Miami Florida

MIAMI (Dade)

Miami, FL: Miami was a speculative dream of Henry Flager (a Rockefeller Standard Oil partner; the lawyer who drafted its corporate charter) (Brands, 2010, p. 94) . First developing luxury hotels in St. Augustine, Flager then bought a railroad, extended it to Daytona, then to West Palm Beach. Only then did he incorporate a tiny village he called Miami (1895). In Miami, Flagler built a tourist hotel, a rail terminal, an electric plant, sewage system and water works; he helped establish public schools and donated land for a town center, and then built docks and wharfs. In a village of only 260 (1896), he started a newspaper: the “Miami Metropolis”.

In 1911 Flager brought the Wright brothers into town to show off their planes. Flager’s Miami promotion cross-marketed Flager’s Florida East Coast Railway on which East Coast residents could travel to the “land of sun-bronzed men, beautiful women, eternally youthful—working, playing and actually living in the fullest sense of the word”. So visit “St Augustine, Ormond, Daytona Beach, Miami, the romantic Keys and finally Key West … Modern hotel accommodations to suit both your taste and purse … Through Pullman service to all East Coast Resorts”. When Flager died in 1913, Miami had grown to 13,000 (Ward, 1998, p. 64).

Miami’s story was not over with Flager’s death. E. G. Sewell, a Kissimmee native, arrived in Miami’s early years and opened up a shoe store. In 1914, after perusing a newspaper article, Sewell got to thinking. Sensing that during World War I Americans would not vacation in Europe, they would be open to an alternative; so why not Miami? “So he passed the hat … and in two weeks raised $3,000 for tourism promotion”. Advertising worked; that winter (1915) 5,000 tourists came to Miami. Sewell was quickly elected President of the Miami Chamber of Commerce and there was no looking back for Miami tourism. “The chamber filled the trains with sacks of literature featuring photos of scantily-clad women acquiring tans” and the tourism flourished.” (Mead, 2014, pp. 224-5)

In the early 1920’s, southern state/municipal advertising revolutionized tourism promotion. Resort tourism had been significant for several generations, but that promotion was mostly private: railroads, hotel cooperatives, and other, usually local, private interests operated the campaigns. In the 1920’s, however, Tourism promotion shifted from coastal resorts to “warm and sunny” coastal cities–but it also shifted into the public arena. “Follow the sun” vacation tourism flourished, pioneered by a raft of southern state EDO’s (Florida, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Alabama) and municipal convention and visitor bureaus. The Florida state Bureau of Immigration (1925) added its two cents to state-promoted tourism. If we were to focus on tourism alone, the Sunbelt began as early as the twenties.

Miami/Florida-style Urban Renewal

According to Professor Mohl, people-moving was the heart and “soul” of Miami’s urban renewal. Was its CBD urban renewal more political than business-led? Was it more a conscious expression of a strategy to preserve a Jim Crow policy system than an economic development strategy?

Les Deluges: Post-1960 Population Movements

It’s no great insight that a city’s rise and decline involves population movements, but the timing, process, and reaction to population movements can not only “shape” but define the city’s policy future, its physical/social configuration—and in Miami’s case its role/prominence in the global competitive hierarchy.

Miami, like its suburban neighbors, had previously pursued a long-standing tourism strategy that built (1) infamous resorts and entertainment developments and (2) attracted huge numbers of Jewish New York retirees. Both saturated coastal enclaves and beaches. “Most Florida politicians directed their sights exclusively northward, to the places from which people and money were flowing in a seemingly endless stream” (Portes and Stepick 87). The attention of Miami’s ED policy elites pointed North—not to the Caribbean, certainly not to Latin or South America. That was soon to change.

Miami’s population movements came in rather large waves in relatively short time periods, the cumulative impact of which redefined the city, its policy system, demographics, political culture, its impact on neighboring suburbs. Immigration, and the pinball-like population movements it triggered, impacted Miami differently than the 19^th-early 20^th Century immigration Big Cities. In that first “Great” immigration, many ethnic groups entered more or less simultaneously over a half-century. Immigrants often moved on to other cities or farm homesteads. Big City neighborhoods broke up into an ethnic ward-based mosaic whose votes were captured by ward bosses and political machines. Native residents often moved to city peripheries.

That did not happen in Miami. One ethnic group, Cubans, overwhelmed all other immigrant nationalities, and existing “native” groups (Anglos and African-Americans) as well. Pre-1980 Cuban arrivals were more often former affluent, middle or upper working class with education, skills, and often past careers. Native residents wasted little time in moving to the suburbs, leaving behind a business-CBD bound political and institutional elite which initially adapted and maintained its traditional dominance over the ED policy system—largely due to Cuban non-involvement in local politics. While ethnic groups clustered in distinctive neighborhoods, the city’s small size pushed new arrivals into neighborhoods used by other ethnic and racial groups (especially African-American) and fleeing Anglos had no choice but to leave the city for Dade, and other counties. The city changed its demographic composition almost completely in thirty years.

It took more than a generation to capture all this immigration and native emigration, and digest it into a new policy system. In the meantime, new immigrant waves poured into the city. The city reinvented itself in the process. Economic development played a large role in this transformation, not that it “attracted” these new waves, it didn’t, but in that it played a role in differentiating those who assimilated and prospered from those that did not. Also, the federal government played a major role. In return, the new Miami (Dade) that resulted evolved into an entry-level “world city” with a major position in the global trade and finance hierarchy as the “Capital of the Caribbean” and an international city of America’s southern hemisphere.

In 1960 Miami, with 291,000 plus residents, was the nation’s 44^th largest city (Florida’s largest[i]). The City, all 35 sq. miles of it, was also a component in Miami-Dade a (1958) metropolitan experiment to counter balkanization and the endless in-fighting of small and large suburbs that characterized the metro area since the early 1900’s. Miami-Dade contained 935,000 residents. Miami City was white Anglo and African-American, residentially segregated, governed by a southern white, business-politician led, growth-oriented policy system. Nasty and racist it may have been, but it was also loose, personalistic, almost cabal-like than centralized, effective and powerful. With one exception, its weak mayors had been Republican (in the solid Democratic South) since 1896. In 1957 it elected its second Democrat. By 1980 the city had grown to 346,681 and Miami-Dade nearly 1,626,000—and 1,937,000 by 1990.

The First Wave: Post-Castro Revolution Cubans

In 1952, Batista tossed out the previous despot, Carlos Prio. Prio promptly set up his new HQ in South Miami. From there Prio met, and funded revolutionaries attempting to overthrow Batista. Ironically, during the Battista years Miami became the vacation trip for the Cuban middle and upper classes. Miami’s tourism had a new dimension and it partially explains why Miami became the go-to place for the Cuban middle-class in exile.

In late 1955 Castro went to Miami and obtained the funding that led to his1956 invasion of Oriente Province which eventually resulted in Battista’s 1959 overthrow. Battista ouster caused a flood of Cuban immigrants, a flow that would ebbed and flowed for two decades after. After Castro’s revolution, Miami became the center for revolutionary factions, who at a Congress in Miami approved a “Miami Pact” which Castro, preferring his own path, repudiated.

The first post-Cuban revolution wave, between 1959 and 1961, brought approximately 135,000 Cubans into Miami—a city of 291,000 (Portes and Stepick 102). At first Miami’s Cubans considered themselves mostly as refugees waiting for the day they would return to Cuba. Cuban politics in Miami did not center on City Hall, but on how, and who would lead Cuba when the Reconquista occurred. The goal was to liberate Cuba from Castro and the key to that lay in Washington. To Washington political leaders, Miami Cubans were allies in Washington’s struggle to resist Castro’s and USSR’s expansion in the Americas. Assisting Cubans in Miami was a vital element in our foreign policy—a reality the local Anglo business and political elites had to live with. The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion was organized and domiciled in Miami and Coral Gables. That focus climaxed with the 1962 October Missile Crisis.

After 1962, airlifts, regular Eastern airlines flights and rafts continued to bring new exiles to Miami through 1965—the cumulative total approximately 210,000 (Portes and Stepick 103). By that time the Anglo city leadership was aggressively pushing Washington to resettle the “immigrants–until the federal government reached an agreement with Castro to permit limited immigration into the USA—i.e. Miami—by air. These “freedom flights” continued until 1973, bringing an additional 340,000 new residents[ii] into the Miami airport (Portes and Stepick 104). The federal resettlement program resettled almost 470,000 by 1978—but “it didn’t take” as many, maybe most, resettled Cubans eventually returned to Miami area. In 1979 close to 80% of all Cubans in America were living in Miami (and suburbs). In 1980 the City’s population reached 346,681. Hispanics, 17.6% of Miami residents in 1960, were 56% by 1980. Essentially, the City was majority Cuban by that point. Non-Hispanic whites were 19% from a 1960 42%.

In this context, it was not at all clear what assimilation of Cubans meant? While Anglos pressed hard for English as the primary language, and for Cubans to travel the path of assimilation pioneered by the previous Great Immigration ethnics, Cubans redefined assimilation as recreating “as far as possible the country left behind. This was to be no mere immigrant neighborhood, but a ‘moral community’ standing for the values of the old Cuban society and against the new order imposed by Castroism” (Portes and Stepick 107). Miami was to be a Second Havana.

Immigration, Entrepreneurship, Neighborhood Revitalization and Cuban-Black Relationships

After the Bay of Pigs and Cuban missile crisis, it was clear Cubans were not going back to Cuba anytime soon, so they settled down in Miami. In the early 1960’s Cubans voted, but only a handful held local offices. There were few neighborhood organizations, no domestic-oriented newspaper, and hardly any Cuban restaurants (Portes and Stepick 27-30). As more and more Cubans moved in, however, they increasingly influenced local politics and policy—pushing out Anglos and African-Americans.

