A BILLION MONGRELS !

Garbage dumped along roadside,Tunapuna

Oooouchh! The stench! Like a billion mongrels I must say! I had to cover my eyes and my nose! Can I escape this smell and sight? It’s along the street corners for goodness sake! Where else can I walk? Oh I have been saved by the bell, the road here is not usually as busy as it is not the main road, and it is just a side street deep in the neighborhood.

As population growth is on the rise in the East west corridor, spaces are harder to find as individuals find themselves crunchy up in unsuitable environments just to find more attractive jobs and a faster life. Tunapuna Municipality has been one of the many areas that has seen such a growth; both in the economy and in the population size. The area has a population of about 275,00 and by  2020 it  is projected to have about  380,000. The rapid growth in the country's urban population calls for urgent attention in resource mobilization “to reduce, reuse, recycle, or recover as much waste as possible before burning it (and recovering the energy) or otherwise disposing of it”, as observed by Rachel Kyte, World Bank's Vice President for Sustainable Development. It has been stated that a city that cannot effectively manage its waste is rarely able to manage more complex services such as health, education, or transportation. It begs the question; can this possibly be what is taking place in Trinidad and Tobago? This rapid increase in the municipal  population has put a strain on the physical and social infrastructure evidenced  by the problems as varied as lack of potable water supply, in some areas and not only  as a Geographer but  an  Environmentalist, I  would notice the indiscriminate cutting  on the hillsides for  development  purposes. A university town has evolved out of the area! A Municipality well placed for the development of competitive industry, service and a skilled professional workforce.

However, much of its potential can remain unexploited in the absence of care socio-economic and physical planning. According to a very recent report from the Government, 90% of the population is served with garbage collection. Why then is there garbage here? Possibly it is a part of the remaining unobserved 10%. Who can tell?  Maybe the garbage truck is late? Maybe the residents did not put the garbage out on time? This results in a health risk for the local community. Not only is this an environmental and health issue, it is also a social issue as many   homeless people search through the garbage to find themselves useful resources. Many are used to sustain themselves and many are sold as a form of livelihood.

I therefore see sustainability as then issue then! “Sustainability of waste management is key to providing an effective service that satisfies the needs of the end users. One pillar of sustainable solid waste management is strategic planning, and links to guidance are provided. "As the policy report for Trinidad explains that waste from most informal settlements in the area is not collected and this results in in piles of informal dumpsites. What I suggest is that the local authority develops innovative ways of reusing human waste with the aim of improving sanitation services for the poor whilst restructuring the economics of sanitation in the country (Kwarteng, 2011). What has also been working in other Countries of the Global south is a policy framework to support the youth in local communities to tap into opportunities in waste recycling to be financially independent. One such example is in Ghana.

Honestly speaking however, the local government will face challenges. Insecure land tenure and threats of eviction can make sanitation a low priority. In communities such as those in the inner most parts of Tunapuna, in which poor communities have insecure tenure, the threat of eviction is so large and so urgent that communities are pre-occupied with it and any outsider entering the community is perceived as someone who may have more information or power to help provide secure tenure. Often communities such as this one are targets of misinformation from private developers or municipal staff. In this context, it can be difficult to focus communities on sanitation unless they can link their organizing to securing tenure. For successful development of any solid waste project, community participation in collection, community consultation on cost recovery, and public participation in siting and design of facilities is inherently essential to sustainability. These suggestions are opportunities for the local authorities to take up in order to give a face lift to their community. It is highly likely that although different challenges will be met, projects like these can be successful as it was taken in in Trinidad in areas such as Princes Town. These projects would also contribute employment creation and unleashed the country's wealth stored in garbage, especially in registering projects to benefit from the global carbon market. (Kwarteng 2011)

Reference

Boodan, Shastri.2013. “Cabinet to consider CNG master plan” Trinidad Guardian ( March 15^th 2013) Accessed April 2 2013

Kwarteng, Oduro. PRIVATE SECTOR INVOLVEMENT IN URBAN SOLID WASTE COLLECTION. Ghana: www.crcpress.com, www.balkema.nl, www.taylorandfrancis.co.uk,, 2011.

http://www.localgov.gov.tt/devplanning/Tunapuna%20Piarco%20Final%20Draft.pdf

http://www.swmcol.co.tt/

http://www.guardian.co.tt/letters/2011/03/21/urban-challenge-good-quality-water

http://guardian.co.tt/business/2013-03-14/cabinet-consider-cng-master-plan

NIMBYISM

Homes and Homelessness, Tunapuna

I am in complete shock to see so many of them here! I walked through the Park and it dawned on me that life has not been a walk in the park for all of us. Many are homeless (top-left photo); for several reasons too. Unemployment; because of lack of sufficient skills, and sometimes, in such a race-focused society as this, because of race.

