Urban sprawl, although not a popular topic in debate, it is indeed affecting Trinidad

How it began and how it evolved in Trinidad.

                                        Introduction Video (specific to North America)

                                        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_A9PFOY18

HOW IT BEGAN -

               Urban sprawl began with the onset of urbanisation; the movement of persons from the rural area to urban areas. These behaviours are often due to the preconceived notions of more opportunities economically, socially and culturally and a better standard of living available in urban districts. The patterns however were geographically specific as the histories of the locations often differed. Typically, the average person did not know what the approaching future entailed but the desire and will-power to persevere until an improved criterion of subsisting was obtained, was the main goal of the migrants.

http://previous.presstv.ir/photo/20110111/z.hashemi20110111174130390.jpg



With all the current advancements of technologies, complex series of innovation and rise of modern cites and post-modern cities (Hall and Barrett 2012, 39) one would think that urban migration is a recent phenomenon however the process began in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century in American cities and much earlier in European counterparts in the decades prior. So as with most origins of development and as with almost all geographical models, patterns for sprawl exists in antiquity but the earliest model was based on that of the capital of England (Hornstein 2005).

In London the wealthiest class had access to more resources such as modes of transportation (Waugh 1995, 251). This made the long commutes from early suburban areas into the city possible. The influx of the rich into the city continued until transportation, roads, and availability of municipal resources improved. When this occurred the relatively affluent people, all of a sudden began building residences outside of the city and as these demographics moved out, less affluent people moved in, causing city centres to be increasingly populated by lower-income individuals.                http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-120896605/stock-photo-london-oct-london-sightseeing-bus-on-october-london-uk-open-top-tour-bus-with.html

 http://yakkersy12geo.blogspot.com/2008/09/hoyts-sector-model.html

What cause this dramatic shift in residence in both London and cities in America? This can be explained by use of the Hoyt’s Sector Model. He suggested that the city grew in a series of sectors or 'wedges' along traditional communication routes. In developing this model Hoyt perceived that it was customary for low-income family institutions to be adjacent to railroad lines, and profitable institutions to be along business pathways (Waugh 1994, 258). Identifying that the transportation routes into an urban area, including railroads, sea ports, and others, represented greater access, Hoyt hypothesised that metropolises have a tendency to grow in wedge-shaped patterns or sectors radiating from the CBD or central business district and centred on major transportation routes.

With these trends, by the mid-twentieth century, Europe, Japan and North America had a mainly urban population, while most people in South America, Africa and Asia worked in agriculture, and lived in rural settlements close to farmland. At that time, the world’s largest cities were London and New York. Since then, people worldwide have moved to towns and cities, in the hope of new opportunities and the Caribbean was not oblivious to this movement. Caribbean settlements followed the same outline of urban growth, with different patterns of course, due to the discrepancies of histories.
 

EVOLUTION IN TRINIDAD -

In Trinidad there are many CBDs but the main CBD is the capital, Port-of-Spain. In the mid-twentieth century there was an influx of persons seeking residence in the capital also searching for better or enhanced opportunities. Later that century persons who had climbed to escalator or wealth soon began moving out of the CBD away from the noise, hustle and bustle of the working class population. The prosperous followed the main transport routes and colonised attractive areas outside of the CBD.

            I saw these houses, accesoried with step-in pool, spiral staircases, large gates and atleast

2 cars and as I admired them I  thought to myself "Wait, isn't Maraval outside or on the rims of the CBD, why does this area drastically contrast that of Lavantille?"    


It was in that instant I decided to look at the origin of sprawls to find out how it evolved in Trinidad and then I saw how the Hoyt's Sector model delinated settlement patterns around POS. Though I could not do a photoshoot of these private houses (though I wish I could have) it truly got me thinking about this phenomena and what cause these types of patterns along the East and West of the CBD.

