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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD height=49><H4>Housing remix needed for true urban renewal</H4>
By Raymond Forrest, Contributor</TD><TD height=49><DIV align=center>
</DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
One of Jamaica's most serious defects, over the last 40 years has been the insidious growth of political garrisons and the delapidated properties, neglected infrastructure and antisocial and criminal behaviour they have spawned.
These areas are well known for deviance, and have stigmatised the good people who continue to reside within them but who genuflect to the dominant control of a few.
Others move away when the opportunity presents itself.
Unfortunately, instead of diminishing, these types of garrisons and their antecedent behaviour have spread to other areas of the country, including St. Catherine and St. James.
Today, especially in Kingston and St. Andrew, the garrisons stand as living legacies to misguided political power, while their architects have died or retired - with full Jamaican honours.
Jamaica now has to engage in widescale social re-engineering, just to minimise the rot.
We now face the difficult task of de-politicising such areas by engaging in targeted urban renewal schemes.
A major opportunity, however, has been missed in the build-up to Cricket World Cup 2007, in not renewing many of the decrepit and run-down sites that dot many areas of Kingston, which were once pristine residential neighbourhoods in the 1950s.
The problem is that one can't just go in and demolish these old sites and replace them with modern dwellings without also resolving what one will do with the people who live there, prior to rebuilding.
What is happening at places like Denham Town - where the National Housing Trust is replacing old structures with new housing - is commendable, but it needs to go further.
There has to be a comprehensive plan of urban re-development that will involve simultaneous redevelopment of several areas, so that their occupants can be re-housed over the new areas.
Subsidised state housing must be mixed with those who can buy such housing on the open market.
The previous occupants must be mixed with an infusion of young professionals to re-gentrify these areas or else it will degenerate into the previous maligned areas.
This can only be done if one can offer safe and affordable cluster of homes at below-market rates that will attract a diverse mix of persons in various professions and trades.
To avoid political manipulation in the distribution of persons to these new sites, we would have to do a random stratified draw of numbers - connected to the names of families seeking entrance into these areas - to allocate persons to these areas.
One objection that might surface is that this could throw out traditional voting patterns in some of these areas, and prevent persons from exercising their votes in the short run if there was a quickly-called election. Redeployed residents would have to go through a whole new process to be re-verified for the voter's list at their new addresses.
Social re-engineering will also involve giving new names to these areas, as was done when parts of what was once called Riverton City was transformed into Riverton Meadows.
WAR-LIKE HOMES
We have to get away from the war-like names of the past.
Even if they were not the official names, some communities have become well-known by their infamous nom-de-plumes.
Some of the amenities included in the KRC-AmCham model used in building the Community Centre complex in Grants Pen, St Andrew, could also be incorpor
By Raymond Forrest, Contributor</TD><TD height=49><DIV align=center>
</DIV></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>One of Jamaica's most serious defects, over the last 40 years has been the insidious growth of political garrisons and the delapidated properties, neglected infrastructure and antisocial and criminal behaviour they have spawned.
These areas are well known for deviance, and have stigmatised the good people who continue to reside within them but who genuflect to the dominant control of a few.
Others move away when the opportunity presents itself.
Unfortunately, instead of diminishing, these types of garrisons and their antecedent behaviour have spread to other areas of the country, including St. Catherine and St. James.
Today, especially in Kingston and St. Andrew, the garrisons stand as living legacies to misguided political power, while their architects have died or retired - with full Jamaican honours.
Jamaica now has to engage in widescale social re-engineering, just to minimise the rot.
We now face the difficult task of de-politicising such areas by engaging in targeted urban renewal schemes.
A major opportunity, however, has been missed in the build-up to Cricket World Cup 2007, in not renewing many of the decrepit and run-down sites that dot many areas of Kingston, which were once pristine residential neighbourhoods in the 1950s.
The problem is that one can't just go in and demolish these old sites and replace them with modern dwellings without also resolving what one will do with the people who live there, prior to rebuilding.
What is happening at places like Denham Town - where the National Housing Trust is replacing old structures with new housing - is commendable, but it needs to go further.
There has to be a comprehensive plan of urban re-development that will involve simultaneous redevelopment of several areas, so that their occupants can be re-housed over the new areas.
Subsidised state housing must be mixed with those who can buy such housing on the open market.
The previous occupants must be mixed with an infusion of young professionals to re-gentrify these areas or else it will degenerate into the previous maligned areas.
This can only be done if one can offer safe and affordable cluster of homes at below-market rates that will attract a diverse mix of persons in various professions and trades.
To avoid political manipulation in the distribution of persons to these new sites, we would have to do a random stratified draw of numbers - connected to the names of families seeking entrance into these areas - to allocate persons to these areas.
One objection that might surface is that this could throw out traditional voting patterns in some of these areas, and prevent persons from exercising their votes in the short run if there was a quickly-called election. Redeployed residents would have to go through a whole new process to be re-verified for the voter's list at their new addresses.
Social re-engineering will also involve giving new names to these areas, as was done when parts of what was once called Riverton City was transformed into Riverton Meadows.
WAR-LIKE HOMES
We have to get away from the war-like names of the past.
Even if they were not the official names, some communities have become well-known by their infamous nom-de-plumes.
Some of the amenities included in the KRC-AmCham model used in building the Community Centre complex in Grants Pen, St Andrew, could also be incorpor