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.