 

Firstly, lower class began inhabiting the CBD until it became so highly populated the urban landscapes began spreading to underdeveloped areas surrounding. This is where urban sprawl around the world began. There was a greater need for space as overpopulation, in relation to persons and resources had met its carrying capacity. Urban sprawl, the development of urban activities on underdeveloped areas, in Trinidad became a problem especially sprawl that had no system of structure to them. Its negative connotation is the generally understood as the “ill effect” of unregulated development that early real estate advisors and developers with an interest in land ethics and city planning were trying to avoid.

                 Picture showing the shift from agriculture (sugarcane production) to service (Hilton Hotel on the Northern Range)

At this time employment shifted from agriculture to services and manufacturing and many live in areas of manicured landscapes on the very fringe of nature, near agricultural businesses or immediate to lower class residents. These environments have thus had to endure encroachment on their lands without much avail as the population in the sprawls continued to augment. Internationally, some cities have larger populations than the whole of the CARICOM. Most of the largest and fastest growing cities are in Asia, Africa and Latin America (Wilson 2005, 68).

Urban sprawl began subsequent to the globalisation of urbanisation. It is evidently not recent as it has been common to every city from the beginning of “urban history”. It has exploded as an area of focus in urban geography in recent years, with researchers citing the automobile, governmental single-use zoning laws, accessible mortgages, and housing subsidies as necessary indicators for the present-day version of the phenomenon (Bruegmann 2005). Urban sprawl would continue to impact all corners of the world as most immigrants settle in or around the hob of business to reduce excess expenditure, particularly on transport.

 

 

References

Bruegmann, Robert. 2005. Sprawl: a Compact History. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago   Press.

Hall, T. and H. Barrett. 2012. Urban Geography. 4th ed. London/ New York: Routledge.

Hornstein, Jeffrey M. 2005. A Nation of Realtors®: A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American Middle Class. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Waugh, David. 1995. Geography: An Integrated Approach. 2^nd ed. London:  Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd.

Wilson, Mark. 2005. The Caribbean Environment: For CXC Geography. London: Oxford University Press.

Increasing Violence with Increasing Urbanisation, according to Location?



'Guns and gangs' GONZALES, Belmont and Urban Sprawl



Background
In north-east Port of Spain, Belmont is a district within a continuous urban area. Belmont was the city's initial suburb and began conurbation with the Central Business District. It is sited at the base of the Laventille Hills and has been continuously augmenting its population which are of usually middle/ lower-middle class.
Gonzales lies within the governmental district of East Port of Spain, east of the St. Ann’s River and bound by Lady Young Road on the north, the city limits to the east and the Gulf of Paria to the south.

The area of Gonzales is notorious for deviant and violent act to society within the last decade, yet the population of this area is increasing uncontrollably. With my walk through the area, I saw many houses essentially converted to small shops and clothes stalls with the actual place up residence being at the back of their business or on the second floor of their home.
The structure of the city is principally based around the capital of the nation. The lower-middle class reside there due to ease of access and transportation into the CBD.

Gonzales has undergone a statistically substantial upsurge in the rate of sprawl in the last several decades, and predominantly in the last several years. The trend has led to the large-scale loss of negligible structures and other undeveloped land, and this upsurge in land development has not corresponded proportionately to human population increases. It is therefore population rearrangement that has led to an extensive range of consequences such as crime and land pollution.

 
Crime and Violence

Crime within or on the periphery of the CBD, is usually due to economic inequality. Increasing economic and social polarisation combine to lead to increased lawlessness expressed in racial conflict, violence and crime, despite increased expenditure on police and a growth in private security forces. The variety of people may also lead to the emergence of distinct sub-areas within the slum such as ‘skid rows’ (e.g. Belmont in POS) and ethnic ghettos. Despite the transient and socially dysfunctional nature of the slum population, many organisational features indicate a need for congregation. These include membership of teenage gangs, church communities and ethnic organisations, as well as patronage of particular bars that act as ‘neighbourhood drop-in centres’ where locals can get to know each other, exchange job information and borrow money before payday. For many residents the skid row environment becomes a way of life in which they feel comfortable and secure. 
 

