By Paul Andrew Bourne, M.Sc. (pending); B.Sc. (Hons); Dip. Edu.
The Keynote speaker at the ninth Bob Marley lecture was Dr. Patricia Anderson, sociologist within the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences, Mona Campus, University of the West Indies. Pat Anderson formulated her presentation around the theme “Govament Yaad”. The session took the form of a historical background to physical infrastructure and social issues of low-income individuals, then to an institutional management of created communities, followed by economic reality of the people in the traditional versus the contemporary settings.
In Anderson’s presentation, she provided a theoretical background innercity physical development. The development of innercity housing solution was in response to government’s social responsibility in providing for the less fortunate among us. The government responded to the need for housing by low-income earners by building high-rise and non-high rise dwellings in West Kingston. These construction sites shared similar characteristics irrespective of their locality in the general area. These were yard space, sanitary convenience and physical structure. Anderson used Marley’s song on Trench Town to illustrate the experiences of lower income earners in the housing solution of West Kingston. She cited that, “Bob Marley as he sang his own experience growing up in one of the worst examples of public housing.” The use of video footage of sceneries in traditional West Kingston in particular Trench Town depicted a high degree of social deprivation of low-income people. Dr. Anderson highlighted that the physical structure of West Kingston housing solution fostered the social experience of innercity communities. She said that, “the design and implementation of these housing developments have also served to shape the structure and character of social life for the low-income urban population in Kingston. The author adds that this was the significance for the power in words of Marley song “TrenchTown Rock”. This social experience helped to propel a social change in the life of Marley instead of having him subscribing to the order of the continuous poverty.
The created West Kingston was a product of political maneuvering. Anderson argued “the extent to which the political allocation of housing was a critical factor in the spawning of Kingston’s garrison communities.” The political tribalism that we have come to know today was formed because of the understanding that politicians had of the social realities of innercity people in West Kingston. The communal convenience, a shared yard topology, overcrowded dwellings and low incomes were making for social decade.
Anderson noted Tivoli Gardens is the first designed housing solution in West Kingston that offered the people of low income a different socio-psychological approach to their old way of life. The model was different forming that of Trench Town with communal conveniences and shaped topology. The author must declare, in contemporary Jamaica though, that this has not radically transformed the socio-economic realities of West Kingston.
Anderson traveled four (4) communities of which two (3) are in West Kingston namely Rema, Tivoli Garden and Denham Town, and McIntyre Villa of Central Kingston in different time period, and reported the socio-economic similarities among them. Although the modeled community of Tivoli Gardens was equipped with various social amenities, it shared many of the social realities of other innercity housing development. These were decaying buildings, high-rise apartment and low-income families.
Portmore/Hellshire was another housing solution in response to the need of people but this time in aid of lower-middle income families. A stark different in those housing solutions was that they were funded by a non-governmental institution. Anderson noted that Portmore/Hellshire development was “promoted” by the World Band and USAID. These institutions saw the transformation of the provision of housing solutions from within the purviews of government to other entities. It meant the shifted of government’s role in the provision of this social good.
Because Portmore/Hellshire was predominantly lower middle and working class people with owner-occupier status, the socio-economic realities of those people differ from those of West Kingston and McIntyre Villa. Anderson pointed out that contemporary community development must go beyond physical infrastructural development to that of sustainable development. This new community will fashioned with all the social amenities of Tivoli Gardens, and with economic viability from within the construct of institutional management that will see increasingly less dilapidated buildings and remove the intertwined issues of social destruction from the lives of innercity development.
In concluding Dr. Pat Anderson’s presentation showed that despite the new era, innercity housing development still has not address the socio-economic realities of traditional innercity communities. Despite that reality, she has prescribed a solution under the umbrella of sustainable development. In that community development can be solely on the basis of infrastructural development, but a holistic approach to a community.