Reflective Analysis

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Expansion of reflection

I chose these three blogs because they were beautifully written and they correlated with my blog entirely, but, they were mostly based on theoretically negative connotations of sprawls, with the expection of one of Khadija's post.

 

Sayyida Ali – A Journey into the Urban

http://tturbanperceptions.blogspot.com/

             Sayyida’s blog was not related to sprawls directly however it related indirectly to my blog in more ways than one. The basis of my blog was to start with background information (so that the reader can get a good foundation of what urban sprawls were and its potential) and then evolve it into a more revisionist perspective. Sayyida’s blog basically did the same within each post as she “Journeyed into the Urban” assessing and evaluating the perceptions that constitutes the urban.
            Her posts such as ‘Inner City Life and Stereotypes’, ‘Urban Poverty and Cities of Aspiration’ and ‘A Population Affected by Transit Issues’  related to my poem on ‘Life’, Increasing Violence with Increasing Urbanisation’ and ‘Mobility’ respectively.

             But what really grabbed my attention was her post on ‘San Fernando: Planning Urban Growth’ where she wrote about her observations of the city and related sprawl as a continuous trend occurring on the southern part of the island. She saw sprawls as a major constraint to the agricultural sector. This is understandable but, I believe that a country cannot focus on agriculture and providing food for the poor when they may not have a private place to take part of in their meal, or they may not have a place to store extras so that they can provide their family with food for another day. I guess as the saying goes ‘There is a time and place for everything’ I believe she was trying to convey that ‘There is a place and space for everything’.

             What I do agree with is her stance on urban planning with relation to the Housing Development Cooperation (HDC) created by Act No. 24 of 2005. The governmental agency claims to aid with housing and planning yet their works seem to hamper instead of benefit the communities and many areas of sprawls have been victim to these deeds.

 

Tammi Thompson – Urbanisation and Disparity           

http://urbanizationdisparity.blogspot.com/

Tammi’s blogs were directly connected to my theme. She focused on ‘slums’ along the southern part of this Trinidad and though she seemed neutral on the whole concept of urban sprawls she had a great historical contents with her post. This helped me greatly in realising that areas develop according to location and its past histories.

What grasped my attention with her blog was her quote from her post “Disparities in Architecture (the urban poor)” which was “Just as a skyscraper is a symbolic part of an urban space which can represent wealth and innovation, huts or built up dwellings of the urban poor also reflect symbolism, which may be that of poverty and hardship.”

To me, this was beautiful. It summed up all my perceptions of sprawls and everything I stood for in my revisionist perspective of urban sprawls.

Overall she showed that ‘slum areas’ are closely intertwined with the cities of direct production and advanced services and thus are located near them, but separately in scattered clusters. With my blog I focused on these pockets of communities from the North West to the South West of the island and I could attest to this as I observed these same processes.

 

 

Khadija Stewart – The Dark Side of Urbanisation

http://negativeurbanisation.blogspot.com/

Firstly, I love her theme and the black background definitely helped in conveying her topic. Her topics of ‘Overcrowding’, ‘Traffic Congestion’, ‘Pollution/Litter’, ‘Disparities in Development’, ‘Environmental Degradation’ and ‘Poverty’ all linked to the characteristics of urban sprawl, but what really caught my eye was her post on ‘Urban Sprawls’.

She looked at different nuclei within the city of Port-of-Spain (I am assuming she refers to Port-of-Spain as a Multiple-Nuclei urban form), and focused on how each are being affected by sprawl according to the main service performed in that area.

She was the only of the three that gave the typical adverse scholarly attributes to sprawl and then in her abstract about the topic she wrote she actually “sees nothing wrong with sprawl”. I found that very interesting as she contradicted the very theme of her blog which “focused on the negative effects of urbanisation”. It revealed that even though she researched the topic and gather all the evidence of negativity she still saw this phenomenon as a building block for development which can be improved with better implementation of laws and policies.
            After reading this, I thought to myself “Wow”. I realised that I was not the only one who saw potential in these places habitually called favelas and slums; these disregarded places of mostly lower class societies who are often forgotten by the way side on the escalator to progress and development.

