Miami Beach wants to be the next ‘Blue Zone’ – how will it get there?

Miami Beach, FL, may be known for its spring break scene and celebrities snapping up multimillion-dollar mansions, but it hopes to soon join the ranks of the world’s “blue zones”: communities where people live a lot . taller and healthier than average.

“It’s about changing the perception and the reality of who we are,” Miami Beach Deputy Mayor Tanya Bhatt, who is leading the effort to turn around the party venue, tells Realtor.com® exclusively. “We’re never going to have a strong nightlife. And that’s a great thing to have. But we’re also about a lot more than partying—until you quit

What is a “blue zone”?

Journalist Dan Buettner coined the term “blue zone” in 2004 for certain communities around the globe that he claims have unusually high life expectancies and large numbers of centenarians.

While he acknowledges that genetics plays a key role in a person’s longevity, Buettner also believes that longevity is ripe in certain communities because of their lifestyles.

The five blue areas are: Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; Loma Linda, CA; and Okinawa, Japan.

In his best-selling book, Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer, Buettner identified nine common traits of these five communities: natural movement, purposeful living, stress reduction, mindful eating, a plant-based diet. , moderate alcohol consumption, a faith-based community, putting family first and having a healthy social circle (“tribe†).

While it should be noted that the concept of blue zones has been challenged as a myth and not based on science, the idea remains extremely popular.

Buettner cleverly built a business empire around the concept, with several books, speaking engagements, meal plans and branded foods, vacations and merchandise. He has even gone so far as to try to unblock the debunkers.

In 2020, Minneapolis-based Blue Zones LLC was acquired by Adventist Health, a private Seventh-day Adventist-based nonprofit healthcare company with $6 billion in revenue.

How will Miami Beach become a “blue zone”?

If you weren’t born into one of these long-lived communities, don’t worry. Buettner believes that with enough effort and change, any community can drastically increase its longevity and well-being.

To that end, he created the Blue Zones Community Project that will work with communities to make them — hopefully, eventually — the next blue zone.

In 2023, Bhatt watched the Netflix documentary Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones and was intrigued to learn that communities can hire the lifestyle company Buettner founded to help increase their well-being and longevity.

Impressed with what other communities, such as Ft. Worth, TX and Hawaii—were able to reach after joining forces with the company, Bhatt secured $220,000 in funding for Miami Beach to do the same.

While she believes the city already has many benefits of the blue zone lifestyle — including many outdoor, walking and community activities — it could be improved.

In February, the 7-mile strip of sand known as Miami Beach, where its cozy population of 80,000 swells to 500,000 on weekends, will begin a six-month evaluation process to figure out what it needs to do to become more like a blue area. .

Once the evaluation period is over, Blue Zones LLC makes its recommendations for areas of improvement and works with the city to implement them.

Bhatt says she’s excited to learn the company’s suggestions for change, but has thoughts about the area’s weak points: the lack of micromobility, such as bike and turnpike lanes and shared bike and electric scooter systems, and a lack of community-based events. for young people in their 20s and 30s.

With the rise of remote work, Bhatt points out that the traditional place to meet like-minded people (a “tribe”) – the “office” may not be an option for many.

If Miami Beach achieves certification — something that takes about five years — it would be one of the most popular Blue Zone-certified communities.

“We have a global brand,” says Bhatt. “I mean, ‘MTV Spring Break’ was filmed here.

What should communities do?

So far, Blue Zones LLC has consulted with 90 communities, 70 of which have received certification.

“Communities like Miami Beach want to take control of where they want to go,” Dan Buettner Jr., executive vice president and chief transformation officer for his father’s company, tells Realtor.com. “And where they want to go speaks to quality of life and well-being.”

A team of Blue Zones staff will work with no fewer than 300 Miami Beach community leaders to develop a plan over the next six months that will hopefully lead to positive systemic transformations.

The certification doesn’t mean Miami Beach would be the sixth blue zone; it would simply indicate that the city had made enough improvements to meet the company’s criteria.

Buettner says Blue Zone-certified communities were able to do things like lower rates of smoking, obesity and depression and increase their ranking on Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index.

He points out that the strong, elderly people in his father’s original study weren’t working out in gyms or studying diet books. Instead, the nine principles of power they lived by were organic to their communities.

The point is not to force people to eat better or exercise more, but to change the way a community functions. For example, a pedestrian path was added around a lake in the Blue Zones project community of Albert Lea, MN, to encourage walking.

“It’s not about creating environments where people make the healthy choice, but where the healthy choice is the inevitable choice,” Buettner explains.

How communities can be certified

He points to the largest city on his list – Ft. Worth, TX – as a shining example of the project’s ability to transform a community for the better.

Blue Zones worked with the city of almost 1 million residents to secure an $8.5 million bond for a series of capital projects for downtown West 7th Street. All landscaped media, wider sidewalks, pedestrian and bicycle lanes, better lighting and improved traffic signals were added.

Buettner says these changes revitalized the area and its residents.

Similar improvements were made in Albert Lea, MN, he says. Main Street downtown was struggling with closed businesses and insufficient foot traffic.

“They were about to raise the speed limit,” he says. “We advised the opposite: lower it.â€

He says the result was less noise and air pollution, more foot traffic, renewed businesses and an increase in property values.

In Jacksonville, FL, Buettner says Blue Zones was integral in getting the city to ban smoking in public parks.

“It’s not just about making it harder to smoke, but about waste and air quality,” he emphasizes.

Nor does it hurt for a community to be associated with the popular term, “blue zone.” It can also be beneficial for property values.

Just look at the Seventh-day Adventist community in Loma Linda, CA – the only city in the US to have earned official blue zone status. Smart local real estate agents often play around with the designation of their listings.

“Live in Loma Linda, the only Blue Zone in the United States, and enjoy all that this healthy and vibrant community has to offer. Schedule your tour today! A listing enthuses a four-bedroom, $660,000, single-family home.

“It’s definitely a selling point,” agrees Janet Burke, of Re/Max Advantage, who has sold residential real estate in the area for nearly 30 years.

The only thing communities need

There’s one thing a community needs if it ever wants to become a blue zone — more than bike lanes, healthy food options, or walking.

Buettner says he can consult with a community until it’s, well, blue on the face; but if a country is not ready to make real changes, it’s all for naught.

“You can’t do anything to anyone; people have to be willing to do it to themselves,” he says. make him sick”.

He has high hopes that Miami Beach is ready.

“Miami Beach is already on a journey,” he says. “We just want to be a part of it.”