Coral Gables was founded on innovation, being one of the very first planned communities in the United States. Today, we’re known internationally as a Smart City, leveraging information and communication technologies and intelligent connected infrastructure to benefit our residents, employees, businesses, and visitors, as well as make our city more resilient and sustainable.
Our city is the home of the University of Miami, 140+ multinational corporate headquarters, 20+ international consulates and trade offices, and a vibrant innovation ecosystem. The City provides excellent municipal services, including an accredited Police Department, as well as a Class 1 Fire Department and a Class 1 Building Division. In addition, the City has AAA bond ratings from S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch; has been named a Tree City USA for the past 39 consecutive years by the National Arbor Foundation, and selected as a Playful City USA for eight years in a row by the non-profit organization KaBOOM!
Excellent municipal services, high quality of life, convenient access, responsible growth, and a diversified economy make Coral Gables a highly desirable place to live, work, and play.
Benchmarks
- 60% of Population has BA or Higher
- 55% of Population Speaks a Second Language
- 40 Average Age of Residents
- Third Top Small City in the Country to Start a Small Business
- Eighth-best City in the Country for ESG Investment
- Among Top 5 Most Beautiful Small Cities in America and Top 10 Cities to Live Well in America
- Among Top 5 Places to Live in Florida, Top 20 Best Small Cities, and 40 Best Cities to Live in the U.S.
- Best of Miami – Readers’ Choice: Best City to Live in Miami
- 98 Walk Score in Business Core, Sixth Most Walkable Suburb in the U.S.
- First Place in Government Experience, Digital Cities, and Open Cities Index in the U.S.
- Home of the University of Miami
- 4 Miles from Miami International Airport
- 9 Miles from PortMiami
- 7 Miles from Internet Hub NAP of the Americas
- 20 Consulates & Foreign Trade Offices
- 140 Multinational Corporations
- 20 Live Theatre, Art and Cultural Institutions
Technology plays an important role in many of our city’s services and operations by fostering communication and collaboration among employees, residents, and businesses; expediting tasks; increasing productivity; reducing our carbon footprint; assessing and managing risks; improving safety; making government activities and finances more transparent; and making City services better.
Smart devices, systems, and sensors already in place around Coral Gables form an interconnected network that gathers and analyzes data we can act on in real time. Much of this data is freely open to the public via dashboards, an application store, citizen engagement tools, and our community intelligence center on Coral Gables’ Smart City Hub on www.coralgables.com/smartcityhub.
Award-Winning Smart City
Coral Gables promotes the development of a smart city ecosystem that fosters innovation and economic growth by bringing together through technology People, Businesses, Organizations, Things, and Systems. By leveraging strategic planning and innovation, the City’s digital transformation and smart initiatives benefit the citizens with continuous improvement of customer service and quality of life.
The city has implemented a robust and resilient smart city technology infrastructure and engineering framework throughout multiple innovation districts that provide hyper-connectivity, visibility, control, and automation of city services. This infrastructure fosters quality of life improvements in Public Safety, mobility, energy efficiency, sustainability, and accessibility of digital services, entrepreneurship and economic development, and digital literacy, supported by a robust foundation of resilient high-speed broadband communications built on industry standards and best practices for security and fault-tolerance. This infrastructure includes fiber optics corridors, wireless networks, public Wi-Fi, satellite communications; interactive smart kiosks, a complex layer of cyber-physical systems and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, smart lights, intelligent cameras, traffic and environmental sensors, first-of-its-kind smart city AI-powered modular integrated poles; distributed clouds, predictive data analytics; and a smart city hub and a digital twin platform with real-time urban analytics public dashboards and digital tools for citizens, first responders, traffic engineers, academic researchers, businesses, and entrepreneurs.
Coral Gables is proud to have won over 30 national and international smart city innovation and technology awards and recognitions. The city received the 2024 Smart 20 Award and the 2024 IDC North America Smart City Award, the 2022 Smart City Innovation Excellence Award, and the 2022 IEEE Smart Cities Awards Jury Prize; was recognized as Connected City Innovator of the Year in 2024, one of the world’s Top 7 Intelligent Communities in 2023 and 2024, and one of eight Smart Cities to Watch in 2020; and won first place nationwide in the 2023 Government Experience award, the 2019 and 2020 U.S. Open Cities Index awards, and the 2018 Digital Cities award, among other recognitions.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) highlighted Coral Gables’ smart city infrastructure, platforms, and initiatives in their smart cities best-practice case studies and in federal smart cities standards and strategic plans. NIST also highlighted Coral Gables in its Global Community Technology Challenge (GCTC), a collaborative platform enabling local governments, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, technologists, and corporations from all over the world to form project teams to work on groundbreaking Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) applications to benefit cities and communities.
