By 2025, what will Miami’s downtown look like? If it’s not underwater, the Miami Downtown Development Authority (DDA) hopes the area will have been cultivated into the “business, social and cultural epicenter of the Americas.” It’s a lofty endeavor, but here’s how the agency intends to make it happen.

1. Growing Cultural Influence – HistoryMiami, Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Olympia Theater, Pérez Art Museum Miami: these are only a few of the standing cultural monuments that illustrate what Miami’s downtown district has to offer. DDA intends to continue fueling growth in these areas as they not only encourage investment, but also cultural influence.

2. Continue Leveraging the Waterfront – Miami has a beautiful coastline (that’s about as close to objective as you can get). And while much (and possibly all) of the land along the waterfront has already been developed, the DDA intends to continue leveraging the many arteries leading to waterfront areas to attract more tourists and businesses (and capital) to the area.

3. Bring Prominence to “Grand Boulevards” – The great cities of the world all have grand avenues that can act as hooks for attention – like the Champs-Elysees in Paris or Las Ramblas in Barcelona. Miami DDA wants the same thing for the city. Miami’s downtown is already home to two prominent boulevards – Biscayne Boulevard and Brickell Avenue. These two streets host some of the city’s finest financial and residential addresses, respectively, but the agency’s vision involves further transformation into “vibrant, attractive public spaces to rival the great streets of the world.”

4. Better Community Spaces – It is the belief of the city’s DDA that great downtowns do not achieve such greatness through eye-catching skylines (though it does describe Miami’s as “attractive”) but rather through its people and their collective experience as well as what influences that experience – namely “public realms,” which the agency described as “streets and community spaces” (among others). Because of the importance of those spaces in defining a city’s character, the DDA is placing an emphasis on improving community areas and streets.

5. Walkability is Key – The city is moving currently forward with a number of new transit projects and extensions to existing options – Beach Corridor Transit Connection, Miami Streetcar, Tri-Rail extension to Downtown, All Aboard Florida – that will expand access to the city’s downtown area, which the DDA said is “critical to its economic and social strength.” Specifically, the agency believes more transit options causally relates to the maximization of “doing business, shopping, working and living downtown,” and further allows residents to choose preferred options of transportation rather than rely on only what’s available. Focusing on walkability is doubly important, as our own reports have shown contemporary urban residents largely prefer easy accessibility to the sprawl more common in past decades.