Florida International University FIU Digital Commons Center for Leadership Current Research College of Arts, Sciences & Education 2013 Miami: The Global City of the Future Mayra Beers Center for Leadership, Florida International University, [email protected] Candace Atamanik Center for Leadership, Florida International University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/lead_research Recommended Citation Beers, Mayra and Atamanik, Candace, "Miami: The Global City of the Future" (2013). Center for Leadership Current Research. 1. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/lead_research/1 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Center for Leadership Current Research by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Miami: The Global City of the Future Center for Leadership corruption and wrong-doing surface repeatedly. Business Miami: leaders are wary of entering the public arena. The Global City Two years ago, the Center for Leadership at Florida International University initiated a project to take an in-depth of the Future look at Miami’s struggles—how they came to be, and their impact on the community. The Center also wanted to draw community leaders together to come up with a plan for Executive Summary effectively facing these challenges and finding ways to make the city truly world class. The project, spearheaded by the center’s exeutive director and FIU’s president emeritus, Mitch Maidique, began with a case study of Miami’s history and the city’s ever-changing social and ethnic divisions, fragmented communities, toxic politics, and rocky economic cycles. A collaborative effort Twenty years ago, Harvard Business School professor by members of the FIU faculty and Center for Leadership Rosabeth Moss Kanter wrote that Miami’s favorable staff—in consultation with Harvard’s Kanter—the study was geographic location and promising role as a connector of completed in early 2012 under the title “Miami: Leadership global traffic in business and the arts was unparalleled. The in a Global Community.” Almost immediately The Miami city was featured in Kanter’s 1993 book World Class: Thriving Case, as it has come to be known, sparked a community- in a Global Economy, and from outward appearances Miami wide dialogue involving hundreds of civic leaders, all seeking appeared to be poised on the edge of greatness as a truly answers to these pressing questions: international city at the nexus of the Americas. What keeps Miami from emerging as a global leader, and Twenty years later, however, Miami has not lived up to that will its boundless possibilities ever be realized? great promise, unable—so far—to move forward into the 21st century as one of the world’s leading global communities. What followed over the next fifteen months was an Even with its obvious attractions, Miami struggles with unprecedented series of community summits hosted by social divisions, deep economic divides between rich and the Center for Leadership, initially to discuss and debate poor, and the isolationism of its various cultural and ethnic the findings in The Miami Case, and then, in subsequent groups. Many residents view the community as fragmented meetings demanded by participants, to clearly identify the and lacking a unified vision and leadership. Miamians have roadblocks inhibiting the city’s potential for growth. In the long been disenchanted with local government; charges of end, after countless hours of study and soul-searching effort, 2 FIU Center for Leadership Miami’s community leaders found themselves in agreement on three critical issues facing the city, all requiring significant and collective action: education, economic development, and civic engagement. (The process and the list of issues considered are included under the Summit III summary below.) The first two—education and economic development—most agreed, were obvious, and participants were able to quickly identify a number of initiatives already in place to address them. The third pressing theme, however—Miami’s woeful lack of civic engagement—had long gone unaddressed, and the more community leaders looked into the issue, the more critical they found it to be. Source: volunteeringinamerica.gov/FL/Miami • Voting records show that historically only 15 out of every The participants at the Leadership summits represented 100 eligible voters show up to cast their ballots in municipal a broad cross-section of the community—entrepreneurs, elections. Fortune 500 executives, politicians, attorneys, journalists, academics, representatives from local nonprofits, social and • In a recent survey of the level of civic involvement in the 26 political activists, members of the military and Miami-Dade communities served by the Knight Foundation, Miami came County Mayor Carlos Jimenez who attended as an active in dead last. listener. They nonetheless managed to reach clear consensus in voting to make the problem of civic engagement a top • A case study titled “A Tale of Two Cities” compared Miami community priority, with a commitment to identify existing to similar-sized Minneapolis and found glaring differences in engagement opportunities, partner with local businesses to levels of civic engagement between the two urban centers, encourage community participation by their employees, and especially among poor and working class citizens, with promote Miami as a city with engaged citizens. Miami once again on the failing end. They gave the initiative a name—“Engage, Miami!”—and • Using a composite of U.S. Census indicators measuring formed a steering committee with a three-year mission to volunteering, voting, involvement in community groups, use tackle the problem. Since February 2013 that initiative has of news media, and everyday interactions such as talking moved forward with earnest, spurred on by a firm belief that to neighbors, that same study concluded that Miami was the impact of greater civic engagement on business, human the least civically engaged major metropolitan area in the services, arts, culture, and government has the potential to United States. catapult Miami to a level of international prominence. LEAD.FIU.EDU 3 The Miami Case: Leadership in a Global Community Miami’s position as a global community has long been clear: its geographic location makes the city a gateway to the Americas; the seaport and airport provide transportation for millions of people and cargo tonnage each year; it boasts a solid reputation as an international arts destination that attracts visitors from all over the world. In short, it would appear to be the perfect incubator for innovation and global prominence. Two years ago the Center for Leadership at Florida International University commissioned a case study to determine why the city hasn’t lived up to its great promise—and to kick-start a community dialogue to address those challenges and help the city seize on Miami’s considerable opportunities. Through interviews with more than 20 local leaders and extensive research into current and historical economic, political and social issues in the city, the case study, “Miami: Leadership in a Global Community,” provided a thorough review of all relevant issues affecting Miami’s rise to global prominence, which has been dramatic and uneven—and unfinished. Since the late 1800s, Miami has attracted a broad diversity of residents arriving from the Northeast and the Bahamas including investors and developers, fishermen and farmers. As decades passed and the population grew, government and community leaders struggled to address the bourgeoning demands of urban growth and strained resources. They tackled ways to bridge growing socio-economic and cultural barriers and make sufficient progress on issues such as adequate infrastructure, expanding economic development, providing education, and developing successful public-private partnerships in both business and government. By 1959, the boom years of real estate expansion and population growth had slowed to a crawl for Miami and Dade County. With a new influx of residents, this time Spanish-speaking Cuban immigrants ousted by the Cuban Revolution, the county’s Ethnicities in Miami by Location demographic rapidly changed. The decades that followed also brought waves of new residents from Latin America and the Caribbean. This demographic change shifted Miami’s economy from one almost exclusively based on tourism and real Red = Caucasians estate to one based on services, commerce, and finance with a primary focus on Blue = African Americans Latin American trade. Within a generation, the new cultural and economic power of Orange = Hispanics the Hispanic resident was evident as more than 25,000 Hispanic-owned businesses Green = Asians were established in the area. With this transfer in economic power, Miami struggled to attract businesses that would provide high-paying corporate jobs and expand Source: rochestersubway.com/topics/2012/05/ visualizing-ethnic-boundaries-in-rochester/ entrepreneurial opportunities. Race and class further widened the divide. The African-American community represented a third of the voters present during the incorporation of the City of Miami in 1896 and participated in the economic rise of the region. As the community became more diverse, many African Americans felt neglected by their civic leaders’ response to the problems in their neighborhoods. Tensions