Miami 21: now that the tide has retreated, what the sea bottom looks like ... by gimleteye

Mayor Manny Diaz came to the executive office of Miami with so much promise. He did not, however, understand how to wield the power of his bully pulpit. Or, if he did understand, the building boom he represented for much of his life as mayor claimed him as the first political victim. Yesterday's vote to reject a new zoning code is a great disappointment for the future growth pattern of the city. It also shows how political leaders decide to exercise their authority.

The vote against Miami 21 had, in the end, less to do with the mayor than with the battle between his presumptive successors, city commissioners Joe Sanchez and Tomas Regalado. Sanchez, who had been a loyal ally of Diaz' through the building boom that is now in cinders, finds himself under great pressure to distance himself from the fiscal emergency engulfing the city, largely because pro-growth commissioners allowed the public interest to be steamrollered by land speculators and their lobbyists-- building far out of proportion to historical trends.

Diaz spent his political capital on getting the Marlins Stadium deal done and the grand vision for billions of dollars of new infrastructure including the tunnel to serve the Seaport. But he had the sequencing wrong. He should have pushed Miami 21 first and kept it away from the politics of his successor's race. In this matter of political judgment, Mayor Diaz failed.

Diaz told the Herald, "We owe a lasting legacy to those who will call Miami home long after we're gone,'' Diaz said earlier in the day, saying the plan could help Miami draw comparison to New York and Chicago in coming decades." But Miami is not going to be New York or Chicago in any progressive sense of comparison because the Growth Machine and speculators extracted every last dollar from zoning and permitting during the biggest boom in Florida' history. The other day, I referred to Miami as a third-tier American city. I don't believe I'm far off in this assessment.

The regrettable Diaz legacy for Miami is a warren of see-through condos, a paucity of public space linking commerce and consumers, a vision that is as unattractive as it is unlikely to be financed, all beneath a scrim of greenwashing that leaves the city without a heritage of a people-friendly, transit-friendly, water-access friendly place; features that Miami 21 could have helped. It didn't have to happen this way, but the influence of building and development trades was overpowering: stronger than Major League Baseball on steroids.

I've never talked to Mayor Diaz, but observed him and city commissioners during the heyday of the building boom fawned over by developers and celebrities and wealthy supporters. Perhaps it is inevitable that power creates a bubble through which opposing points of view are so marginalized that they never even surface for consideration. (That certainly is the point of view of Jared Diamond in "Collapse": how societies choose to fail or succeed".)

If Miami 21 had come before the Marlins' deal, it would have sent a clear and unequivocal signal to the developer/speculator lobby that the needs of taxpayers and citizens would come first. But if Miami 21 had failed, under those circumstances, perhaps the thinking at City Hall was that the Marlins' deal could also be crushed.

It is always about leadership. The simple fact is that the cratered economy in a region that is defined by more people and more growth has left a political vacuum. Will voters be energized to hold accountable incumbents, like Sanchez, who never saw a zoning proposal for a downtown high rise that he didn't like? And who is there, among the candidates, to push forward needed reforms of the zoning code? Is Miami destined to become a sea water Detroit or Biloxi?

The mainstream press can't summon the will to be as brutally honest on the real, political predicament the building boom caused, or, how the Greenberg Traurig/downtown lobbying corps is largely responsible for marginalizing any and all opposition that might have arisen. In this respect, the battle to protect the county's Urban Development Boundary is instructive: the Neisen Kasdins, the Diaz de la Portillas, the Miguel De Grandys and Juan Mayols: they could not make the entire state political apparatus or the judiciary bend to their will and eventually, over a very long period of years, a judgement was rendered against the forms of growth that have imposed such huge costs on taxpayers and voters. (Did the Herald or Miami Today give a single story to the Hold The Line Campaigners who prevailed? No. And it is in the absence of coverage of critics-- or simply capturing them as "NIMBY's", that the public is largely unaware of other points of view that could prevail under the right circumstances.)

The UDB victory, such as it is, happened far, far from the voting booth where county and city elected leaders will compete. It takes a lot of guts to stand up to a wealthy and battle-hardened status quo. Florida politics, including Miami's, is all about keeping the same characters in power, the same speculators in the game, and the same gut reaction that "property rights" trumps every other consideration of the public commons except those that can be extracted from the law at a very, very long distance from a sleepy, dreamy public that will take the cash but would be just as happy with the cash and its clunkers back.