The City polarized, Anglos led by the Miami Herald resisted Cubans who were aggressively “militant in their defense of American values [capitalism], more aware of the perils surrounding them, than laid-back natives” Faced with Anglo hostility, Cubans solidified culturally, socially, economically and politically. Portes and Stepick assert in this atmosphere “Little Havana [became] no mere immigrant neighborhood … but a moral community with its own distinct outlook on the world” (Portes and Stepick 139).

To an economic developer this solid, internally cohesive moral community expressed itself by buying from Cuban businesses, Cubans lending to Cubans, and hiring Cubans. Cubans unionized when the worked for Anglo firms, but not for Cuban-owned companies. As Cuban-owned firms scaled up, they did so as non-union competing with Anglo unionized firms. Supplier networks of inter-Cuban businesses developed. By the 1990’s Cubans had forged a phalanx of business and personal relationships that rivaled any economic power enjoyed by the Anglo downtown business elites. Off to the side in Overtown, however, African-Americans could not penetrate or benefit from this solid economic and social wall—and resented it deeply.

Perhaps, the first large-scale Cuban employment opportunity happened when NYC’s Jewish garment manufacturers opened facilities in Miami/Hialeah and hired Cuban women for low wages—escaping increased union pressures in NYC. South Florida garment industry jobs increased from 7,000 in 1964 to 24,000 in 1973 (Portes and Stepick 128). The Cuban economic and social cohesiveness opened up additional avenues for middle-class residents. Cuban financial professionals were hired by international companies who established a branch in Miami and made it their “Latin” American HQ. South American firms from unstable countries set up branches in Miami (Venezuela and Ecuador, for example) to “house their reserves”—and Southern hemisphere banking and construction facilities incorporated in Miami. On the other hand, the “drug trade” entered Miami at this time, laying the foundation for a future city image displayed in the TV hit series “Miami Vice” and the hit movie “Goodfellas”—as well as a serious social concern.

The demographics of Cuban immigration subtly altered the economic base of Miami and the surrounding suburbs. Staffed by resident professional Cuban bankers, these South American/Caribbean financial institutions made “character loans”, typically between $10,000 and $30,000 to other Cubans for startups—based on the applicant’s past Cuban business experience. Most were for gas stations, then grocery stores and the famous bodega. Shops and restaurants followed. Success rates were phenomenal, Cuban-staffed financial institutions grew, and “balance sheet” American bankers missed the golden opportunity.

Cubans with construction industry experience, unable to break into American unions, created home repair business and marketed door-to-door in their neighborhoods. With character and SBA loans, plus pooled family savings, they capitalized their firms. By 1979, about 50% of major construction firms in Miami-Dade were Cuban-owned and they accounted for 90% of residential and commercial construction in the southwest Miami-Dade. Unionized construction in Miami-Dade fell from 90% in 1960 to 10% in 1980. Anglo firms commonly “double-breasted”. (Portes and Stepick 133). By 1977 the Census of Minority-Owned Enterprises counted over 30,000 Cuban-owned firms in the USA, most of which were in Miami—which was home to half of the forty largest Hispanic firms in the nation—and the largest minority-owned bank in the nation (Portes and Stepick 135).

Lost in all this immigration is the native African-American Miami community. The initial immigration years were at the height of the civil rights movement and the early Great Society. The chief concern was whether the two groups competed for the same jobs. Liberty City and Little Havana were less than two miles apart. In the Sixties, most Cubans were middle-class, professionals, and reasonably educated, they were not inclined, if humanly possible, to compete for the same jobs as Blacks but that changed as the class and education demographics changed later in the Seventies. Portes and Stepick asset evidence suggests that, if anything, the Cubans competed with whites giving as one example hotel industry employment in which Hispanics more than doubled (18% to 40%) their employment between 1970-1980, while blacks also increased by 64% in the same period. The obvious loser were whites (Portes and Stepick 39-40). Closely associated was Anglo exodus to other cities/counties, particularly Broward County.

Blacks were left to bear the brunt of the Cuban economic, political and social bulldozer. Portes and Stepick cite a Black activist attorney: “Blacks were left behind. Miami is the only city I’ve ever seen where Blacks don’t own a radio station … a savings and loan, or an insurance company—anything! … Blacks have been manipulated out of the economic mainstream of Miami, and when you’re out of the economic mainstream, you’re out of the political arena” (Portes and Stepick 14).

There was no one-to-one substitutions of Blacks by Cubans … nor was there direct exploitation of one minority by the other. There was, however, a new urban economy in which the immigrants raced pass other groups leaving the native minority behind…. Miami Blacks found that the game had drastically changed. Anglos were leaving, and other whites who spoke a foreign language were occupying their positions…. In 1977 … Cuban-owned firms in Dade County exceed eight thousand … four times as many as were owned by Blacks; average gross receipts of Cuban firms amounted to almost $84,000 or twice as much as a typical Black enterprise (Portes and Stepick 43)

Government agencies also looked with sympathy on the exiled fledgling businesses and favored them disproportionately. In 1968, The SBA distributed $1,078,950in loans to Cuban-owned small firms in Dade County, and $82,600 to Black enterprises. Between 1968 and 1980 46% ($47.7 million) of SBA Dade County loans went to Cuban and other Spanish-origin business, versus only 6% ($6,5 million) to Black firms…. Such patent inequalities sharpened the sense of double subordination felt by Miami Blacks (in the 1970s) …. During the 1970’s, the two minorities never clashed directly; each remained absorbed in its own situation and problems. (Portes and Stepick 46)See p. 14

It is as if the parallel social structures and definitions that were created by the arrival of the Cubans simultaneously pushed Blacks into double subordination. [Also] An immigrant group coming from the Third World reproduced its institutions so thoroughly that a parallel social structure was established. (Portes and Stepick 16-7)

So by 1980 Miami, its suburbs/surrounding counties and Miami-Dade had been thoroughly yanked from its past. Anglos still dominated the area politics, the CBD was filled with Anglo corporate firms (and suffering from disinvestment), the Anglo-owned economic base divorced from local markets, while Cubans increasing dominated the local economy—and Blacks isolated from both languished on the sidelines in their Great Society ghettos. Parallel social, political and economic systems barely coexisted with each other.

The hegemony of the old ‘upper uppers’ has given way to parallel social structures, each complete with its own status hierarchy, civic institutions and cultural life. As a result, economic mobility and social standing ceased to depend on [assimilation] or on pleasing the elites of the old class order.… The overlap of parallel social systems in the same physical space has given rise to acculturation in reverse—a process by which foreign customs, institutions and language are diffused within native populations. As a consequence, biculturalism has emerged as an alternative … to full assimilation. … Opponents to biculturalism, immigration, and natives alike, must either withdraw into their own diminished circles or exit the community. (Portes and Stepick 16) See p. 8

By this time, the hegemonic Big Cities of the East/Midwest were beginning their rise from the Seventies nadir, led by charismatic mayors. Western cities engaged in Trillen’s “Domeism” were launching their version of the 1920 City Beautiful entrance to the national/regional competitive hierarchies. Miami, on the other hand, lay on the threshold of a nightmare.

The 1980—the Perfect Storm

For decades (since 1959), Haitians had fled their oppressive and economically devastated island. Usually, the final destination was New York City. That changed in the late 1970’s.

The Boat People–Between 1977 and 1981, an estimated 60,000 Haitians arrived, “by boat”, in Miami (Portes and Stepick 50). The “Boat People” unlike the hundreds of thousands of Haitians in NYC captured the attention of the media, and with bodies washing ashore, reminiscent of Europe’s Mediterranean present-day migration, their plight elicited genuine sympathy from most Americans. Much less so from Miami residents who quickly feared “the Third World” was about to move in. It didn’t help that as Haitian immigration dissipated, the Cuban “flotilla” (“Mariel”: see below) commenced.

At least two characteristics stood out from the Cuban immigration. First, they literally arrived in boats and rafts, and those that didn’t make it were found on the beaches, dead. Second, they were very young Blacks and third, they were Fourth World, not middle class or even working class (few had more than fifth or sixth grade education, did not speak English (Haitian Creole) and a third had been unemployed in Haiti and had no discernible urban skills). One could also add there was nobody there waiting for them or willing to help them as family or even of similar background. Haitians were classified by INS as economic, not political, refugees, a decision which negatively impacted their assimilation and access to programs. Cubans would embrace the Mariel refugees, but Haitians were another matter. The Boat People were a hard to digest immigration.

So, in waltzed the federal government who was there to help. Jesse Jackson led a march to support the Haitians. The Congressional Black Caucus motivated the U.S. Attorney General and the President (Jimmy Carter) to get involved. A Cuban (Mariel) and Haitian Task Force was formed to deal with the onslaught. The Ford Foundation set a Haitian Refugee Center, and middle-class Haitians from NYC arrived to assist and mentor. A new nine census tract neighborhood, Little Haiti, developed from Haitian resettlement that followed. A new community development organization, the Haitian American Community Agency of Dade, was set up to provide human, housing and social services to the neighborhood. Miami outsiders did their part to integrate and resettle Haitians in Miami, but to many local residents, it seemed as Miami was outside looking in.

“If the creation of Little Haiti was a victory for the national Black political establishment and for the refugees themselves, it was seen in a very different light by the local population” (Portes and Stepick 54-5). Anglos probably reacted the most negatively who were coping in 1980 with two sizeable migration flows simultaneously. The threat to the resort and tourist industry was real, although not critical to its long-term viability. White exodus became a flood with the notorious popular bumper sticker “Will the last American leaving Miami please take the flag”, very common, if not popular.

Once settled the Haitians competed directly for housing and jobs with the local Black population, except that desperate Haitians would take any wage they could get, undercutting low-income wage structure rather dramatically. Liberty City, Overtown and other black neighborhoods soon attracted Haitians—but immigrant Haitians did not, on the whole, make common cause with Miami blacks. “Haitians rarely cross 7^th Avenue (Liberty City). They call the are ‘Black Power” and do not want to live close to it. Haitians will not melt into the larger Black community. There is just too much animosity … both in school and at work” (Portes and Stepick 55-6).

