need to consider how we can live in a changing environment, and how we got here," Bachin added. "The consequences of our past decisions can help inform how we move forward as a city and region with planning for the future."
