It’s hard not to roll your eyes looking at photos of some groundbreaking ceremonies. Shoveling a pile of dirt on an empty parking lot? While construction vehicles actively trundle around in the background? Doesn’t look like “groundbreaking” to me.
The same can be said of many ribbon-cutting ceremonies, too, with their oversize scissors and grinning donors. Wasn’t that building completed four months ago? Haven’t students been taking classes there since the start of the semester?
These events—and you can probably lump some “topping out” ceremonies in there, too—live in the realm of “pseudo-events.”
As defined by historian Daniel Boorstin, who coined the term in the 1960s, a pseudo-event is an event hosted for the primary purpose of media publicity.
That’s not to suggest that media attention is the only or primary reason that the A/E/C industry hosts these events—though media publicity is certainly a part of it.
What I struggle with is the general unreality of the events: celebrating construction milestones that have already (or have not yet) happened. While some events—a ribbon-cutting for a new elementary school, for example—garner some genuine community interest, most of these events are little more than image management.
These events present opportunities for people to look good: to make speeches, to give thanks, to mug for photographers. This would be fine if not for the fact that the events live not as celebrations but rather as key construction “milestones.” If the ground is already broken or if the building is already open, let’s stop calling these events something other than what they are.
Taylor Coe 