I took this photo from afar, only to be shouted at " Don't take our Pictures you know, you need permission". Yes!, they do feel, they are still human, they still want to find that sense of place, a place they call home, a place where they feel secured, a shelter, a basic human need.

But, this is a park, remember? Are they even supposed to be here? Who lets this happen when there are kids who have to play in this same area? I must say that it seems this is a CATE society; Citizens Agreeing To Everything type of society (so heavily moved I had to coin my own word)! Not in my backyard! There must be a place for them other than here! Some were possibly a neighbor, that means he did live somewhere before all this.

Research in particular shows that those responsible for urban housing in societies have been making all the wrong rules. It raises many more questions than it answers. The root cause of this type of urban decay is a matter of political relevance. Is this a result of gentrification leading to rent gaps that cannot be met? Smith (1996) Argues about the disparities that exist between the potential rent that could be gained if a city is refurbished (top-right photo) and the actual rent gained from the present housing condition (bottom-centre photo). It was therefore profitable for the authorities who in this case are neither national nor central/local government but the private sector to do such. Private house owners refurbished their houses into privately rented accommodations (in some cases completely demolish and rebuild) in order to suit a middle class type of society. In providing this highly demanded service, it comes with knowing the consumer’s preference. As these consumers are the working folk who seek to find opportunities of closest housing to their jobs, they are willing to pay the dollar.

The mighty dollar wins right? This type of dealing drastically transforms the life of many. The working class meets their need but… those, yes, the “othered” who fens for them? Whose responsibility? It is not easy as simple  good standard housing is not cheap. Urban managers who seek to make a better life for all its citizens will find this a challenge, especially in the global south. Where do they stay in the mean time? Certainly, I would not agree for it to be not in my back yard; a place that I commonly dwell. What I do think should be done is, donations should be made to facilitate urban managers in providing for these people a place that is as comfortable as possible. But the questions remain, how are these homeless provisions sorted, are they all actually going to be helped?

Reference

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ns4qxqIEhs


http://guardian.co.tt/news/2013-01-16/ramadharsingh-tackles-homelessness

Smith, Nigel. The New Urban Frontier:Gentrificationand the Revanchist City .London,1996

INVITATION TAKEN....HERE'S TO THE URBAN!

Regenerated home makes mix use, Tunapuna

The clock does not stop in the urban! It is reset! Economic forces within the Tunapuna area are source of urban change and they have played a great deal in shaping the not only the landscape but the lives of those who live within it.

Regeneration intervention has typically involved a series of discretionary funding programmes, operating in parallel to, although often seeking to influence, the activities of ‘mainstream’ public service delivery (Tyler, 2012).

I evidence from investigations about the Tunapuna for example,  that there were many houses along the Eastern Main Road that were mundane and very dilapidated. As such, the government decided to revamp the area in order to help meet the challenge of the century. By this, they gave the leading development initiatives through the use of incentives such as relaxing tax burdens and local planning restrictions.

This drive completely improved the aesthetics of the area Honeestly, it does. I  feel  really  grand when  walking along an  area such as this on my way  eastward to the market. Although many new buildings were not created, those that already existed were brought up to a certain standard. This was done attract private sector investment and improve the economic dynamism of Tunapuna.

So, this created what impacts on the urban? This policy has has on a large scale made an impression the urban problems that the urban faces; while the area had become more prosperous, many problems such as unemployment still remained. Some buildings for example, the one shown above, have been overworked and thus do do look as refurbished as it should. Here, this building for example serves as a barbershop and hair salon, a school and as house.

This approach created jobs created safeguarded through intervention but in relatively low-skilled occupations. The school on the other hand is privately owned and expensive and thus does not provide for a wide range of consumers living in the immediate community.There are daunting methodological problems in identifying robust causal links between interventions, programmes and policies and desired outcomes. . The processes linking funding allocations, policy priorities, mechanisms and effects are likely to be indirect, hard to identify and even harder to measure. Hence the problem of attribution— i.e. the difficulty in identifying the extent to which a particular intervention has created a specific outcome (Saunders et al., 2011).

Given the complexity of such manufactured structure on so small a plot, perhaps it might be too harsh to say that their policy was crisis. But, what this has done is, it has given planners an idea as to what not to do in the future; relax restrictions on buildings. It has given them an opportunity for restructuring.

Reference:

1. Tyler P. (2005) Assessing the effect of area-based initiatives on local area outcomes: some thoughts based on the national evaluation of the Single Regeneration Budget in England, Urban Studies, 42(11), pp. 1–28.

