About two dozen leaders of Miami's major businesses are forming a nonprofit to tackle some of the city's growing pains after a population boom, and they are using lessons from around the globe to help shape South Florida's future.

Miami has become one of the nation's least affordable housing markets and use of public transit is down significantly, two challenges the new Partnership for Miami group plans to address.

Partnership for Miami's members include well-established locals such as Jon Paul Pérez, president of Related Group and one of South Florida's most active developers; Ana-Marie Codina Barlick, CEO of the family-owned Codina Partners and the developer behind downtown Doral; and Jose Mas, the CEO of multinational engineering and construction company MasTec. The group also includes some of Miami’s more recent arrivals like billionaire Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of hedge fund Citadel, and Orlando Bravo, founder of private equity firm Thoma Bravo.

Partnership for Miami issued a report this month that outlines six focus areas where the city needs improvement, and includes examples of what has worked — and what hasn't — in Miami's peer markets across the globe.

The report isn’t meant to be a one-size-fits-all solution, Nitin Motwani, managing partner of Merrimac Ventures and a Partnership for Miami member, told CoStar News in an interview.

“We want to learn from some of the pros and cons of things that have happened in cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, London, Paris, Mumbai, or Dubai,” but do it in a way that is uniquely Miami, said Motwani, whose company is one of the chief developers behind the $6 billion Miami Worldcenter mixed-use project.

Forming Partnership for Miami "happened organically among some of the people who've been in Miami for some time, as well as some of the new people who've moved here with fresh perspectives" and where they think there is "room for opportunity and growth to continue our trend and the trajectory in a positive way," Motwani said.

The group comprises “people who are all very busy” and want to see things get done, Motwani said. Many of the group’s members were already having conversations among themselves as part of their work in the private sector prior to establishing Partnership for Miami.

Similar to partnerships in New York and Washington, D.C., the idea is “to make sure we give direct feedback, in real-time, on challenges” employers and workers are dealing with, Motwani explained.

Priorities outlined in the report include making the city more affordable and livable, diversifying the economy, education and workforce development, improving global connectivity via the airport and PortMiami, modernizing government services and protecting the area’s natural environment.

Affordable housing is a significant issue Partnership for Miami is focusing on. While South Florida's tri-county area has seen dozens of company expansions and high-profile individuals announce plans to move to the area, Miami-Dade is the only county where the population declined between 2020 and 2023. Motwani said that decrease stems from low-income individuals being priced out of the market.

Miami has become one of the nation's least affordable housing markets, with nearly two-thirds of renters and a third of homeowners being cost-burdened and spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs, according to the report.

Partnership for Miami wants to build more than 175,000 affordable and workforce housing units to help combat the issue. The report suggests Miami draw inspiration from Atlanta's HouseATL, a coalition of public, private and nonprofit organizations that managed to generate $300 million in affordable housing investments.

Developers like Motwani say unlocking the necessary inventory in Miami will include streamlining the building permitting process across municipalities to help accelerate construction, a process that takes time even under the best conditions.

But coordination between Miami-Dade County and its 34 municipalities, each with their own departments, building codes and regulations, is expected to be a challenge. San Jose, California, developed an online tool to accelerate permits for single-family remodels and commercial projects from contractors with documented track records, reducing the approval time to as few as five days, according to the report.

Traffic is another important issue expected to continue plaguing Miami and hamper its future growth unless strides are made. More than 90% of Miami residents commute to work by car, and public transport ridership has declined nearly 25% since 2015, making the city the eighth most congested in the world, according to the report.

While momentum has started to build around transit-oriented development and the launch of an expanded commuter rail line, the city still needs "at least" five new major transit corridors to get people out of their cars, the report said.

One example of the potential difficulties of coordinating with local stakeholders for these kinds of projects is the Baylink transit corridor, a long-proposed expansion of the downtown area’s automated people-mover system to the city of Miami Beach.

Miami Beach officials voted against the project in February. While the county project does not require the city’s approval, the city’s resistance is just one example of the what the public and private sectors will have to navigate moving forward.

“We didn't come out with a report that said, ‘You have to do this.’ We came out with a report saying, 'Here's some of the opportunities for further growth in Miami and further improvement,'” Motwani said. “We're fully out in the public. We are meeting with elected officials, and we are working on ways that we can be helpful and advance some of the solutions for these opportunities to grow,” Motwani said.

One of those opportunities in Partnership for Miami's report suggests shifting the city's economic mix to sectors with higher-paying jobs in real estate, finance and healthcare.

While these industries have long been some of Miami's largest, the lack of a physical space or campus dedicated to them, like North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, an area home to over 375 companies and 60,000 employees; or St. Louis' Cortex Innovation Community, hampers innovation and collaboration across industries and between the region's educational ecosystem, the report notes.

Miami's position on the water also means the city is uniquely poised to lead when it comes to developing new technologies and strategies to deal with climate change and rising sea levels.

In doing so, it may cement itself as a legitimate technology and innovation hub — another area where the region's schools, like the University of Miami, Miami-Dade College, and Florida International University, can work together to bring high-paying jobs to the area.

The partnership also wants the city to attract more world-class companies. Only nine Fortune 500 companies were headquartered in Miami-Dade County as of 2023, including homebuilder Lennar, whose vice president and chief financial officer Diane Bessette is a member of Partnership for Miami.

The report says Miami-Dade County should aspire to attract at least an additional five headquarters, which would put it among the top 10 U.S. cities.

Miami may benefit from still being a relatively young city, Motwani said. Miami, despite its global status, is only about a third of the age of New York or Boston, he explained. What the city lacks for in age it makes up for in its ability to respond to sudden changes, such as the growth it is currently experiencing.

"I think a lot of other cities have so much history and so much baggage that it's very difficult for them to pivot," Motwani said. Miami is "very nimble and flexible, and we can move quickly," he added.