Mariel Immigration (1980)—As the Haitian immigration was winding down in 1980, a new Cuban immigration started pouring in by May 1980. In response to an incident at the Peruvian Embassy in Havana (April, 1980), over 10,000 Cubans crammed into the facility seeking to escape the island. In response Castro opened the port of Mariel to any Cuban who wished to go. He then invited U.S. Cubans to pick up the relatives in the port. They did. On April 20, two lobster boats filled with Mariel refugees were the first to arrive at Miami. A “Freedom Flotilla” ensued. Somewhere between 125,000 and 150,000 Cubans eventually left; by late summer nearly 90,000 were encamped in tents located in Miami-Dade (including the Orange Bowl).

The complication that arises from the Mariel immigration is that Castro spiked the composition of the emigration by emptying his jails and mental asylums, drug addicts and gamblers, as well as those he classified as “anti-social”. Figures vary, but at least 10% of the Mariel refugees were troubled or in some way not suitable for entry into the US. At the time, media and initial crime reports made the number out to be much higher, and instead of being something to celebrate, the immigration became stigmatized nationally and locally. President Carter and many others were ambivalent as to how to treat the Mariel refugees, and this backfired in the November elections when Cubans seemingly voted for Reagan. The qualification and entry of the refugees was handled mostly by federal agencies, a federal state of emergency was declared and U.S. Marshalls and marines—as well as the Coast Guard—were sent in. The leaks and news reporting from the processing centers once again focused on the negative elements. Multiple airplane hijackings followed, and reports of a crime wave in Little Havana repeatedly were reported. On September 26, Castro closed off Mariel harbor. By the end of summer, it is reasonable to suggest the Mariel immigration had not come off very well and was a serious disappointment to Miami-Dade Cubans as well. Mariels’ encountered discrimination among Miami’s Cuban, particularly older Cubans (Portes and Stepick Chap 2).

Within the Cuban community, Mariel differentiated former solidarity as a new generation of young Cubans entered into politics and business, isolated themselves from Anglo organizations and institutions. And created a host of parallel Cuban associations and organizations. They heralded a belief a new Miami had been created by the arrival of Cubans. “Before the Great Change, Miami was a typical southern city, with an important population of retirees and (WWII) veterans, whose only activity consisted in the exploitation of tourism.…the motor of this Great Change was the Cuban men and women who elected freedom…. These last decades have witnessed the foundation of a dynamic and multi-faced Miami over the past of Miami that was merely provincial and tourist-oriented.” (Portes and Stepick 35-6). By the mid-1980’s the mayors of Miami, Hialeah, West Miami were Cuban, and ten Cubans had been elected to the state legislature. As a consequence of Mariel and the arrival of a new generation of Cubans, a new Miami and Miami-Dade political and policy system was emerging.

(b) McDuffie Riot–In the midst of the Haitian and Mariel immigrations (March 1980) a 33-year-old Black insurance agent (Arthur McDuffie) died of injuries after being chased through the city by Miami police for “rolling” through a red light. Four police were tried for beating McDuffie and attempting to cover it up. The trial in Tampa rendered a verdict in mid-May, at a time when 50,000 Boat People and Mariel refugees were housed in tents in the Orange Bowl and adjacent to Liberty City. The pent-up frustrations, discrimination and abuses of decades, and the incredible turmoil associated with two large-scale foreign immigrations, all jelled to create a hostile and unforgiving atmosphere.

All four officers were acquitted—within three hours a riot started in Liberty City. According to Portes and Stepick, the riot was especially violent against whites (eight were brutally killed on the first day of the riot), was supported by Miami’s African-American leadership, and was an expression of the bitterness of Miami Blacks, rather than a civil rights movement (Portes and Stepick 47-9). Liberty City was effectively destroyed as a commercial and employment center (an estimated $80 million dollars of damage). During the 1980’s three serious racial riots hit Miami—all caused by a Black killed by police. In 1990, a three-year boycott by blacks of Miami area tourism ensued.

(d) Followed by the Nicaraguans in 1989. (p150) Nestled beneath bigger headlines was yet another sizeable immigration that shaped Miami-Dade during the 1980’s. Climaxing in 1989, when an estimated 20,000 (1989-1991) Nicaraguans poured into Miami and its suburbs (the most known being Sweetwater (Little Managua), near the Everglades), Nicaraguan immigration brought tens of thousands[iii] from Central America to South Florida. Nicaraguans also, like Cubans, developed their own identity and internal solidarity—and settle in distinctive neighborhoods.

Sizeable numbers of Nicaraguans began to appear in Miami area after the mid-1970’s when the Contra/Sandinista civil war began. That civil war continued through the 1980’s. The first wave (late-1970s/early 1980’s) were primarily wealthy land/business owners, managers, families associated with the Somoza regime, and political refugees (an estimated 120,000 fled to the USA). Somoza and his family, settled in Miami. The second wave, mid-1980’s composed of professionals and white-collar workers fled the socialist state and US embargo that destroyed Nicaragua’s economy. The second wavers often settled in the Sweetwater suburb. Second phase Nicaraguans mirrored earlier Cubans in turning to ethnic entrepreneurship, based on former skills and experience. By 1987 some 600 Nicaraguan-owned businesses had been formed in the South Florida area.

The third, and final wave began in the late 1980’s, peaked in 1989 and continued to 1991. The last wave was blue collar and poor, settled in Miami itself in neighborhoods formerly occupied by Mariel refugees. Employment for the third wave was hard to find, although by this time Nicaraguans were able to take jobs (garment and construction) formerly occupied by earlier working class Cubans who now had moved up or were retiring. While often disparaged as a “cheap labor force” by academics, these jobs did provide income for newcomers to raise families and assimilate into society and economy.

The Sandinistas were defeated in 1989 elections and immigration, while still continuing, does not compare to the rates of the 1980’s. The Nicaraguan exodus mirrors that of the Cubans thirty years previous—although they too have been classified as economic rather than political refugees by INS. The close symmetry of the two ethnic groups, however, was not lost on many Cubans who saw Nicaraguans as refugees against Communism as they were. Castro allied himself with the Sandinistas and that cemented the warm relationship. As such the Cuban “solidified moral community” of business and government was opened to Nicaraguans—although Nicaraguans resented the hegemony and patronage of they perceived “superiors”.

The net effect of this “perfect storm” of immigration is that it transformed an old city of the South into a new immigrant city. Certainly, Miami and South Florida had always captured immigrants. Many of Miami’s blacks originally came from Bahama (in 1920 more than 50% of Miami’s black population were Bahaman (Mohl, Miami: the Immigrant City 155), and did not experience American slavery, for example. In 130 Miami’s foreign-born equaled 11.5% of its population—12% thirty years later (1960). By 1970, Miami was 42% and Miami-Dade 24%. In 1980 those figures leaped to nearly 54% and 36% respectively—nearly twice the rate of the next ranked city ((New York). Miami during most of the twentieth century was the nation’s either second or third-ranked immigrant port of entry (Mohl, Miami: the Immigrant City 149-51).

Effects of Pre-2000 Racial/Ethnic Identity Politics on Miami’s Policy System and ED

Every city displays some degree of race/ethnic identity politics in its policy system. San Francisco, for example, is the benchmark for highly intense identity politics that allow its characterization as hyper-pluralistic. That Miami’s identity politics revolves chiefly around unassimilated blocs of immigrants overwhelmed by one dominant ethnic group often removed from local politics, disappearing but powerful Anglos, and weakly-mobilized, frustrated, neglected Blacks—not all of which are native—lends a distinctly different character to its policy system. Commentators, such as Mohl (Mohl, Miami: the Immigrant City 151), assert that Miami has not followed the older immigrant path to assimilation. Rather, it has evolved a new “bicultural” path, “a process of ethnic adjustment without complete assimilation” or a pattern “of assimilation and ethnic cultural maintenance existing side by side”:

Few have described Miami as a new melting pot …. Rather Miami might be more accurately described as a ‘boiling pot’, a new immigrant city where vibrant ethnic cultures compete and clash with one another while at the same time displacing some of the mainstream American culture. (Mohl, Miami: the Immigrant City 151)

To say the Miami policy system relied on bloc coalitions only touches the surface on the distinguishing factors in the Miami policy system–factors that deeply affected its policy outputs. The lack of attention by Cubans, the dominant immigrant group, to local politics/policy until the 1980’s minimized their impact on policy-making, allowing other blocs to achieve disproportionate influence over the City’s policy/administrative governance and the fabrication of an electoral coalition by one charismatic mayor for a considerable portion of that era.

The starting point is Miami’s policy and political structures are both distinctive to Miami, and, over the last half of the twentieth century, been a consistently high priority reform for immigrant/racial blocs. Several structural issues stand out. First, the relationships/division of policy responsibilities between the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County have engendered arguably more tension than cooperation. The sorting out of functions and services by level of government has generated a politics and policy-making that is hard for external observers to follow as it is not always clear which level of government is pursuing the initiative and whether the other level is cooperating. The infamous bilingual referendum, for example, was a Miami-Dade initiative. City neighborhoods can overlap into County unincorporated areas.

Much conflict is a derivative of each’s government form and electoral structures. The City through most of this period had a commission government, with a strong mayor, at-large elections, department heads (police especially) with ties to a bloc, and a mayoral appointed city manager–likewise Miami-Dade. “Administrative politics, especially disputes over dismissals and appointments of such administrative officials such as city manager and police chiefs, have come to have an inordinate significance in Miami’s new ethnic boiling pot” (Mohl, Ethnic Politics in Miami, 1960-1986 146).

Second, at-Large elections greatly impacted policy-making because Miami’s racial/ethnic blocs are profoundly linked to particular geographies/neighborhoods/cities, i.e. intensely “segregated” into near-impregnable enclaves (the proverbial “Little” Havana and Haiti and Nicaragua) each with their own culture, priorities and distinctive policy agendas. In both City and County, the primary issue has been charter reform to approve district elections so each bloc would be more able to address its policy concerns. Until 1986 each referendum in both City and County on this issue has failed. At-Large elections have played into City/County relationships as Anglos, losing power in the City, maintained dominance of County politics into the 1990’s. CBD and mainstream ED strategies became elements of County, not City ED policy process.