Saunders, John, Wong, Veronica and Saunders, Carolyne, The Research Evaluation and Globalization of Business Research (September 2011). British Journal of Management, Vol. 22, Issue 3, pp. 401-419, 2011.

http://guardian.co.tt/news/2012-02-29/move-boost-economy-14-corporations

URBAN AXIOM!!

Improved built environment, Tunapuna

What intersts me most about this photo is the fact that I am trying my best to imagine what structure was in its place before but .. . I  can not. Urban change is dynamic. The form of cities changes at different rates and are associated links between the socio-economic and cultural and political forces that shape the city; its form and structure. These links and what constitutes them have been observed to a great extent by mapping the streetscape along the Eastern Main road from in Tunapuna. Measuring from this, the major land uses were identified and the structure of the buildings. 

The main urban form recognized, and to a great extent that is in the Tunapuna area from a street or eye level view is one that is associated with post modern societies. Such societies are outlined as having three main characteristics; a fragmented ‘patchwork’ form, a post –suburban area with edge city developments and increased socio-economic polarization and ‘fortress’ landscapes    (Hall et al., 2010). From my observation however, it can be seen that this description can be contested as the area does not follow every characteristic ideally. For example, the Tunapuna area has all the defining characteristics except the increased socio economic polarization. Although it may not appear so to the onlooker such as myself, does it truly mean that it is not indeed present?  Is the politics of the authorities in the area geared towards trying to preserve a particular light of the city?

To me, even before I did the research,it was evedient that the area has been promoted as an attraction for tourists; those domestically (who would come from the southern part of the country), regionally and internationally.  It has especially been made easy for those wanting to avoid the hustle and bustle of the main city Port of Spain. Improvements in the physical environment through having planted trees being incorporated along with the built environment has significantly improved the image of the area. It has promoted sustainability and thus better living and working quality environment.

These, they mark the city edge. The area is therefore a contrasting representation of the majority of building and environment that further east in Tunapuna along the Eastern Main Road. This building along with those four building blocks further up the street where it is increasingly mixed commercial and institutional and some of the newest sets of buildings  mark the regenerated area.  It is therefore self-evident truth that this area is urban!

Reference:
Hall and Barrett,2012. Urban Geography. 4^th Edition. London and New York: Routledge Publishing.(pages 282-301 ).

 http://www.google.tt/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CFUQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Flibrary.queensu.ca%2Fojs%2Findex.php%2Fsurveillance-and-society%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F3327%2F3289&ei=NFVuUYGnMKrJ0wHkzIDwBw&usg=AFQjCNFKxnS6Xv0c3qXsR3kom1cCnFtnoQ&sig2=rVYA4pLaEA42yX-Awg9cMQ
 

GLAMORIZED HEIGHTS!

Tall buildings, Tunapuna


 I look up! Tall buildings play a major role in defining the identity of the urban as they form the city’s skyline and its form. Discussing these matters involves raising issues such as urban space, scale and skyline. The city’s planners have sought the benefits that city revitalization and renovation can bring; in the capacity of local city infrastructure. In this post, the height of the building makes me want to  speak as a town representative ( smiles). SO I CARRY ON.

In Tunapuna, the tall buildings on the lower Westward end of the Eastern Main Road; the edge of the city, dominate the entire urban fabric of the area. These buildings are concentrated in clusters and thus highlight specific city fabric and the contextualization of the urban. The clustering allows for flexibility in building composition. The morphology of the urban therefore is not totally dependent on the individual buildings or their locations. These new clustered tall buildings have collaborated with a loss in the historical image of how the city was.

The corroboration of tall buildings in Tunapuna is a visible creative element of the socioeconomic building considerations that have gone into it. Although this building is tall, it relatively low compared to those high rise buildings in the main city Port of Spain. This may be due to building regulations regarding skyline and built spaces in Trinidad. In particular, this building creates a very famous public space for people within a certain taste and within a particular age group (Hall et al., 2012). For example, the first floor caters to children and the second floor caters to fitness personnel.

This building, among others in the cluster, is a marker of financial stronghold of the city. It is one that is aggressive and powerful in terms of whom it allows on the inside. As a result, this building is very keen on security; it has iron bars on the first floor and dark glass windows on the second.

These buildings being on the edge of the city means several ramifications. For example, an economic challenge would be an increase the cost of land and infrastructure on the city edge ( Train, 2003). It would also mean that there would be morphological / physical consequences; changes in the urban fabric and spatial shaping. Studying the urban form and the process of their formation and transformation seek to further help us to understand the spatial structure and character of a by examining the patterns of its component parts and the process of its development in the Tunapuna area.

 

Reference:

Hall and Barrett,2012. Urban Geography. 4^th Edition. London and New York: Routledge Publishing.(pages 282-301 ).

 

Train K. (2003) Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

http://guardian.co.tt/sport/2013-03-21/expect-fireworks-starlight-stakes