What our actions say matters

It’s hard for someone on the other side of the state to know just how this all played out. One can only use words like “striking” or “stunning” to describe the new zoning approved by the Miami Commission on Thursday.

The approval, as I understand it, authorizes the development of a pair of 500-foot-tall electronic signs associated with a new parking garage and, ultimately, additional retail space near the Arsht Center. Five-hundred-foot-tall signs... think something well over 40 stories tall, or as tall as the tallest buildings in my own home town of Tampa.

Part of me, the part that frequently feels concern over the commercialization of every space in our lives (including virtual spaces like Second Life) is appalled. Of course, the artists’ renderings show “good” ads, cultural ads like promotions for Broadway musicals (Wicked and West Side Story) and concerts, and artsy ads for companies and products. Nothing crass, nothing tawdry, nothing even too overtly commercial. If the ads are beautiful, perhaps this approaches a kind of public art?

But one assumes the owners get to decide what ads will run, based not on what is most aesthetically pleasing, but on what generates the most revenue. Think about 250 feet of Hulk Hogan’s scowling face promoting whatever new product he’s been hired to hawk, and the look and feel of the whole deal is rather different.

Part of me recognizes the financial benefit to the city, and the potential that such an infusion of cash to the developer (who also, obviously, benefits) could help give legs to the rest of the development and help make the entire project come to fruition. Sadly, land frequently is rezoned (or re-planned) for projects that never come up out of the ground, benefitting no one except, perhaps, the attorney who handled the rezoning and the experts hired to sell the attributes of the proposal. Something this big and unique has the potential to generate considerable revenue for the city as well as the developer, a serious consideration in these difficult times.

But the biggest part of me simply asks the question, “How do you explain this to citizens?” It may be that most people don’t care now, and won’t care later. Maybe I’m overly concerned about how these decisions get explained, given that general inattention of citizens to matters like zonings.

But most zonings don’t alter the skyline dramatically. Among those few that do, the community debate frequently is over the aesthetics of design (at least in areas already characterized by high-density development). Here, the most important aesthetics won’t be about the structures themselves, but about the ads that play there. One has to wonder just how long the citizenry can choose not to notice, and what they will think when their attention is drawn to these multi-story electronic monoliths with their message to buy, buy, buy.

One would like to believe that the citizenry might be won over by the revenue this project will generate for the city, revenue that, one presumes, will help the city deliver services and hold down any tax or rate increases. But in this climate, I doubt that most citizens are motivated by deals struck that raise city revenue. Public understanding of municipal finance is very limited. Public suspicion of elected officials is high. Throw around big city revenue dollar figures, and many citizens ask themselves how much of that goes into officials’ pockets.

We always must be concerned about what we are saying by what we are doing. Citizens pay limited attention to our words, and probably somewhat more to those actions they deem (and the media deems) to be of significance. When they attend to what we do, will they see actions that speak boldly of our service to them and to the community? Or an ad for Head-On pain reliever... just the thing for the pain our collective minds feel at the current state of affairs.