The streets of Miami’s ritziest neighborhoods flood — but Liberty City is bone dry.
The neighborhood sits just 12 feet above sea level. That slightly higher ground is gold these days in South Florida with rising seas caused by climate change.
That makes Liberty City irresistible to developers and also, to filmmakers who wanted to document what happens when gentrification comes for one of Miami’s historically Black neighborhoods.
The result is the new film, Razing Liberty Square. The movie traces the redevelopment of Liberty Square, which was one of the oldest segregated public housing projects in the country.
Real estate developers promised to build new, mixed-income housing that wouldn’t displace any of the residents. The film shows just how those promises fall apart.
Katja Esson is an Academy Award-nominated director who directed and produced this film. She spent years documenting what would happen when the city turned over public housing to a private company for redevelopment.
On the Jan. 22 episode of Sundial, Esson joins us to talk about this film that is both a timelapse of a broken promise and a cautionary tale.
Related Urban Development Group, the firm behind Liberty Square, has contested the film's portrayal of the project. In a letter shared with WLRN on Jan. 26, below, the group’s president Albert Milo Jr said the completed development will have “more than enough units for all former residents who wish to return."
Razing Liberty Square runs at Coral Gables Cinema from Jan. 26 through Feb. 1. It’ll air nationally on PBS on Jan.29
On Sundial's previous episode, we were joined by Nora Maité Nieves. She is the artist in residence at The Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. In her exhibit “Clouds in the Expanded Field,” she connects her Caribbean roots to the skies above whatever city she might find herself in.
Listen to Sundial Monday through Thursday on WLRN, 91.3 FM, live at 1 p.m., rebroadcast at 8 p.m. Missed a show? Find every episode of Sundial on your favorite podcast app, such as Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify.
This article was updated on Jan. 26, 2024, to add a statement from Related Urban Development Group.
