Cilento Participates in National Planning Program

City of North Miami, FL benefits from 3rd Annual D-PRAT Workshop 

[NORTH MIAMI, FL] Sullivan 180 Community Development & Communications Manager Shannon Cilento, AICP was recently selected from a pool of applicants from across the nation to lead a team of professional planners in the American Planning Association’s (APA) 3rd Annual D-PRAT Program in North Miami, Florida in November.

The APA’s Urban Design and Preservation Division’s Design-Preservation Rapid Assistance Team (D-PRAT) is an annual pro-bono program to provide free planning expertise to under-resourced communities and organizations by collaboratively planning for the future, focusing on urban design and historic preservation issues.

Cilento is leading one of 3 project-based teams in North Miami. Her team is focused on creating and activating vacant lots and underutilized City parks, as well as implementing flood mitigation efforts and native plantings to the parks studied. The teams spent 3 days on the ground in North Miami collecting data, meeting with City and County officials and other stakeholders and creating initial design concepts.

“It has been a wonderful experience to join professional planners from across the country to develop strategies for the City of North Miami to help them accomplish their planning goals,” said Cilento. “I am learning a lot from my fellow planners and from the North Miami community—I look forward to implementing what I have learned to my work here in Sullivan County.”

The teams will continue to work remotely throughout the next 8 weeks to finalize a plan and recommendations for the City. A draft plan will be presented at the end of January.