PM revives housing plan - Inner-city

[Mosiah]

Correct, I-man. The NHT did not get the cooperation of the politicians regarding No Mans Land. That was pre-Dudus. I think the waters could be tested again.

[Mosiah]

Another myth, Hortical, if this program is anything like the ICHP where there were probably more units being built in JLP constituencies than PNP. Her constituency did receive some and has land for more. Portia supported it strongly.

[Mosiah]

What needs to be bulldozed? The news units built under the ICHP or places like Lizard Town, Backtu, etc.?

[Jangle]

Normalising Kingston

Published: Friday | May 3, 2013 5 Comments




By Peter Espeut

In our first 50 years as an independent nation, successive governments used taxpayers' to create and build garrison communities - politically monolithic residential areas for the either green- or orange-shirted faithful. As a political strategy to gain and hold power, the garrison has long been exposed by the media and academia, and there have been widespread calls to 'dismantle the garrisons', all of which have fallen on deaf partisan ears.
What will we do in the next 50 years? Expand the garrisons and strengthen them?
Recently, both Opposition Leader Andrew Holness and Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller have proposed new government-sponsored housing projects. What bothers me is that both leaders are tribal to the , and that neither has given an undertaking that the housing will not be given out on a partisan basis, leading to further garrisonisation.
The opposition leader proposes that, using NHT funds, a new city be built somewhere between Spanish Town and May Pen. This immediately brings to mind the creation of Kingston's twin 'city', Portmore, in my view the supreme example of poor urban planning. I suppose the housing units themselves were properly planned, but I can't say the same about the infrastructure.
How could you plan to build 100,000 houses without knowing where domestic water is to come from? And where were the residents supposed to do their shopping? Why no plan for a market, and adequate health and education facilities? Or was the plan for higglers to ply their wares on the roadside in the hot sun?
Building Portmore - and Greater Portmore, etc - has led to the conversion of thousands of acres of good agricultural land into concrete, block and steel. This jeopardises our future ability to feed ourselves - unless the plan all along was to import more and more of our daily diet.
And where does Mr Holness want to build this new city? On top of Innswood Sugar Estate? Or Bernard Lodge? The Government is already planning to convert Caymanas Sugar Estate into an industrial park. Or maybe he plans to resurrect the ill-conceived plan of Kingsley Thomas to build on Harris Savanna, adjacent to the Kingston to May Pen toll road, a wilderness area important for its plant and animal biodiversity? That plan was thankfully abandoned when the fact that the plateau floods seasonally was revealed by environmentalists. In fact, it is this seasonal flooding that enhances its value as a habitat for Jamaican wildlife.
HEAD EASTWARD
If we are going to build a new city, let it be to the east on those highly degraded limestone forests between Bull Bay and Grants Pen. The land has no agricultural value, and charcoal burners have already taken out every stick of hardwood, leaving only red birch and other soft woods. Yes, it will be more expensive to build there rather than on the flat agricultural plains further west, but the positive trade-off is that we preserve our best agricultural land to grow food for future generations. That is holistic and strategic planning!
As I drive through the narrow lanes of both east and west Kingston lined by zinc fences hiding shacks and shanties, I ask myself if our development planners are happy with this scenario. Fifty years from now, when we celebrate our centenary of Independence, what will these areas look like? These lanes, laid down more than a century ago, were not designed for motor vehicles, or for modern living. The rickety one-storey dwellings, consisting mostly of bedrooms, are much too close together for decency, and residents have to recreate on the narrow streets under street lights.
In the developed world, such ghettos would be levelled and modern urban communities established, going up a few storeys. Yes, we could develop a new city east of Kingston, but wouldn't it be better to renew inner-city Kingston?
Imagine all that area between the Windward Road/Mountain View Avenue and the Wareika Hills transformed? And the area between Waltham Park Road and Spanish Town Road? And, for that matter, Homestead and March Pen on the outskirts of Spanish Town? It would look so much better, accommodate many more people, and would provide a better quality of life for hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans.
Prime Minister Simpson Miller has announced that, using National Housing Trust (NHT) funds, she intends to resurrect the Inner City Housing Project. (It seems that everyone has their eyes fixed on NHT funds). This approach seems too piecemeal, and too prone to increase garrisonisation.
Can we develop a millennium project to degarrisonise and rebuild and normalise the ghettos of Kingston and Spanish Town?

[1of1]

rephrase, dem nuh like seaside