For years, people posted notes on doors, corkboards and car windshields with tape, thumbtacks and windshield wipers. Notes got wet, stolen and often never delivered.

Then, along came the Post-it note. We could post notes wherever we wanted, without the hassle of glue, tape or other things to make the note stick. And, the product took off, making billions for the company with the Post-it patent, 3M.

Sometimes great ideas like that, with the possibility for big change, are right in front of us, just waiting for someone to take them and run with it. Sometimes they are ideas just sitting in your back yard, with the possibility of changing an entire community.

In my last blog post I talked about how quickly The Underline, an initiative to transform 10 miles of underutilized land below Miami’s Metrorail into a linear park and urban trail, has mobilized. In the 10 months since we incorporated as a nonprofit, The Underline has been embraced by Miami-Dade County Parks & Recreation and Transit departments, has been endorsed by four cities and the county, and even the University of Miami’s School of Architecture has devoted a design studio to it. Now, our goal is to complete a master plan by the summer of 2015 and break ground in 2016.

Click here for to read the rest of the Knight Foundation blog post by Meg Daly an entrepreneur and founder of Friends of The Underline. 

Knight Foundation provided seed funding for the project to promote community engagement. Photo: Pedestrian path below Metrorail track by Michael Bolden.