The American Society for Quality (ASQ)’s International Team Excellence Awards (ITEA) recognized Coral Gables’ Innovation and Technology department (CGIT) for performance excellence in quality engineering and process improvement. CGIT’s six sigma black belt projects received an ITEA case study award from ASQ at the 2019 World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI).
Coral Gables was selected as one of 35 Champion Cities nationwide in the 2018 Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayor Challenge, a competition designed to help city leaders think big, be bold, and uncover inventive ideas that tackle today’s toughest problems.
Those accolades are a recognition of the city’s leadership, performance, and innovation in leveraging technology and best practices to align with city goals; promote citizen inclusion in important government processes; share government data with the public; proactively address citizen expectations; boost cybersecurity and operational efficiency; enhance public safety and mobility; foster economic growth; preserve our history and natural environment; and continuously improve citizen services and quality of life.
Coral Gables’ award-winning IT department works closely with leading tech experts and with multiple partners in professional organizations and academia to ensure our City remains on the cutting edge of technology and innovation.
Bolstering Infrastructure Resilience
Coral Gables has implemented powerful data centers and cloud computing platforms to expand our capacity to support vital activities, such as provisioning services before, during, and after a hurricane. To keep services functioning when natural disasters cripple the conventional power grid, our City is partnering with universities and pursuing matching grants to install solar and wind micro-grids.
In 2021, the City achieved SolSmart Silver Designation through the Solar Foundation, International City/County Management Association (ICMA), and the U.S. DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office.
In celebration of World Standards Day, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Standards Association held a contest in 2017 exploring how standards are helping to create the smart city of today and tomorrow. Coral Gables’ winning submission centered around our city’s robust network and system infrastructure based on engineering standards and best practices that enable residents and first responders to stay connected even when Mother Nature strikes hardest.
Increasing Transparency
Through our recently revamped Smart Hub, anyone can view Coral Gables’ legislative, financial, and public records. Citizens can easily assess City revenues, such as property taxes; expenditures, such as capital improvement programs; budgets and demographics; review public records and the legislative calendar; watch a legislative session live; and even see which lobbyists are registered with the City.
Fostering Citizen Engagement and Improving User Experience
The City launched a new City Website in 2022 to assist visitors in easily locating information, while also updating the look and feel of the site: www.coralgables.com. The award-winning website was built on a state-of-the-art digital experience platform with improved service-oriented design, citizen services directory, enhanced features and functionalities, advanced search function, integration with city applications, streamlined content, and new video and photography showcasing the City Beautiful’s nature, historic landmarks, gorgeous residential areas, and vibrant business and arts and culture districts.
Using the Coral Gables new Citizen Center 311 app and chatbot, citizens can request, track, and explore city services, communicate with the city, and receive automated updates and alerts via text, emails, or mobile apps. The city’s website, mobile app, and smart city hub are also accessible on-the-go by visitors and pedestrians at interactive public kiosks. The city has made its city websites, data portals, and mobile apps more accessible and inclusive.
Improving Services
Smart technologies enable all types of business with Coral Gables, including payment, passport applications, business licenses, and permits, to be transacted online. Downloadable apps let Coral Gables residents check on traffic, order free rides on sustainable Freebee vehicles, and find and pay for parking by smartphone.
Streamlining Operations
Coral Gables has been implementing several Enterprise Systems that enable our City to better manage citizen services, city assets, facilities, permitting, finance operations, procurement, human resources, and payroll by streamlining our procedures and reducing data entry. Employees will get the data they need, whenever they need it, to make better decisions and improve our City’s day-to-day operations.
Reducing Crime and Enhancing Public Safety
To make faster and better-informed decisions, the Coral Gables Police Department leverages technologies such as closed-circuit TV cameras, mobile camera banks in critical areas, license plate readers, manned drones, cloud-native public safety platforms, crime data analytics, and apps that enable citizens to text police and upload photos and videos of incidents as they witness them. With the owner’s consent, our police is also able to upload and monitor video from the more than 3,000 doorbell cameras now installed in homes across the City.
Driving Economic Growth and Digital Literacy
The City’s economic development and innovation and technology departments, in partnership with multiple tech companies, education organizations, and federal agencies, provides digital literacy, e-commerce tools, and business technology training programs for small and medium businesses and the local workforce. The City and its partners host a series of free workshops that help small businesses enhance their digital skills and grow their bottom lines. The free workshops, digital bootcamps, and course materials are designed to give businesses the information and skillset needed to improve their selling capability beyond their brick-and-mortar stores. The City’s goal is to empower businesses with the tools and skills needed to expand, diversify, and thrive.