Mainstream ED has been an Anglo priority, much less so the other blocs. The City has not displayed particularly aggressive mainstream ED while the County and the Chamber has—generating a good deal of conflict in the process. In 1985, for instance, middle-class blacks, claiming it would destroy their predominately City neighborhood, stymied an initiative to prevent construction of a new sports stadium/tourism strategy aggressively pushed by County Metro, Chamber and the Anglo business community (Mohl, Ethnic Politics in Miami, 1960-1986 154). City policy-making often stressed people-focused policy areas, such as police relations important to an economically-depressed, segregated, riot-prone, native African-American neighborhoods. The “sorting out” of economic development left mainstream ED (Beacon Council, Convention and Visitors Bureau, Port Miami, WAIO, Airport, and the Chamber) lodged securely within the Metro (Miami-Dade) county system, while the City’s focus, mostly contained in its Department of Community and Economic Development, centered on neighborhoods, community services, some housing, and several neighborhood redevelopment agencies whose history reaches back to the City’s urban renewal eras.

Miami’s private sector initially was mobilized and led by the Miami Herald, and then by Knight-Ridder corporation (the largest in the nation at that time) when the Herald was merged. Alvah Chapman Jr., a Herald assistant editor in 1960, rose to become Chairman/CEO of Knight-Ridder by the end of the decade. Sincerely concerned with the state and future of Miami, worried about the decreasing influence and activism of the business community, he organized in 1973 the “Non-Group”, a Vault-like informal group that met in member’s houses (limited to twelve members) committed to dealing with Miami’s problems and its future. In the future, the Non-Group was primarily responsible for critical ED initiatives such as the Beacon Council, $2 billion downtown redevelopment, Hurricane rebuilding, and a catalog of social service, homeless and housing initiatives. It also, depending on one’s view, played a major role in the City’s adapting, or not, to its immigrant explosion. Chapman served as Chair of the Chamber, Orange Bowl, Philharmonic and a host of major area-wide initiatives.

Accordingly, the City policy system was characterized by personalistic, decentralized, log-rolling policy-making, often manipulated by a charismatic mayor balancing off blocs and coalitions. Self-interested, fragmented, surprisingly divisive, ad-hoc “fix the pot-holes” and “dig us out of the current crisis” (Hurricane, riot, etc.) policy-making-was largely unresponsive, for the most part, to the reality that through most of these years Miami was both the nation’s poorest major city and its most residentially segregated.

Interestingly, each immigrant group, led by Cubans with their radio station Radio Marti, consistently asserted its own “foreign policy” focused on their former homeland, downplaying local Miami policy concerns. Cubans exile politics is well known, but Miami was home to elements deeply involved in the Nicaraguan civil war—including assassinations. The drug industry was able to play off these factions to gain access into the City. Charismatic mayor, Maurice Ferre, used periodic foreign policy ventures/ events to draw support from his electoral blocs (such as refusing to meet with Mandela to pacify the Anglo business community, meet with Communist China’s trade representative, or seeking to ban communist countries to send delegates to Miss Universe pageant—and others. “Miami is probably the only city in America with its own foreign policy” (Mohl, Ethnic Politics in Miami, 1960-1986 147). An important take away from fragmented immigrant-dominated bloc coalition policy systems is their policy agendas can be uniquely tilted toward foreign exile priorities than addressing serious local policies.

The termination of a Black city manager in 1984 by city commission and Mayor Ferre generated a crisis that eventually led to a drawn-out change in the City’s government structure (p.154).

The Great Rethink-the New Miami

Cuban exile-focused solidarity was fractured by the Mariel newcomers. Reaction among whites and blacks in South Florida (indeed the entire state) to South Florida’s demographic transformation was both hostile, and deeply fear-laden. The Miami Herald “spearheaded a campaign” in 1981 to divert refugees from the area—and overwhelming passed a referendum against a 1973 “bilingual” Dade County ordinance which won in no small part because of weak resistance from the Cuban community and a failure to involve itself in local political affairs. The shock of Mariel and other immigration diasporas, the black riots and the seemingly imploding politics to the Cuban community was transformative and regenerative—hitting the young new generation raised in the city since the exodus the hardest.

In 1981, Blacks (who voted with Cubans against the referendum) did not turn out to vote for the first major Cuban City candidate for mayor in favor of reelecting charismatic Puerto Rican-born mayor Ferre. The electorate was split almost equally between the three blocs (non-Hispanic Whites 34%, Blacks 30% and Latins 36%). By 1985. However, Cubans, with 40% of Miami registered voters enjoyed a majority in the five member Miami Commission (and a Cuban had been appointed as Dade County city manager) and only one Black was on the City Commission.

In October, 1984 the Miami Commission fired the highly-respected black city manager who was quite popular in the black community. Mayor Ferre broke with his past coalition partners and joined with Cuban commissioners to oust the manager. Tension, a black-led Ferre recall election, and politics erupted and continued until March 1985 when after thirty-five unsuccessful ballots the City Commission, with the support of the lone Black commissioner, elected the first Cuban as city manager. In the November election, the city’s first Cuban, Xavier Suarez, was elected mayor. A new Cuban power structure had arrived and the Miami policy system had started down the path of change and transformation.

In 1985 Beacon Council, the EDO of Miami-Dade County was formed. The Beacon Council is a public-private partnership as the Metro contracts with the privately-governed/operated nonprofit to be the lead agency for the Metro region. As such the area’s mainstream business-oriented ED programs, presently including cluster targeting, business assistance, attraction, site selection, incentives management, international development, planning and marketing are performed by staff from the Council. Cynically, one could see the Council, which today has a strong Board mixture of all ethnic groupings, as a corporate, oft-times Anglo, hold on the region’s traditional economic development programs, lodged firmly within the Metro—despite the reality that much of the corporate facilities lie within the City’s CBD-downtown areas. In its early years, the Council and other major mainstream EDOs were somewhat insulated from the turbulence of the new emerging City Cuban-dominated policy system.

Yet, by 1990, one single ethnic group, Cubans, with the cooperation of fleeing whites heading to Ft Lauderdale and points north, had demographically overturned a major American city—a radical departure from the past early 20^th century Big City immigration experience. But at least as of 1985 leaving more or less intact the Anglo political and business power structure. As young Cubans looked around in 1985, a Hispanic (Maurice Ferre), a Puerto Rican had served for six terms and the CBD remained into an, increasingly disinvested, Anglo corporate enclave. It was not until 1985 that Miami elected its first Cuban mayor (Xavier Suarez). It was not until 1996 that the first Cuban (Alex Penelas) was elected mayor of Miami-Dade County, but by 1993, Cubans elected a majority on the Miami-Dade Commission and in 1989 3 out of 4 Miami-Dade congressional seats were held by Cubans. The Florida state legislature also got their fair share of Cuban membership. The first Haitian elected to the state legislature, however, was 2000. The lag of over a decade between City and County is revealing. The County, however, provided the next major step in the evolution of Miami’s two policy systems.

In 1992, the Court (U.S. District Judge Donald Graham) did what numerous referendums failed to do: convert the County’s at-large elections into single member nonpartisan districts. That opened the County door to blacks and in 2017 four blacks, including the Commission Chair, were African-American (of 13 Commissioners). There is some concern that district issues, as opposed to the regional perspective, have permeated into County policy-making and politics. Policy-making in the Miami area has been characterized as “driving wedges (between races and ethnics) than by unifying communities” (Lipartito, Maidiquo and Beers 9). In 1996 and 1998 to compensate the power of the County Mayor was considerably strengthened by adding his appointive power for the county manager and making department heads responsible to him/her. The mayor became the County’s chief executive officer.

By 1990 there were 25,000 Cuban-owned businesses in Miami-Dade (Lipartito, Maidiquo and Beers 3), but in 1991 the CBD accounted for only 37% of the metro area (same as Kansas City) (Teaford, the Metropolitan Revolution 191). “Among major U.S. cities, Miami was second only to NYC in income inequality, measured as the share of people earning less than $15,000 compared to the share earning more than $200,000” (Lipartito, Maidiquo and Beers 7). By 2009, 17% of Miamians lived below the federal poverty line, the fourth lowest in the US. Political scandals and FBI investigations of all types consistently rippled through both City and County, as personalistic bureaucracies and political officials gathered their fair share of the public purse. Still, at least locally it was believed that South Florida’s political governance, its fragmented decentralized multiplicities of municipalities on which were superimposed Metro Dade and its warring blocs of ethnic and racial groups, without any being able to exert a over-arching regional and consistent economic development approach, combined with its durable inequality and poor quality services created a business climate outsiders were reluctant to invest in. Hialeah mayor in 2010 commented:

The occasional unfriendly front presented by Miami’s political system to outside firms [created] the false perception that it was unresponsive to business needs. In Miami-Dade County there were many unknowns, overlapping political jurisdictions, and a culture that while exciting in many ways, was often difficult to navigate. Several Miami institutions such as the Beacon Council, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce actively promoted business development within the County by highlighting what Miami had to offer businesses, but Miami’s divided political structure, and numerous municipalities sometimes made it difficult for outside firms to gain a foothold in the community.

[Former Mayor Manny Diaz confirmed that] Business here is afraid of controversy, mistrustful of politicians, and prefers to be left alone”.

[Armando Cordina, CEO, a prominent real estate developer who built most, if not all of the large corporate headquarter relocation [IBM, Bacardi, Ryder, Office Depot and Perry Ellis] summarized the challenges ‘Companies want to come, but not if they find inadequate schools, expensive real estate, and lack of local leadership’. (Lipartito, Maidiquo and Beers 12)

It’s hard to believe these complaints are any different from NYC, Los Angles,Chicago and for that matter most large cities. Also the same cluster targeting—the cluster herd dynamic—in any cases big cities grow and firms move and agglomerations form. It is the realities of business climate, not the clarity of politics, the simplicity of jurisdictions, or the ideologically/paradigmatic targeting—it’s whether business perceives it can make money or must be at that location.