Her quote from Janet Bowman was also inspiring to read - “We still object to the whole concept of waving the urban sprawl rule. We believe it serves a purpose” ~ Janet Bowman

It related to everything that I tried to portray within my blogs, especially with the last six I did.

 

References

Ali, Sayyida. "A Journey Into The Urban." A Journey into the Urban. Accessed April 11, 2013.
http://tturbanperceptions.blogspot.com/

Stewart, Khadija. "The Dark Side of Urbanisation." The Dark Side of Urbanisation. Accessed April 12, 2013.

http://negativeurbanisation.blogspot.com/

Thompson, Tammi . "Urbanization & Disparity." Urbanization & Disparity. Accessed April 10, 2013

http://urbanizationdisparity.blogspot.com/

Sustainability

When I saw this in Carapo, I had to stop and take a picture. While doing this, I actually chuckled to myself saying “the sign actually says ‘No Dumping’ and people a literally doing what they want.
Then,,,, it hit me, the residents are physically destroying their own community and many don’t even know it.
My smiling expression quickly changed into one of concern. I wondered if they understood what the repercussions of these behaviours can denote for future generations, if they could even read and interpret the sign (as many of these marginalised people maybe illiterate) or if they knew what sustainability meant.

Although throughout my blog posts I’ve seem to be the voice of the poor residing within sprawls, bring to the forefront both negative and mostly positive facets to this lifestyle. Conversely, with the topic of sustainability, I must say that most of these areas are almost as good a doomed as their living conditions do not meet the needs of the present generation without comprising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland 1987).

However as populations have skyrocketed in recent decades, the actual rate of sprawl has slowed while urban populations have become denser. Still, real problems emerging out of the time-honoured condition of sprawl raise important questions for the nature of sustainable development. Such questions would suggest added pressure on the professionals representing the real estate market, those brokers for whom defining themselves meant aggressive efforts towards legitimization in the early- and mid- twentieth century.

Meanwhile, the category of the middle class has become in some ways a virtually all-encompassing consciousness and has remained directly tied to the ideal of consumerism within strong housing markets (Campbell and Mollica 2009). This idea has prompted anti-sprawl advocates to criticize unrestrained development and the over-consumption of resources. Though not unique to the late twentieth century, anti-sprawl campaigns during this period were particularly strong and multidimensional (Hall and Barrett 2012, 306).

 Easily accessible data such as the cost of sprawl, the visible destruction of open spaces and agricultural land, and the over-dependence on the automobile were used by such marquee anti-sprawl activists as the Sierra Club and the National Trust for Historic Preservation to prove that sprawl is a major public concern. In fact, the idea of sustainable land use previously broached by Richard Ely has been one of the key concepts uniting groups in their campaign, because it taps into the larger and even more compelling issue of global warming (Bruegmann 2005).

With increasing populations and diminishing resources, issues of ethical, conscientious development may take centre stage and force a rewrite of existing curriculums. Many great cities fail if there is unsustainability and a classic example of this is the Roman Empire. With unsustainability there is only two options ship-up (adapt) or ship-out (die) as resources degrade and competition for necessities increase. Sprawls are not environmentally sound and these areas would not thrive into the future, however if these is a possibility where sprawls continue to spread, they would just evolve with time as they consume new areas and over-exploit these newly found resources.

References

Bruegmann, Robert. 2005. Sprawl: a compact history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Brundtland, Gro Harlem. 1987. Our common future. Melbourne: Oxford University Press

Campbell, Tom, and David Mollica. 2009. Sustainability. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate

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

Mobility

    Is the government of Trinidad and Tobago making provisions for various forms of mobility?    

            Planning for the minority is a huge factor in the development of cities because as one plans for the minority the majority actually benefits. Without this, developments may not be sustainable and communities try to create and obtain the resources needed on their own leading to possible degradation and sprawl.

These pictures are examples of the lack of planning in infrastructure with relation to transportation and mobility.

  1) No Sidewalks on one side        2) No bicycle lanes          3) No sidewalks on either side

 

The video furthermore seeks to explain how important mobility within cities is and also compare transport and mobility between the Global North and Global South while including reflection on its impact on urban sprawls.

Enjoy!!! ^_^

 

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References

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

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