Time against race: Aesthetic ‘merit’ and histories worth preserving on an American frontier

This article examines the appetite for historic preservation in Miami within broader colonialist and moralising discourses of 'civilising' the wilderness and of aesthetic 'merit' that go back to the foundation of the city. It argues that a growing sense of anxiety, stoked by increasing waves of migration into Miami, is at the heart of this emphasis upon historic preservation, but is also at work in the delineation of what types of structure merit preservation in local law and policy. It analyses the effects of these policies upon peoples of colour, and argues that the effects of Jim Crow segregation law can still be seen in Miami's cityscape through the present-day delineation of which structures 'count' as historic, and therefore worth preserving for the future.