Many Memorials

Repairing our breaking society is something many Americans agree we should do, but the routes to that destination and the ideas of what it will look like diverge. The literal emblems of this divergence are our most public buildings: memorials.

Progressives tear them down and build idealizations to replace them, visions of new “communities” united by causes.

Conservatives argue for a return to clean, classical lines and columns reflecting the principles of society over government and the free person over the tyrant.

Establishmentarians take a deferential approach to architectural experts: a promise of artistry whose reality, like the reality of most bureaucratic promises, is impersonal, monumental, placeless.  What’s sought is a representation of authentic community. What’s developed is another front in the political war for control of America: idealized, abstract, top-down.

But outside of Washington, our city of memorials, there are other models for representing community. These models acknowledge breakages rather than eradicate them. They express concrete testaments, not symbolic ideals. They don’t assert an idea of community but live in it, take their bearings from it, become decipherable inside it. They remind people of the past not for a visit but in the everyday. And they trace what it takes for communities to survive.

You can find one of those models in an unexpected place, a unique section of an unusual city where a tourist hub, a neighborhood, and a memorial converge. The city is Miami—not the Miami of television or movies but a different Miami altogether. This Miami is west seven or eight miles from Miami Beach and two or three from downtown or Brickell by way of Calle Ocho. It’s past the investigative agencies and car dealerships, art galleries and outdoor fusion restaurants, fitness centers and grocery stores which occupy the first blocks of the street. And it’s right before the cigar shops and cocktail bars, jazz clubs  and restaurants, outdoor markets and coffee shops which come after—the part of Calle Ocho where tourists visit. 

Read more at CREATED.