THE HUMAN ECOLOGICAL APPOARCH

The essential premise of the ecological approach is encapsulated in Wirth’s (1938) view that a person’s behaviour is determined by the environment (Pacione 2005, 543). While variations in crime rates over space have long been recognised and current evidence indicates that patterns of these relationships within metropolitan communities have persisted, it is believed that spatial analysis is theoretically inadequate. The norms, behaviours and attitudes should be taken into consideration as many criminologists had made a link between the periphery of a CBD and deviant activity.

In relation to urbanism and sprawl, criminal violations can be analysed as events which occur at specific locations in space and time and involve specific persons. With relation to urban morphology and behaviours, it can be said that the circumstances under which there violations occur are neither random nor trivial, but rather a structurally significant phenomena (Felson and Cohen 1980). Furthermore social structure allows people to translate their criminal inclinations into action. People often migrate due to pull factors such as the illusion of better opportunities and chances to improve standard of living, yet after this move is done and their standard of living have not improved it becomes quite difficult to live, hence the strong community bond among people living in these areas.

Often the middle and high class persons commute to the CBD every day, passing these slums areas along the way. However due to a lack of research, the general public may rarely know how segregated the lower class persons may feel when, the same opportunities are become available yet neglection is a common outcome. These persons may furthermore become so enticed with their visual persona and lifestyle of the upper classes that it can stir up emotions of animosity that may result in spiteful acts to obtain the same material items quickly. These deviant actions may occur for various reasons, such as for the thrill of the moment, as a source of illegal employment or to be initiated into a group or gang.

This phenomenon can be seen throughout the world- Mumbai slum Dharvi in India; the biggest in the world as well in Asia, and also Rio De Janeiro, Brazil are perfect examples of these marginal regions. These areas a characterised by poverty, crime, dirtiness, increasing pollution, increasing black spot, increase in illegal business, increase in prostitution, increase in women crime, increase in drug trafficking, increase in child labour and abuse, increase in diseases, increase in AIDS, increase in slums, pollution, and this is only 1% of problems these slums have. Thomas Hobbes, a moral and political states that men in a state of nature, that is a state without civil government, are in a war of all against all in which life is hardly worth living and the way out of this desperate state is to make a social contract and establish the state to keep peace and order. He believed that the lack of political and social inputs into a community lead to a brutish, violent and short life and these are every so often the facets of sprawls.

All of these can further be exacerbated by unsustainability and lack of planning. Also due the continuous increases of these activities, they cannot be completely eradicated in a fast manner, proper planning and implementation must be done with accordance to the needs of the people. However as the say goes, “You can take the boy out of the area, but you may not be able to take the area out of the boy” unless there is psychological alterations, illegal actions would show its ugly head due to human ecology and the mind-set of the individuals
 

References

Felson, Marcus and Lawrence E. Cohen. 1980. “Human Ecology and Crime: A Routine Activity      Approach”. Volume 8 (4): 389-390

Pacione, Michael. 2005. Urban geography: A Global Perspective. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

 



Social Stealth - Hiding in plain sight

Potential sprawl?

Taken at the UWI grounds, 06/02/13

Students coming to the campus everyday,
Looking left and right before they cross street.
Often seeing the Northern Range in all its glory,
Yet, no one seems to see where the urban and rural meet.

Have you ever realised the really tall structures piercing out amongst the mountains,
Urban sprawl hidden in plain sight, viewed over and over again.
It is The Mount Saint Benedict, or The Abbey of Our Lady of Exile,
More than several buildings constructed on our elevated hills of pride.