Our City tracks real-time pedestrian and vehicular traffic data in downtown areas. Retail businesses can use this to determine when they should be open and improve their marketing and sales strategies. With our sensors and our artificial intelligence (AI) systems, we can even tell them how long visitors stop in front of their windows. Free public Wi-Fi in city public areas, parks, and community centers has helped drum up business and attractions as well, with more than 30 public Wi-Fi sites and network corridors in city public areas, the central business district, downtown, public parks, community centers, city facilities, streets, and pedestrian corridors.
The City created the Gables TechTank incubator in partnership with tech talent and education institutions to bridge the regional tech talent and skills gap by facilitating the upskilling of professionals through training programs and providing reliable, sustainable sources of technical talent, data, services, and innovative solutions to organizations located within the City of Coral Gables.
The City also partnered with the University of Miami and tech organizations to launch the 6-month Smart City Solutions Competition and an annual hackathon program called CodeMania!, a 3-week competitive, hands-on learning experience for high school students to learn how to build and present a solution to solve real-world problems. The program encourages the teams to plan, create, and present a public-facing digital experience and/or chatbot concept that can help the City of Coral Gables improve the lives of its residents and visitors while helping students connect with education and career opportunities.
Research Programs and Partnerships
The Innovation and Technology department (CGIT) manages an impactful Smart City Lab and tech internship program, with over 125 internships provided by CGIT in collaboration with universities, colleges, and schools, from high school to undergrad to grad to postdoc, and 14 of those interns have been hired by the City over the years.
The City installed new smart city AI-powered modular poles featuring the Coral Gables v3 custom industrial award-winning design in the City’s central business district. This new design was created as a collaboration between the City of Coral Gables and industry partners, with expert advice from the University of Miami School of Architecture. These new poles – connected to the City’s Community Intelligence Center (CIC) – provide free public Wi-Fi, CCTV, traffic/environmental IoT sensor data, and traffic safety automation, enhancing public safety in busy areas of our central business district.
The City’s Innovation and Technology department (CGIT) started a research collaboration in 2022 with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) on advanced traffic data analytics, optimization, and applied artificial intelligence and machine learning. The research team studies intelligent traffic signals that can communicate in real-time with connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) and urban computing systems to improve energy efficiencies and reduce energy expenditures, congestion, and emissions for regional transportation systems across multiple operational scenarios. The project, titled “Autonomous Intelligent Assistant (AutonomIA): Resilient and Energy-Efficient City-wide Transportation Operations,” was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA-E). This R&D project is developing vehicle-to-signal communication and control test corridors and a small-scale traffic network in Coral Gables, in the smart district areas where the city has installed fiber optics and smart city AI-powered poles and traffic sensors.
The Coral Gables award-winning Digital Twin smart city platform was engineered in-house by the Innovation and Technology team (CGIT) as part of the IT strategic plans and ongoing R&D and innovation operations. The platform, recently revamped with advanced photogrammetry and 3D immersive technology, is widely used by city departments, emergency managers, traffic engineers, environmental analysts, urban planners, city officials, and decision-makers, and by university and school researchers and students.
Our City’s AI Digital Assistant (AIDA) was developed in 2021 as part of the NSF-funded STIR Labs initiative, by a government-academia joint research team integrated by our CGIT team, researchers from the University of West Virginia Human-Computer Interaction Lab (WVU-HCI) and MIT, the UC Berkeley Innovation Group (BIG), Stanford University, and the City Innovate STIR Labs cohort. In Phase 2 (2021-22), CGIT collaborated with graduate students from the University of Miami’s Institute of Data Science and Computing (UM-IDSC) to enhance AIDA’s NLP models and decision/recommendation engine. In Phase 3 (2023), CGIT reengineered AIDA with integration with Large Language Models (LLM), generative AI, improved ontology, heuristic, and Natural Language Programming (NLP) algorithms, and launched other AIDA personas, such as our new 311 CRM chatbot.
Improving Sustainability and Mobility
Over the last 10 years, the City of Coral Gables has become a leader in sustainability and resiliency in Florida and across the nation. The City’s journey in sustainability started with the development of the City’s Sustainability Management Plan in 2015. In this 10-year plan, the City identified 23 district projects with the goal of reducing energy and water consumption, fuel usage, and overall greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2025. Since 2013, the City has reduced energy consumption by over 14% through lighting and HVAC upgrades, reduced water consumption in city facilities by over 22% by installing low-flow faucets and toilets, and reduced Community-Wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 20%.