See p16 Lipartito for local foundations and their involvement in community development

Still in 2011, Miami was 8^th ranked and $500 million dollars was invested in commercial real estate that year.

The Beacon Council’s “One Community/One Goal Project continued efforts to highlight Miami as an international business destination. Launched in the mid-1990’s as an effort of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, the program identified seven industry sectors that should be the focus of future development for the area: biomedical, film and entertainment, financial services, information technology, telecommunications, international commerce, and the visitor industry. (Lipartito, Maidiquo and Beers 12)

Suarez, excepting between 1993 and 1997 (when an Anglo, former twenty-one-year mayor of Miami-Dade County, Stephen Clark was elected), held the mayor’s office until 2001. Suarez embraced the “City of the Future” and “Capital of the Caribbean” themes—although, it seemed he spent more effort jousting with Miami-Dade County and the State, earning a reputation as the neighborhood “Pothole Mayor”, while juggling a complex electoral web of ethnic and racial coalitions. In 1989 he bravely plunged into an Overtown riot to calm down the crowds and successfully pushed for construction of 1,500 affordable homes. 1992 Hurricane Andrew 80,000 homes rendered uninhabitable, 160,000 people left homeless, 82,00- businesses damaged, and $20 billion in property losses

The Miami Herald and its supporters had only wanted to restore normalcy to the city when they informed Cubans about how the political game was played in America and of their true position in the ethnic queue. The exiles responded by laying claim to the city. They put the old elites in their place by portraying them as representatives of a provincial past. (Portes and Stepick 148)

For Miami Anglos, the sudden (1980) ethnic conflagration was too much, and many just fled north. Those who remained had to rethink their city, no longer as a tourist destination, but as an international crossroads. (Portes and Stepick 60)

In 1987, the Cuban-American National Foundation took a full-page ad in the Miami Herald under the headline “the Herald has failed us”. With Anglos abandoning the metro area for other counties, and new immigrant groups pouring in, the Herald finally got the message. Perhaps it was the Herald’s circulation rates gave it an advanced warning that the 1990 census would report only 10% Anglos in the City—and Miami-Dade with 30%, down from 82% in 1950. If the Herald wanted to stay in business it had to recognize and adjust to the “new” Miami. The newly arriving Nicaraguan third wave were the initial beneficiaries of a new editorial policy and outlook. A Spanish edition of the paper was published.

The 180 degree turn in the Herald’s position toward supporting the Nicaraguan arrivals (against the federal government) signaled no less than a decisive shift in the way local (Anglo) elites thought about their city…. Corporate leaders realized their city was not in ‘transition’ to something, but had consolidate a distinct profile unique in the country. (Portes and Stepick 174)

Said and done, the new Miami was, like the old, based on geography. The old Miami had sun, beaches, and cheap, if hot and humid, largely empty space. The new Miami more dependent on geographic access to North America that initially attracted sufficient visitors to breed familiarity so that in troubled times larger scale population movements could follow to a somewhat-known geography. The marketplace and agglomerations followed people. This is certainly not the model Chicago followed, but Miami was destined within twenty years to become a global “world” city. People-attraction was also important to another American global world city, Los Angeles—although Miami seems a much purer case study. In any case, amid the turmoil, fragmentation poverty, crime, and disruption evident in 1990 Miami, its future path was pretty obvious to all observers.

In 2010 Miami’s unemployment exceeded 10%, compared to 8.6% for the nation. By 2010 Miami ranked 33^rd in Foreign Policy’s “Global /cities Index” (Lipartito, Maidiquo and Beers 9). Since 2000 heavy infrastructure development (highways, mass transit and airport and port facilities) were constructed, but often with a legacy of over-budget and nowhere near on schedule. Still in 2010 Miami’s airport was second only to another great infrastructure, JFK as the nation’s busiest airport (17 million) (Lipartito, Maidiquo and Beers 10). The Port of Miami, the “Cruise Capital of the World” was home base for Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Lines. It was also in the nation’s top 10 of Cargo ports. Major access infrastructure projects commenced after 2010 to improve what had been a major constraint in its expansion and operation. Miami in 2010 was home 10 1,000 international firms, 41 international banks, 71 foreign consulates, and 20 trade offices (Lipartito, Maidiquo and Beers 12)—but despite the great statistics, Miami had yet to break its dependence on tourism and real estate and established itself as a primarily international finance and trade economy.

As I write it is fashionable to speak of diversity and inclusiveness and to glorify mass immigration and sanctify its hordes of refugees seeking a new and better life. Often viewed from afar these concepts and characterizations rob the migration and its members of their personality, character and even humanity; worse they ignore the disruption, tension, and instability injected into their new community—and the vacuum they left behind. Mass, abrupt, and migrations are hard on a community or jurisdiction and they leave in their wake a set of tasks for economic development, both mainstream and community, that is impossible to fulfill. The interaction of diverse cultures can be painful indeed, and while it can be argued we are better off for this in the long-run, in the short-run it can be a nasty affair.

During the 1990’s Miami was consistently ranked in the top five most crime-ridden metro areas. In 2000, the city was the poorest major city in the nation. It also has one of the lowest education rates in the nation—so much for education and entrepreneurism correlation.

Miami and South Florida have the highest rate of foreign-born population in the United States. In 2000, 50% of Miami-Dade residents were foreign born. In 2010 that grew to 51%. In 2010 Cubans 46%, Nicaragua 8%, Columbia 7% and Haiti 6% of Miami-Dade’s population. First and second generation equals about 70%. It is interesting that Miami-Dade is an example of a little-discussed phenomenon, in which minorities face discrimination from both other minorities and from the “majority” minority (Cubans) (Ember, Ember and Skoggard 530-1). In a nutshell that issue characterizes nearly every grouping in South Florida.

Neighborhood politics in South Florida deeply reflect profound racial and ethnic groupings which can distinguish them from other regions, cities and states. That ethnicity permeates into racial groups further compounds statistical analysis, policy processes, and ED strategies and EDO/CDOs. The partial reality that each to some degree has created its own neighborhood/ethnic/racial economic base also has implications for local economic development. The variety included within the label “Hispanic” reveals the importance of political culture and the predisposition of some ethnic groups to entrepreneurship, for example.

In 2011 Miami-Dade recalled its mayor Carlos Alvarez, ousting him for the County’s expensive construction of the new Marlin’ $515 million baseball stadium funded with tourism monies, pay raises to top aides, and a 14% tax increase at a time Miami was languishing in the Great Recession’s aftermath. A Cuban was ousted and a Cuban replaced him.

The Global City

Saskia Sassen labels Miami as a “global city”, distinct from a “world City” which has been a feature of the international economic and political system for eons. To her “global cities” are new; they did not inherit their role and power from previously developed assets and relationships. Rather global cities were created by a new and different process. In fact, for her that raises the question as to whether global cities are created by dynamics internal or external to the global city itself (Sassen, The Global City: Introducing a Concept 28). To a practicing, or even a Policy World economic developer, that question may be seem a bit chicken or egg, but it does present the possibility that state and local, even national, economic developers can do little to bring about a global city.

Miami is an excellent example to test out Sassen’s concept (and it doesn’t hurt that Sassen herself hails from Miami). That Miami, “the Capital of the Caribbean” has entered into the charmed circle of what this history has labeled “world city” is fairly self-evident. It is also self-evident this is a newly acquired status, recognized by Miami leaders and economic developers during the early 1990’s. During the 1980’s “a growing number of U.S., European and Asian firms began to set up offices in Miami. Eastman Kodak moved its headquarters for Latin American operations from Rochester, New York to Miami; Hewlett-Packard made a similar move from Mexico City to Miami; and GM relocated its headquarters for coordinating and managing Latin American operations from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Miami. Firms and banks from Germany, France, Italy, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, to name only a few, opened offices and brought in significant numbers of high-level personnel … The City also received a significant inflow of secondary headquarters” (Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (3rd Ed) 118).

By 1992 Miami had 65 foreign bank offices (Los Angeles had 133), making Miami the fourth largest concentration of foreign bank offices in the nation (NYC and Chicago)—by 2005 Enterprise Florida was claiming that Miami possessed over 100 such offices. By 2000, the top twenty-two most important banks in Central America held ties with 319 “correspondent banks”, 168 of which were located in Miami. It certainly did not hurt that Miami had become a major telecommunications center (apart from its being the HQ for most of America’s Spanish-speaking media and print journalism. AT&T laid the first undersea fiber-optic cable to South America, “connecting Southern Florida to Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Columbia” A second fiber optic cable connected Florida to the entire Caribbean (Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (3rd Ed) 118-9).

Between 1970 and 1990 Miami-Dade’s service sector grew by 43%; by 2003 the service sector employed 90% of workers. Domestic tourism and retail, of course, were the traditional drivers in the first decade; in the eighties, however, finance and producer services—and foreign tourists—grew dramatically, doubling between 1970 and 1990. Producer services alone employed more than 20% of all private workers. Employment in banking and credit exploded by 300%; business services doubled as did engineering and accounting. The most explosive growth sector was legal (which frankly also grew from crime and drugs also associated with Miami). By 2004 producer services were 42% of all private-sector employment (Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (3rd Ed) 119-20).

To return to our original question—who or what brought this dramatic economic base transformation about—there is no definitive answer. Indeed, a complex hybrid answer seems most useful. The obvious, and earlier presented explanation, rests on the Cuban entrepreneurial explosion that followed the 1959 Cuban Revolution. There is no doubt this explosion was real and did reap enormous effects on the Miami-Dade economic base. But did it lead to, i.e. “cause”, the subsequent development of Miami to become the global city?