-Sprawl

       Urban sprawl: the scattering of urban extensions (as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land in close proximity of a city or town. It is the dispersal of a city or its environs into more unused areas.  The morphology of a town includes its size, shape and general layout, furthermore most towns are very different to each other in their layout but they usually have very distinct zones or sectors in each (Vance 1990). The town St. Augustine is not a major urban area in Trinidad as compared to Port-of- Spain (the country’s capital and main CBD), but it is a major town and a district known for its University, Law School and residential units for the university students. According to the Multiple-Nuclei model by Harris and Ullman (Hall and Barrett 2012, 41), it would be considered a nucleus within Trinidad but is this town sprawling to the mountains?
 

- Mt. St. Benedict’s, a controversial example of Social Stealth?

            The construction of Mt. St. Benedict and its surrounding buildings, which include a monastery and yogurt factory are the type of structures that are customarily found in the urban areas and even the suburbs, however it can be seen as a more or less underdeveloped setting in our country. The Northern Range of Trinidad was an extension of the Andes Mountains of South America and many of the same flora and fauna came be found inhabiting the same where new and indigenous species are as well. Thus the modification of this once pristine deciduous dry forest would be cause disturbance of the once natural ecosystem.

             The civilization on the hills was to be a continuous process however the plan, to further construct homes on this particular part of the Northern Range, was abandoned for an undisclosed reason. After, a pine planation was established on these hills to bring back aesthetic view that was lost with the initial clearing of land for the production of homes. Personally, I truly believe that if there was not some sort of ceasing, the southern side of this part of the Northern Range would have begun to resemble that of Movant, Lavantille. Imagine the next 30 – 40years, if the population continues to increase and migration trends continue I envision a minute amount or no green spaces on this range. You see, cities customarily expand over time, especially where there is a lack of decentralisation. With this there would be no time for a ‘Garden city’ or ‘edge cities’ sprawl would be eminent, radiating from the centre of the city unto the periphery and surrounding areas but sharing a complex inter-relationship with the transportation routes.

                 Rome was not built in a day so consequently the area may not seem as a potential area for sprawl nevertheless it may be in the blueprint stages and persons may not be recognising the altering landscape, hence the idiom ‘hiding in plain sight’. Basically it is a way of being ‘one with the crowd’ by moving slowly and not attracting attention and most of all not being recognisable. These areas may not become slums especially if sustainability is made the subject of this development however it is too early to judge and it is hard to pin-point a specific set of people exacerbating this expansion process.

 

 Who is a part of this faceless mob increasing the potential of sprawl, and why might this happen?

The main reason for the increaseis to alleviate social issues like homelessness and poverty.

                    This first step that is done is to give those people houses, which shows how important shelter is and how highly the thought of just owning a home is as it relates to social misfits. Underdeveloped areas, particularly within Trinidad, are often so secluded from the main sources of commerce, food and entertainment that persons would not be attracted to these areas.  So the rural areas are too far, right outside the main CBD has too many notorious connotations, there is no space in the CBD itself, why not settle on the outskirts of a town where the town has some of the micro-structure that matches the macro-structure of the CBD. This maybe one of the motives for the unplanned development that has the potential to occur on the foothills of the Northern Range, on the outskirts of St. Augustine, for settlement purposes. However is this a justification of the problem?

                      No one knows what the future may hold so as time go by, throw an eye on to the right when in a maxi going to POS or to the left when going to Arima and see if sprawl maybe happening in plain sight. Do these areas on the Northern Range look the same as they did a decade ago? Do you hear your parents or persons complain about the loss of biodiversity or houses apparently appearing from nowhere?  Although of these areas have put a stop to the sprawl; it can be seen occurring at other places where proper implementation in the form of human resources is lacking.

           Trinidad next 30-40 years, nope this is Trinidad's Northern Range presently.

Food for thought…

                           The future development of our Northern Range by social stealth methods: alleviating social problems or exacerbating environmental degradation?
                            You be the judge of that…

 

References

Hall, T. and H. Barrett. 2012. Urban Geography. 4th ed. London/ New York: Routledge.

Vance, James E. 1990. The continuing city: urban morphology in Western civilization.                    Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.