Active Design is a set of evidence-based design guidelines that lead to positive health outcomes for our community to reverse negative health trends like rising obesity, high rates of depression, and chronic diseases. Active Design is developed under four areas: Parks and Open Spaces, Development Patterns, Transportation and Mobility, and Buildings; that focus on walkable communities, promote an easily accessible network of parks and open spaces within close distance of residences, encourage a diverse mix of land uses, encourage transit-oriented development, promotes shaded sidewalks with façade elements that improve the pedestrian experience, encourages uses that serve a community for different age groups and inclusive of catering to a variety of needs, enhance bicycle mobility through bicycle infrastructure, and encourages schools with easy access to transit routes, and maximizes the accessibility to stairs.

The City of North Miami Beach Ordinance currently supports transit-oriented development, walkable neighborhoods oriented around the five-minute walk, regulates mixed-use development to encourage residents to live, work, and play within the same neighborhood, and supports an environment that attracts day and evening activities so that the street is occupied by visitors, residents, business owners and operators who have a clear and vested interest in the vitality of the City

The North Miami Beach Comprehensive Plan, Future Land Use Element Objective 1.6, requires facilitating mixed-use and planned unit development projects that are of appropriate intensity, density, land use mix, and urban design to foster walkable neighborhoods, great public spaces, and increase the viability of pedestrian, bicycle, and public modes of transportation, and reduce dependency on the automobile.

The Resolution being proposed supports current policy and regulations and further emphasizes the intent of the Code.