It certainly appears to have been important in bringing language skills, an entrepreneurial financial sector—and a critical mass of population to Miami. It also fragmented the area politics and policy systems—not good. Sassen observes that another driving force was that international FDI to Latin, Caribbean and South America also exploded in the time period. With new investment and new markets, firms across the planet set up corporate structures to coordinate, manage, and operate facilities, product sales, and production—and they needed some place to do it. No one in Miami created that opportunity—or for that matter tried to consciously tap into it. It wound up in Miami. Why?

The Cuban entrepreneurial enclave certainly provided the skill and language base to jump-start economic migration—and the media/Spanish language agglomeration let everyone know—and the Cruise Capital of the World brought all sorts of rich and luxury professional workers to Miami on vacation, often buying second homes/resorts/condos in the process. But the unseen, bottom-line-driver of choosing Miami as the center for hemispheric capital and productive investment, was Miami, in the United States offered safety and stability that many Caribbean, Central American and even South American countries could not offer at that time. Most of these nations were still Third World, some Fourth, and their politics was quite volatile, in some cases unstable. FDI originated from the Developed World (Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (3rd Ed) 17); it was more attractive to Developed World institutions to locate in Miami than most other below the equator capitols—so, for example, GM relocated its South American HQ from Sao Paulo Brazil to Miami. In essence, the global finance systemic also played its role in making Miami a global city. It was left to state and local economic developers to make it more global, to grow the agglomeration, and to spin it so to attract other clusters.

At this point, we conclude by offering one final observation concerning world and global cities. As Sassen observes global/world cities bring top level managers, extremely skilled and well-paid talent and expertise into their core corporate HQ and ancillary services. They do so in volume. Real estate is greatly affected by these managers, and rich domestic and foreign tourists/retirees as well. This lends itself to the “luxury city/Two City” strategy/characterization. Piled alongside the hordes of refugees and immigrants that flooded into Miami after 1980, one can easily see how Miami became of the richest paradise of capitalist America, and the home to inequality, low-wage and poorly skilled residents. No wonder the politics and instability of the latter created a policy system in deep tension with the former.

[1] Part of the problem with B&H data results from its use of David Birch’s Dunn and Bradstreet database—which has been severely critiqued to the point that Birch himself, moved away from it in subsequent publications. See Davis, Haltiwanger & Schuh, Small business and Job Creation: Dissecting the Myth and Reassessing the Facts, NBER Working Paper 4492, October 1993. http://www.nber.org/papers/w4492

[1] Almost all scholars of the American West, from Fredrick Jackson Turner, John Muir, to Carl Abbott have consistently focused on the West’s ecology as core to its identity—and a serious element in its history, culture and politics. Much of the discipline of environmental history draws deeply from western case studies and dynamics of western history. It is not unreasonable to assert that western environmentalism, regardless of Privatist and Progressive cultures, has proved a home base for America’s environmental movement. Western state and local economic development has evidenced its own perspective integrating many of the environmental forms/waves into its strategies, programs and tools. For that matter, the eastern former hegemonic cities and states have been more sensitive to pollution control and abatement than wildlife, wilderness, land use, tourism, and energy-related environmentalism more prominent in the west.

[1] Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes, “Global Scale Temperature Pattern and Climate Forcings over the Past Six Centuries”, Nature, 392, 1998, pp. 779-87.

[1] Patrick Allitt, a Climate of Crisis, op. cit., p.74. In his five years as President LBJ signed into law nearly300 conservation enactments (Allitt, p. 69).

[1] King ran a program in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

[1] Bishop also asserted post-material cultures were characterized by greater talent, individual skills, and economic growth. This is Richard Florida’s Creative Classes at work—an assertion with which I do not concur.

[1] Religion, as Bishop treats it, is not doctrines, denominations or specific religious practices; religion is a value system which is expressed in choices, behaviors, expectations, and hopes carried forth daily in one’s life. Religion forms a prism which colors how one evaluates events and ideas and which sets one apart from other religions or from the secular perspective (see Chapter 7).

[1] Horace Sutton, “the South a New America”, Saturday Review, Vol 3, (September 4, 1976), p. 8.

[1] The region with the fewest people throughout this period was the Northeast/ Mid-Atlantic, which in 2000 held 19% of the population, and 17.5% in 2015.

[1] New York Times, February 8-13, 1976, p. 1

[1] Carl Abbott, “Regional City and Network City: Portland and Seattle in the Twentieth Century”, Western Historical Quarterly, August 1992.

[1] Gerald Nelson, Seattle: the Life and Times of an American City, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1977, p. 32.

[1] Robert Serling, Legend & Legacy: the Story of Boeing and its People (New York, St Martin’s Press, 1991)

[1] Gerald Nelson, Seattle: the Life and Times of an American City, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1977 pp. 27-32

[1] Gerald Nelson, Seattle: the Life and Times of an American City, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1977, pp. 30-49

[1] Quintard Taylor, “Swing the Door Wide: World War II Wrought a Profound Transformation in Seattle’s Black Community”, Columbia Magazine, Summer 1995, Vol. 9, No. 2 http://www.washingtonhistory.org/files/library/swing-door-wide.

[1] JoAnne McGraw, Neighborhood Planning and Vision of the City Update, League of Women Voters, November 2001 http://www.seattlelwv.org/files/neighborhoodplanning.pdf

[1] Former Chamber Chair, George Duff is credited with the idea—trying to reverse a disorganized and unfocused regional promotion effort. His selling point was “Only a few American cities will be awarded an international franchise Seattle has the opportunity to be one of them”. Gibson, Spectacular City, p. 87.

[1] See Timothy Gibson, Securing the Spectacular City, Footnote 19, p.79

[1] Gary Gates, “Same-Sex Couples and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Population”, UCLA School of Law (October, 2006).

[1] George Starbird, the New Metropolis (San Jose, Rosecrucian Press, 1972) quoted in Trounstine & Christensen, Movers and Shakers, p.93t

[1] http://www.svedc.com/ceo-message/about-redi/regional-economic-development-initiative/#toggle-id-4

[1] Egon Terplan, “Shaping Downtown San Jose”, SPUR: the Urbanist, April, 2013, Issue 522

[1] John Shirey, “Show Me the Rooftops: Housing and Economic Development with a Redevelopment Perspective”, Western City, May 2006, p. 1

[1] Leah Toeniskoetter, “New Blueprint of a City: San Jose’s 2040 General Plan”, SPUR, November 18, 2011, p.1

[1] Bruce Newman, “After languishing for decades, downtown San Jose may finally be ready for its closeup”, the Mercury News, February 14, 2015, updated August 12, 2016.

[1] Mike Rosenberg, “At the Center of Silicon Valley Boom 2.0, San Jose Remains Broke”, Mercury News, August 12, 2016.

[1] Bruce Newman, “After languishing for decades, downtown San Jose may finally be ready for its closeup”, the Mercury News, February 14, 2015, updated August 12, 2016.

[1] Mike Rosenberg, “At the Center of Silicon Valley Boom 2.0, San Jose Remains Broke”, Mercury News, August 12, 2016.

[1] Eliot Brown, “Silicon Valley Cities Clash”, Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2016, A3.

[1] Eliot Brown, Silicon Valley’s Apartment War”, WSJ, October 20, 2016; Mike McPhate, California Today: the Silicon Valley Rent War, New York Times October 14, 2016; Janet Allon, Not a Techie in Silicon Valley?, Salon, Sept 22, 2016

[1] Andy Kessler, “In the Heart of the Silicon Valley, they don’t want new jobs”, Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2016.

[1] Christopher Walker, “Nonprofit Housing Development”, Housing Policy Debate 4 (3): pp. 369-414.

[1] Littleton Colorado is a suburb of a suburb (Colorado Springs). Colorado Springs is a boomburb.

[1] Global Betting and Gaming Consults LLC, as cited in the Wall Street Journal August, 2013, p. 1.

[1] http://www.ncsl.org/research/financial-services-and-commerce/casino-tax-and-expenditures-2013.aspx; and file:///C:/Users/emiletebo/Downloads/direct_taxes_casino.pdf.

[1] Congress in 1823 approved a lottery to fund Washington D.C. beautification. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, however, as the lottery managers absconded with the funds.

[1] Thomas A. Garrett, Casino Gambling in America and its Economic Impacts, Senior Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, August, 2003, pp. 4-5.

[1] A Seminole Tribe in Florida was undergoing a roughly comparable process as well.

[1] Figures are taken from 2013 State of the States: the AGA Survey of Casino Entertainment @ americangaming.org…

[1] State regulation, unknown probably to most, specifies the “casino take” or the payoff ratio. The interrelationship of the payoff revenue with annual tax proceeds is truly complex, hidden largely from sight and inspection, and fragile.

[1] Lucy Dadayan, State Revenues from Gambling, Rockefeller Institute, April, 2016 (the Blinken Report)

, http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/government_finance/2016-04-12-Blinken_Report_Three.pdf; Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2016, R2

[1] Tampa (274,000) was not all that far behind—about 17,000 fewer residents–and 48^th largest. Jacksonville was 201,000 and 61^st. St Petersburg was 69^th with 181,000.

[1] “The exiles were disproportionately urban in origin, and the proportion of blacks and mulattoes remained much lower than in Cuba”. The early waves were about 15% professionals—but that declined in later years. Throughout, however, exiles were better educated than those that remained in Cuba (Portes and Stepick 103-5)

[1] Since Nicaraguan immigration is not explicitly tracked by the Census (they are recorded as Hispanic), or by local sources, the exact number of immigrations is not known. The post-1989 phase was more dramatic and serious attempts were made to produce some numbers, 20,000 for that phase—but the reader is cautioned. In 2000 Census estimated about 86,000 Nicaraguans lived in Miami-Dade; the issue of undocumented immigrants underscores local Nicaraguan groups who complain that this number should be increased by 65,000.

[i] Tampa (274,000) was not all that far behind—about 17,000 fewer residents–and 48^th largest. Jacksonville was 201,000 and 61^st. St Petersburg was 69^th with 181,000.

