This has been a tough year for Miami development.
We are no doubt in an accelerated transition, there is a lot of misguided gentrification, and it feels like a bumpy roller coaster. Every other week our favorite restaurants and music venues are closing: Tobacco Road, Grand Central, The Stage, Will Call, Fox's Lounge, Scotty's Landing -- to name a paltry few.
Local artists, musicians and people in general are up-in-arms wagging fingers at each other decrying to anyone who will listen: the magic city is disappearing. We are dying. Do not go gently into this light. Rage, rage against the dying of this light..
Relax, bro.
Miami culture is not dying, Miami culture is transitioning.
You have to understand the nature of Miami: real estate.
Ignoring the homestead days of Henry Flagler, Miami has had three periods of evolution.
In the Fifties when the Beaches were in their glorious fun in the sun, Moon Over Miami, Some Like It Hot hay day; this also coincided with the beginning of post WWII suburban planned communities out west. Tons of construction in the Fifties, but ALL of the action in South Florida was east of Biscayne Blvd.
Then, in the 80s, Downtown Miami was essentially built on drug money, as documented in Cocaine Cowboys. And we had a generation of banana republic politics, advanced crime and drug usage and overall chaos, as chronicled by movies like Scarface, Miami Vice, ectera.
Now in the Twenty-teens, Miami 3.0 is here.
We are changing. For the better.
We have something we didn't have 30 or even 20 years ago: culture.
The last 20 years have spawned Wynwood, Museum Park, the Arsht Center, Symphony Hall, Art Basel, and festivals almost every week, many with the help of organizations like the Knight Foundation and the Miami Foundation, all new.
Look at this week alone.
This weekend (a boring off-season in mid-September) we have the Downtown Art Days featuring countless community non-profits, like Buskerfest and The Miami Center for Architecture and Design (MCAD), with nearly 100 events at 34 venues.
THIRTY FOUR venues. And that's just in Downtown.
If you don't want to play in Downtown, go to Wynwood Saturday night: it's art walk.
Oh, you don't like the downtown area, go to Coral Gables, it's their Second Saturday on Aragon with awesome events at the museum, Books and Books, and cinema.
Oh, you live out west and have a family: go to The Children's Trust Family Expo.
That's just this weekend in Miami.
We are not disappearing. We are appearing.
Get the fuck out of here with that.
Having said that, there is a lot of unnecessary development coming our way, particularly the monster mall downtown, misguided and mismanagement of the old Miami Herald lot by the Genting Group as well as the building of Skyrise Miami (our Eiffel Tower) and the new Convention center downtown. It's a cluster.
Brickell and Downtown are under siege.
It's kind of annoying.
But behind the veil lies what Miami has always been about: real estate.
Follow the real estate, follow the money, that is Miami.
It is our responsibility to resist what the real estate speculators want unless it is in conjunction with what we want. Read that last sentence again. It's important.
So, at the end of this Miami 3.0 --
Miami will always be what we who live here in Miami want. Power to the people. We will not be the next Las Vegas. We don't all have yachts and live like ballers.
And it is the "we" that will prevail.
And "we" are not disappearing, on the contrary, "we" are coming together.