Patrick Stanigar: Let’s share some visions of the future
Published March 14, 1996
The following is an excerpt of a paper by Patrick Stanigar presented at the 11th annual Bustamante Lecture in Kingston.
JAMAICA HASN’T begun to have to deal with urban problems, for the problems of our lopsided society are much simpler than those which we will have to face if we were to dare to attempt to build a rational or a just society. I don’t know how we will manage with this future possibility for we are doing badly with our current level of problems. Let’s look at the backlog of work before we contemplate the future.
Some are works to be done to solve old problems and some begin to pave the way for the future. There are solutions which were known or in progress and for those of you who don’t know, here are some of them. Most have been talked about for years. Some are begun, but are unforgivably stalled. Some have been perverted out of recognition. There is no order of importance.
• Complete the West Kingston Market Programme so that 12,000-plus Jamaicans can try to make a living in an environment worthy of their own decency. These people feed and clothe a large part of our society. Most of the food for all of Jamaica is handled by them. Rockfort: There is a harbour front road that most people don’t even know is partially built between Rae Town and Rockfort. It will provide a new entrance to the city and open up more of the waterfront for our appreciation and development. It is along this strip that the urban centre should develop.
• Complete the dualisation of South Camp Road to improve the access to downtown in the future.
• Complete Ocean Boulevard to Breezy Castle to relieve future pressure on Port Royal and Harbour streets.
• Develop Port Royal as an enrichment of our lives and an enjoyment of our history and invite tourists to come help us enjoy and pay for it.
• Build an adequate sewage treatment facility so that we can clean Kingston Harbour.
Do all of you remember back in the ‘70s when we dug up Constant Spring Road and other places and stopped development in many areas of the city in order to build the mains for a sewage collection system. We did this to eliminate pits which pollute the underground water. Well, most of what we collect in those mains is piped through the present treatment plant into the harbour or in some cases diverted to the harbour before it reaches the plant.
• Complete the Harbour Street sewer trunk so that the collector systems above Harbour Street can be renewed and a system can be provided for Rae Town. The children of Southside and Tel Aviv live in rivers of raw sewage. The people of Rae Town have to cross a section of the harbour front road mentioned above to empty their chimies into the harbour every morning. That is within a half mile of this lovely state of the art room.
• Progressively rationalise the electrical distribution system so that overhead wires are eliminated.
• Reinvigorate dormant land downtown by facilitating its sale to local residents. That’s some of the backlog, but let’s get on to the main job of preparing for the future. Let’s look first at the big question – how do we stop the violence in our inner cities? That’s the big question that everyone asks. Well, I think that we can eliminate violence downtown and while we are at it in the whole society. To believe this is not as naive as it sounds.
Remember earlier when I suggested that we try to understand the problem by studying the questions we ask, well let’s look at this big question. First of all, we turn individual human acts into an abstraction which is greater than us and then scare ourselves out of our wits. Then we get defensive about it. What we call violence is individual human acts and if you can’t deal with an abstraction you can deal with people. The violence is the activity of people who don’t seem to be intrinsically more evil than we are. I propose that we accept that the life that these people live is our responsibility and that we begin solution by accepting personal responsibility for our children who live in these communities.
I don’t mean this as an abstraction, I mean that in addition to personal action, we take collective action by rebuilding our education system so that it nurtures in addition to educates. To do this, I suggest that we build a system where each child can be given individual attention.