Miami’s missing metric: the cultural appreciation index | Opinion

Miami-Dade County is wrestling with difficult budget choices. Now is the time to rethink the value of arts and culture. The arts have been treated as an amenity, but they are essential infrastructure.

Like roads, parks, transit and utilities create conditions for economic growth, artists and cultural institutions create conditions that make neighborhoods desirable, attract talent and investment, build civic identity and generate long-term public value. The question is not whether we can afford to invest in culture. It’s whether we can afford not to.

For decades, investment in the arts was measured by hotel stays, restaurant sales, tourism, ticket sales and jobs. That counts. But that measures what happens after a city becomes successful. Data rarely measure the role artists and culture played in creating success in the first place.

Artists create conditions that generate economic value, transforming overlooked neighborhoods into places people want to live, work, visit and invest. They build identity, attract entrepreneurs, inspire innovation and make cities competitive. They contribute billions of dollars in real estate appreciation and expand the tax base. That value is never attributed to the cultural ecosystem that made it possible.

That is the missing metric.

After more than 50 years working at the intersection of community development and culture in Miami, I witnessed the same story: Before the developers came, artists were there.

Artists chose neighborhoods because they were affordable and overlooked. They saw possibilities, investing not with financial capital, but with imagination, labor and risk. They converted abandoned buildings into studios, opened galleries in vacant storefronts, held performances and built creative communities long before the market recognized their value.

Miami’s history tells this story remarkably well.

Beginning in the 1950s, Coconut Grove was one of South Florida’s creative centers. Writers, musicians, architects, artists, bookstores, cafés, galleries and institutions like the Coconut Grove Playhouse created a neighborhood defined by authenticity and creativity long before redevelopment moved in.

The pattern repeats on Lincoln Road, where artists occupied empty storefronts, galleries flourished and landmark institutions including the New World Symphony, Miami City Ballet, Bass Museum and The Wolfsonian helped transform Miami Beach into one of America’s premier destinations.

Then came Wynwood.

When Bakehouse moved into an abandoned bakery in 1986, Wynwood was an industrial neighborhood. Artists came because few others wanted to be there. Galleries, artists, cultural spaces and entrepreneurs followed. Entrepreneur and developer Tony Goldman recognized what many overlooked: creativity was not an amenity added after development. It was the catalyst that made development possible.

Billions in investment followed. Yet our arts and culture economic impact studies focus on spending rather than wealth creation.

What if we measured something different?

How much did surrounding property values appreciate because artists transformed blighted neighborhoods into destinations? How much additional tax revenue now flows to local governments because culture made these places desirable? How many companies, entrepreneurs and talented workers chose Miami because of its creative identity?

Imagine measuring those gains through a “cultural appreciation index” that recognizes long-term public value created by artists and cultural institutions as neighborhoods prosper. We measure the return on investments in other infrastructure. Why shouldn’t we measure the return generated by culture?

Recognizing this missing metric also broadens the conversation about who should invest in it.

Government has an essential role to play, but not alone. Developers, property owners, businesses, philanthropists and investors benefited from neighborhoods whose value was shaped, in part, by artists. Many have become extraordinary champions of the arts. As public resources become more constrained, those who have benefited most have an opportunity and responsibility to invest forward by preserving affordable artist housing, permanent studio spaces and the nonprofit organizations that sustain creative communities.

This is not charity. It is smart economic policy.

For too long, we have asked, “What is the economic impact of art?” The better question is, “How much of our region’s prosperity exists because artists invested in and created value long before anyone else did?”

Until we begin measuring that value, we continue making decisions with only half the data.

That is the missing metric.

Cathy Leff is executive director of Bakehouse Art Complex and is director emeritus of The Wolfsonian-FIU.