[ii] “The exiles were disproportionately urban in origin, and the proportion of blacks and mulattoes remained much lower than in Cuba”. The early waves were about 15% professionals—but that declined in later years. Throughout, however, exiles were better educated than those that remained in Cuba (Portes and Stepick 103-5)

[iii] Since Nicaraguan immigration is not explicitly tracked by the Census (they are recorded as Hispanic), or by local sources, the exact number of immigrations is not known. The post-1989 phase was more dramatic and serious attempts were made to produce some numbers, 20,000 for that phase—but the reader is cautioned. In 2000 Census estimated about 86,000 Nicaraguans lived in Miami-Dade; the issue of undocumented immigrants underscores local Nicaraguan groups who complain that this number should be increased by 65,000.

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Miami Transformed: Mayor Manny Diaz

I still remember a 1981 cover from Time Magazine declaring that Miami was ‘Paradise Lost’ The article cited how Miami ranked number one on the FBI list of most crime ridden cities in American and that an ‘estimated 70 percent of all marijuana and cocaine imported into the US”’ came in through South Florida. Scarface and Miami Vice are what people saw in movies and television [1^st competitive hierarchy]. The prevalence of ‘Cocaine Cowboys’, race riots, and other negative factors added to the reputation of Miami: that it was a nice place to visit, briefly [move on from tourism], but not a place to raise your children, start a business, or call home.

Our politics were also chaotic, with a mayoral election nullified due to fraud and a judge choosing the mayor. The city had [the] highest tax rate possible, with little to show in return … In fact, the city was in so much debt that when I took office it had been bankrupt and placed under state supervision … There was even a referendum calling for the dissolution of the city. P.7

Still in 2011, Miami was 8^th ranked and $500 million dollars was invested in commercial real estate that year. In 2011 Miami-Dade recalled its mayor Carlos Alvarez, ousting him for the County’s expensive construction of the new Marlin’ $515 million baseball stadium funded with tourism monies, pay raises to top aides, and a 14% tax increase at a time Miami was languishing in the Great Recession’s aftermath. A Cuban was ousted and a Cuban replaced him.

When Diaz assumed office in 2001, Miami was on the threshold, if not over it, of becoming a global city—the “Capital of the Caribbean”. Yet the leader who was to become its most aggressive and transformative mayor did not “feel” or speak of that change and success; instead he “felt” the shame of crime, corruption, an economic base (tourism) that had exhausted itself, and a profound sensitivity to the national competitive hierarchy that brought shame on his city—which in his mind was especially identified with, and linked to, the its dominant ethnic group, his ethnic group—the Cubans. His reference point was to his ethnic nationality and his city was an expression of its shame on American TV and movies—not the foreign banks, corporate HQs, embassies, cruise ships, and rising commercial real estate.

Yet, almost instinctively, he turned to Michael Bloomberg and NYC as his role model for recasting Miami into a new image and a new ED reality[i].

Diaz was propelled—driven– into active electoral politics by the Elian Gonzalez affair. A long-standing Democrat he ran as in independent in Miami’s nonpartisan mayoral election in 2001. He ran as an outsider change candidate calling attention to a decade of disruption crime, scandal, change and log-rolling ethnic/racial politics. His “message” was about bringing people together, political stability, education and neighborhood-level infrastructure (potholes, street repair, parks, flooding—and crime). He stressed “the need to create jobs, build the economy and create a great urban core” (Diaz 73). In later years, and in his book, Diaz mentally associated this with Bloomberg’s/Bratton’s “broken windows” policing. This history labels it “broken windows economic development”. We will explore it more deeply below.

Nine candidates (including every living former mayor, the city manager, and city commission member). Diaz made it into the runoff—pitted against our charismatic, former mayor Maurice Ferre. Diaz focused on neighborhood infrastructure, crime, and taking on the city Police Department’s incredibly bad relationships with all ethnic groups. Diaz’s anti-Castro Elian Gonzalez legal service also mattered to many voters. On November 13^th, Diaz won (55 to 45%). A peculiarity of Miami’s political system was that the new mayor took office the next day, so by Nov17th his administration commenced.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Miami, recovering from municipal bankruptcy, was still under the control of a state-appointed fiscal oversight board, covered by a hyperbolic media, and attacked by each faction and ethnic bloc in the city. The level of municipal corruption had reached such extremes that a court stepped in and removed the mayor—necessitating the appointment of the previous mayor before Diaz. As an outsider, Diaz could break past traditions, and that meant strengthening the power and capacity (bureaucratic strength) of the mayor’s office.

Diaz observed his chief impediment was dealing with the bureaucratic culture of city hall—a culture that perpetuated a short-term, fix-the current crisis, fill the pothole, and go home. Mayoral initiatives, he found, languished without constant attention from the mayor’s office, and department silos meant poor communication and coordination. The lesson for an economic development history filtered through a policy-making process is that effective implementation was not automatic after election and policy approval. This is likely as true of programs and strategies operated by nonprofit and private EDOs, and it most certainly applies to public EDOs. The constant involvement of the Mayor and his staff, if Diaz is correct, is a cornerstone leadership activity. To do this, the mayor needed, in the case of economic development, his own ED staff.

Overall, Diaz reorganized city administration and management, modernizing and altering the traditional role and responsibilities of the old city manager. Departmental reshuffling and consolidation, creating a new D=CFO, COO, CIO, budget director—along with a reformed (city manager) CEO, in the mayor’s office. Diaz wanted his own economic developer. Other cities might call the individual the “czar”; Bloomberg had his ED czar, and so did Diaz. He chose an individual from the business community. Diaz’s vision statement for his administration stressed three foci: (10 the city focused on service delivery; (2) neighborhood and systemic-level change; and improvement in health and municipal economic development. He emphasized strategic planning and budgeting. His economic development plan stressed (1) expanding economic opportunity; (2) making neighborhoods safe; (3) investing in our future (infrastructure); (4) designing a sustainable future (new urbanism); and (5) arts and culture. (Diaz p. 93, p.97)

Diaz is clear that he does not see economic development as job creation; “Economic development cannot be just about creating jobs, but [rather] about creating the climate of attraction that makes people want to invest in your city” (Diaz 97). I call this the “broken windows” approach in that it borrows the mentality of NYC’s famous/infamous broken windows neighborhood crime program. This approach uses physical changes, often small and cosmetic, to create a visual image that demonstrates a larger commitment of the city—and the mayor himself—to fixing the problem and making the solution work. Fix the small stuff, convince people you are committed, and the people involved will themselves be more willing to invest and commit themselves to the now-shared goal. To accomplish this bottoms-up and top-down approach to involve neighborhood residents, Diaz, unconsciously blurs the distinctions between community development and mainstream economic development. When he operated sole within mainstream economic development, for example in the Downtown, the involvement he wanted was from the private sector. While Diaz uses

When you invest in people—through education, job training, the arts, health, public safety—[comprehensiveness and Venn Diagram]—you develop a citizenry that is educated and prepared to compete with the best and brightest of the world…. When you invest in place—through better infrastructure {he mentions bridges, roads, ports, and technology)—you create the kind of community where private investment follows and that people are proud to call home. (Diaz 10)

Economic Opportunity—Miami was the nation’s poorest major city. It is theoretically home base to American inequality. Acknowledging that correcting this situation was a multi-decade endeavor, and that the root local issue is “poverty” itself—not reversing social, economic and political power imbalances. In this way, Diaz distances himself from community development—his is a more mainstream approach to addressing the alleviation of poverty among low-income neighborhoods. His centerpiece CDO/strategy, borrowed from Bloomberg’s NYC, was “the ACCESS strategy”.

With ACCESS, municipal government facilitates access to benefits, capital, accumulation of wealth/assets, and financial education that leads to financial empowerment. Using EITC (earned income tax credit), child care tax credits, small business “support including micro-lending (in partnerships with ACCION USA), job placement, skills training, individual development accounts, savings and IRA accounts, credit and financial education courses, and preparing tax returns–all intended to foster “individual self-sufficiency”—and a path to personal prosperity. He also pushed the City Commission to approve a “living wage” above the federal minimum wage. Approved unanimously, it applied to city employees and contractors doing business with the city. Faith-based entities were used to develop EITC technical assistance, after school programs, and crime prevention. Not without its adventures, early identity politics in the form of anti-sexual discrimination did generate some tension with Evangelicals.

One innovation, the “Benefit Bank” facilitated individual resident capacity to obtain the gamut of benefits for which she was eligible through personalized Web pages and internet access. Diaz claims over 100,000 individuals were involved, and 40,000 used the Benefit Bank. Another innovation was the Matched Savings Fund which worked with an individual development account to leverage municipal match to individual savings so individuals could accumulate capital of home down payment, tuition, or small business capital development. (Diaz 100-2) To the extent this strategy attempted actual job creation, it was accomplished though SBA—to facilitate SBA’s involvement a MOU was developed between the City and SBA local office. Jointly with U.S. Dept. of Commerce he set up a one-stop center to provide small business assistance—which ran the gamut from loans to counseling.

Neighborhoods—To define neighborhood revitalization in terms of safety and policing is a radical 180-degree reversal of Progressive community development. Nevertheless, “broken window” neighborhood ED does precisely that. Unconsciously embracing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Diaz asserts nothing good can be achieved unless and until crime brought under some degree of control. Miami is one example of how our Venn Diagram of policy areas entered into the formal practice of economic development. Without “site control”, Diaz would argue job creation or any serious form of neighborhood-level ED is unlikely to be successful. Today, this position is quite controversial.

The Miami Police Department was detested in all ethnic and racial neighborhoods, and had been arguably the key factor in a strong of African-American riots beginning in 1980. The Department had lost its accreditation from CALEA, the national police rating agency. Initially, Diaz created a Civilian Oversight Panel to monitor police activities and hold the Department accountable. He also invited the DOJ in to “audit” police practices; not believing he could hire a police chief from Miami (the ethnic/racial blocs each wanted their own person) he hired the former Philadelphia police chief. The police union was not happy. Chief John Timoney put cops on the streets, used data analysis (COMPSTAT), personally walked beats, Operation Difference which attacked neighborhood crime comprehensively, using SWAT teams in anti-drug, anti-red light running, detectives, DUI enforcement making hundreds of arrests in a short period—getting the attention of neighborhood residents and criminals alike. Rather dramatic reductions in neighborhood crime resulted.