Environmental sensors in Coral Gables measure air quality and noise pollution and analyze the impact of heat islands, while sensors in our waterways detect flooding and monitor salinity, pH levels, the presence of chemicals, depth of water, and overall water quality. This data allows the City and outside experts to more easily detect and respond to critical issues such as red tide, flooding risks, extraordinary fluctuations, and storms. In 2021, CGIT joined the Water Level Network Advisory Committee of the Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association (SECOORA).
The city waived all permit fees for solar installations and other energy-and water-efficient projects in 2016, passed a resolution in 2017supporting the establishment of 100% clean, renewable energy in the city and across the United States, joined the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact in 2016 and the U.S. Climate Mayors in 2019, and was selected as one of 22 cities in Florida to participate in the 2022 Race to Zero Competition.
Electric Vehicles and Alternative Transportation
The City currently has the largest municipal electric vehicle fleet (70 electric vehicles) in the State of Florida. Currently, 12% of the City’s total fleet is electric, which puts the City near the top of the list of electric fleets in the nation. The City has also installed 41 public/private charging stations throughout the City and is just getting started. The City has a goal of 246 charging points and 145 charging stations over the next few years.
Alternative transportation is also a top priority in the City. Currently, the City has over 10 miles of bike lanes with plans to increase to over 35 miles. The City also provides free bike racks to businesses. The City offers a free trolley service in downtown that has over 1.2 million riders per year. The City has also implemented a program for electric scooters and a Freebie EV service, recently upgraded with Tesla EVs, that had over 60,000 riders in its first year. The City is working hard at connecting the first and last mile of transit.
Green Building
The City also developed a new state-of-the-art public safety building, ParkSmart-certified state-of-the-art parking and mobility facilities, and a Trolley maintenance facility that were built to LEED Silver Green Construction practices. The City requires all future City public buildings/private buildings over 20,000 square feet to be built to LEED Silver or equivalent. In 2022, the City achieved LEED Gold Certification for Cities and Communities.
Green Space
The City has over 295 acres of parks and is continuing to purchase additional green space to be converted into community parks in different areas of the City. Coral Gables has an extensive Tree Canopy with over 41% tree coverage and over 40,000 trees in the public right-of-way and has been Tree City USA for the past 37 years.
Green Business
In partnership with the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce, the City launched a Green Business Certification Program on Earth Day in April 2019. The goal of the program is to recognize and reward local businesses for their significant sustainability efforts and accomplishments. In addition, the program aims to educate businesses on additional sustainability initiatives they can implement. The application includes over 75 actions businesses can take to be more sustainable.
Waste Reduction/Recycling
The City of Coral Gables encourages local businesses to reduce the use of plastic straws, plastic bags, and polystyrene “Styrofoam.” The City has held nine household hazardous waste collection events since 2016 (twice a year in April and November) that have collected over 320,000 pounds of household hazardous waste and electronic waste has been recycled and diverted from the landfill. In addition, the City was the first in Miami-Dade to partner with Covanta Dade Renewable Energy to establish a prescription drug disposal program. Since the program began, the City has collected/disposed of over 1,200 pounds of prescription drugs at the Public Safety Building that historically would have gone either to landfills or flushed down the toilet.
The City also launched a Reverse Vending Machine Rewards Incentive Program, where 715 people participated (children and parents from multiple schools, local business workers and patrons, city visitors). With their help, the city collected 18,258 containers in one year; that equals 1,035 pounds of beverage containers recycled.
The Keep Coral Gables Beautiful (KCGB) initiative promotes environmental sustainability and educates the community to take action every day to reduce litter from our open spaces & waterways, improve recycling efforts, and keep our City Beautiful. The KCGB program received the Keep America Beautiful 2021 Innovation Award and the Keep Florida Beautiful 2022 Outstanding Project Award.
Resiliency
Coral Gables is focused on resiliency and dealing with the future potential sea level and climate impacts. To help plan, the City has developed LiDAR elevation maps, authored a White Paper titled “Adaptation Strategies: Legal Considerations,” and conducted a vulnerability assessment looking at its critical infrastructure in relation to future sea level projections. The City also partnered with FIU to do a tidal/sediment gauge study.
The City established a sea level rise mitigation fund (infrastructure reserve) in 2016, which will be used to help fund future adaptation and mitigation efforts, with a goal to set aside $100 million by 2040. Currently, over $13 million has been allocated to the fund.
Coral Gables is working hard to harness technology in the service of our City, and we welcome your input. Please contact us at www.coralgables.com/contact-us to share your ideas.
For more information, visit:
coralgables.com
ITDocscoralgables.com
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TechStoriescoralgables.com/contact-us
