Miami: Mistress of the Americas

Chapter 4: The Miami Growth Machine

c h a p t e r 4 The Miami Growth Machine Another profound transformation took place in Miami between the early 1970s and the mid-1980s. This was not high drama that played out on the front pages of the newspapers or consumed public debate. Befitting Miami’s political reputation as the ‘‘intrigue capital of the hemisphere,’’1 it was a rather stealth-like change that, in the early stages at least, occurred mostly under the surface. Unnoticed by many ordinary citizens and overshadowed by the tumultuous events just described, it would still change the city forever. Indeed, without it the ethnic transformation could not have been sustained. It was the remaking of Miami ’s economy or, better said, of its political economy, from a tourist town into a high-wired international trade and finance center. In a seminal paper written in 1976, Harvey Molotch introduced the idea of the ‘‘urban growth machine.’’ He argued that in order to understand cities better, we need to broaden our perspective beyond the usual sociological traditions and focus on the cities’ political economies. The thrust of his argument was that the ways and directions in which cities develop are largely determined by the economic growth strategies of business elites: ‘‘The desire for growth provides the key operative motivation toward consensus for members of politically mobilized local elites, however split { 69 } they might be on other issues. . . .’’ It follows, said Molotch, that ‘‘the very essence of a locality is its operation as a growth machine .’’ Thus, the particular nature of any given urban growth machine is a matter of the consensus forged by the local elites.2 Miami makes a fascinating example of an urban growth machine , with the point ‘‘however split they might be on other issues ’’ being especially significant. The key issue here is that Miami’s growth machine underwent a major overhaul in the 1970s and early 1980s, well ahead of the massive ethnic and social transformation described in the previous chapter. And it could hardly have been different, for the growth machine was in the hands of the business elites who operated without significant public controls or interference, while local residents’ cultural adjustment to the immigrant waves was a much slower and more arduous process. This de-synchronous transformation was particularly visible when, in the wake of the upheavals of 1980, the Anglo grassroots movement Citizens of Dade United got an ordinance passed that prohibited ‘‘the expenditure of any county funds for the purpose of utilizing any language other than English or any culture other than that of the United States.’’3 Eight years later, the movement was still alive and kicking: in 1988 it successfully pushed an English-only amendment to the Florida state constitution with approval by 84 percent of Florida’s voters. But by that time, as we shall see, the growth machine had been fully reconditioned to rely significantly on the Spanish-language skills of Miami’s work force! Indeed, already in 1980, the year of multiple social and cultural crises, Miami’s economic reorientation was firmly underway , having begun in the early 1970s. Local boosters had flirted with notions of Miami as a potential international business center already in the early 1940s, but it is important to separate this flirtation from the actual economic { 70 } c h a p t e r 4 restructuring, which did not happen until the early 1970s. Promotional publications of the Miami Chamber of Commerce’s Industrial Department in 1941 and 1943 referred to the city as the ‘‘Gateway to the Americas,’’ declaring without hesitation, ‘‘Already all signs point to Miami as the meeting place between businesses of the two Americas after the war.’’ It was really all hot air then, typical booster language without any substance. In the 1930s, similar claims had been made about Tampa.4 What made such language interesting was that it reflected the gradually changing place of Miami in the geographical imagination. Soon, the message was wrapped in cartographic images used to suggest the self-evident truth about Miami’s ‘‘incredible’’ location. The City of Miami celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1946 with a booklet that included a (rather primitive) map that put Miami right in the center of the entire hemisphere with concentric circles indicating its reach in all directions. The caption read, somewhat awkwardly: ‘‘Centering the Hemisphere: Situated virtually at the center of the Western...