Diaz relied on an “infrastructure” capital improvement plan, for him a multi-year 700 individual projects that totaled over $765 million. It focused on neighborhood streets, sidewalks, parks, gutters and storm sewers—and flooding. He extending it to traffic circles and painting/upgrading and planting in street mediums. Before building new parks, he wanted to upgrade older ones, a new community center, and soccer fields and playgrounds were included. Over his two terms, Diaz claims to have poured over $3 billion in capital improvements into neighborhoods, including $150 million in pumping stations and drainage to mitigate flooding (Diaz 146-50).

Affordable housing was another initiative. Diaz claims upon assuming office “Miami’s entire affordable housing portfolio consisted of three residential units”. Previously, the task had been entrusted, he alleges, to CDOs politically allied with City Hall power-brokers. Often the money went out, but no housing resulted. Diaz reached out to private housing developers and that resulted in Diaz forming an independent commercial loan housing review board, comprised of expert citizens insulated from politics. Linked with a new city ordinance to speed up foreclosures of abandoned and vacant (Diaz hated vacant lots as especially destructive of neighborhoods) buildings, he made city lots available for a dollar for those agreeing to build affordable/working class housing. When he left office in 2011, Diaz spurred over $1 Billion in affordable housing projects, leveraged 10x by the private sector.

Perhaps, Diaz’s most innovative neighborhood strategy is the complex of Venn Diagram policy areas tied together under my “broken windows” economic development label. The key underlying theme that unites these policy areas is Diaz’s own word: “Caring”.

Caring is also incredibly important—showing everyone that some cases. A clean [street] median then leads to a clean neighborhood that leads to greater civic pride, lower crime, and the sense that people care about the place and want to live there. That creates attraction; economic opportunity [he chiefly means private investment] follows. (Diaz 97)

Caring taps what is missing from much of economic development strategy-making and implementation: emotion, concern, humanity, sincerity—and action, not reports, long-term plans and media articles. It is not perceived as a commonplace top-down, imposed strategy, but a strategy that focuses on the “details”, “the visuals”, and the people leading it are seen, like Mayor Koch in NYC, in the streets, talking to people, not addressing groups in election years, or indulging in manipulated media events. There is bureaucratic follow-up to individual problems and questions.

Shades of the old-style political machine, broken window neighborhood strategies get city hall back into people’s lives more than mini-City Halls and CD bureaucracy-driven municipal agency comprehensiveness. It is the reverse of the “War on Poverty’s” mobilization of the downtrodden to attack City Hall and the powers that be. Diaz’s broken windows economic development brings the Mayor and bureaucrats into the neighborhoods personally, consistently, meaningfully, and is sustained over long periods of time. In my mind this is “populism” at its best. That this can be construed as neighborhood economic/community development requires some mental, if not ideological, adjustment by economic developers. It also means getting bureaucrats out of their offices.

Diaz thought of it as “quality of life” and he assembled a municipal bureaucratic task force that included code enforcement, solid waste, fire department, building department, occupational licenses, food service regulations, and the city attorney’s office. Its targets broke up behavior that reinforced individual bad decision-making and conversely helped break up problems inhibiting residents and individuals from “moving up” or improving their life. An example of the former was descending on small neighborhood “cafeterias” that during the day served food, but late at night were where workers cashed their checks, had a drink, talked to prostitutes, and gambled in the back room—obviously, drugs could enter the picture. The money brought home to the family after cashing the check in a cafeteria did little to help, and likely prompted domestic problems (Diaz 139-41).

On the other end, Diaz-style broken windows ED was “cleanliness”. Pick up the garbage, clean up litter, fix up potholes effectively, plant flowers and trees, and curtail illegal dumping. All small stuff. Install garbage cans, invest in automated hydraulic-arm pick up that saves labor costs and improves productivity. Instead of laying off the garbage workers, they went through neighborhoods and picked up litter, removed graffiti, picked up large bulky items—more all small stuff. Abandoned cars were towed. BTW, code enforcement could focus on vacant structures, empty lots, illegal housing, and housing prone to the drug industry, and “broken windows”.

Investing in Our Future: Infrastructure and Education—Amazingly, five years after he has left office, Diaz is credited by locals and the Beacon Council as being the man who built Miami’s skyline. In a two-hundred-page book, in which Diaz is not shy about taking credit for stuff, he devotes four pages to this topic. We will suggest a reason for what lies behind this modesty in the close of this topic. The core reason for the CBD, Downtown, commercial explosion during his administration was the silent neglect and disinvestment that characterized the two decades previous to his taking power.

Take Downtown Miami, for example. No major building had gone up in more than twenty years prior to my administration. It had zero residential life, and became a ghost town after five o’clock (p.8). Midtown Miami is another example. What was an abandoned 56-acre railyard full of prostitutes and crack dealers (Diaz 9).

Miami’s waterfront, its Port, and CBD were inextricably linked. Biscayne Blvd was the main thoroughfare for each. To get to the Port, a truck or a cruise vacationer had to drive through the downtown. Diaz claimed “On a given day, up to 5,000 18-wheeler trucks” moved in and out of the Port. The trip to downtown increased the Port’s cost of doing business, and did little to impress tourists who drove quickly through. Biscayne was also home to many foreign bank commercial offices. The answer was a Port Tunnel which could link I-395 to the Port directly underneath city streets. A little-used rail track that traveled down Biscayne could then be reconverted to a light rail passenger system for the CBD. The proposal, in one form or another, had been around for quite some time, but in the turbulence and bloc coalition log-rolling of the preceding decades, downtown, the Port and mainstream ED (which included transportation infrastructure) had gravitated to Miami-Dade County’s sphere of responsibilities. The deal had not come together. The issue perked up again in 2007.

At the same time, several major infrastructure projects including a new ballpark for the Miami Marlins, a new Performing Arts Center and Museum Park and the relocation of Miami Art Museum and Museum of Science, and most importantly a series of reforms (city/county boundary adjustments) and redevelopment issues for the African-American Overtown (and Omni) neighborhoods came to a boil. Most of these projects were complicated, suffered from a legacy of past bickering, expensive, and seeming did not enjoy a consensus either between City and County or among the various blocs that ruled the City Commission. Individual each had their proponents, but the mentality was zero-sum, i.e. “I want mine but not yours”. Worse, the Marlins’ stadium was extremely controversial (five deals had already collapsed in as many years), fragmenting the Anglo power elite, Blacks and Progressive activists.

Diaz supported the Tunnel initiative, but by the end of 2007 it was stalemated—a contest between the City, County and Florida DOT. Votes in the City Commission were not there. At that juncture, Diaz began to fabricate what he later called his “mega plan”. Succinctly, Diaz combined all the infrastructure projects, the Marlins ballpark, Overtown, and the cultural projects—and others—into one basket in a single piece of legislation. One of the most complicated, controversial, and disruptive of these was the County’s heretofore refusal to allow the City’s Overtown neighborhood to expand into what was County unincorporated areas—preventing comprehensive redevelopment of the neighborhood and solving, partially, the neighborhood being cut up into four separate sections because two highways (I-95 and I-395) created wedges and walls between them. The Overtown issue was primarily an economic development controversy. Diaz provides the background:

The County had long asked the city to contribute funds for the Performing Arts Center. In turn, the city had two redevelopment agencies [Overtown Park West and Omni, historically African-American]. A Community Redevelopment Area (CRA) is … a tool for redevelopment in Florida; it operates on a budget generated by the increase in property taxes within the area [TIF] … This tax increment is used to fund and finance the redevelopment projects identified om the CRA redevelopment plan. The life of Overtown Park West CRA was expiring [and neither CRA could instigate redevelopment projects in the County portion of the neighborhood—and had to consent to the boundaries of the CRAs if they could legally use TIF]. (Diaz 160-1)

Suffice it to say, maid great controversy, and struggle, the mega plan got approved—all the projects in it started (the Marlin’s stadium forced the removal of a Miami-Dade mayor) opened in 2012 and the Art Museum, relocations and Museum Park broke ground in 2011, the Science Museum in 2012—and the Overtown/Omni reforms were made. The Port Tunnel broke ground in 2011.

Otherwise, Diaz was fortunate that during his administration the CBD enjoyed a spectacular, privately-funded commercial office building explosion that cemented Miami’s global city. “During the decade 2000-2011 almost 100 high-rise residential buildings were built in downtown Miami. The downtown population now exceeds 70,000” (Diaz 183-4). That, however, had more to do with the private sector which still exerted considerable control over the CBD—and through the Beacon Council and Chamber, the County. The CBD commercial explosion has vivid testimony to the convoluted division of responsibilities between the City and Metro.

Misc

Education arts, p. 181, New Urbanism p.160/Miami 21 p168ff—blur ED and CD, p99, Chap 8 –Chapter titles Economic Opportunity, Education, Neighborhoods Safe, Investing in the Future, Sustainable City, and Arts & Culture

Localities must now have a competitive advantage. In today’s world, businesses have a great deal of choice as to where they invest and create jobs … corporations no longer owe an allegiance to any one nation, nor are they tied to any one location. P.5

… when business stops spending, the economy stops growing and jobs are lost, government cannot cut its way back to prosperity. On the other hand, an absolute safety net of dependency is simply not sustainable. Government is not the end all and be all, nor is it altogether unnecessary. Government has a role—to create through investment, the climate of opportunity and attraction, where people and business will then invest, either through capital, or by choosing to live in one place over another … It is time we end the focus on D.C. and Beltway-based solutions, and return to a focus on our cities. P.6

Climate change p166

Focused almost entirely on Cubans—no real discussion of county—when brought up, almost always negative; big focus on business and business leadership and close alliance with Bloomberg and his approach.

[i] Interestingly, he apparently never considered Hispanic Los Angeles, another global city, as his role model.

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