Minister Robeson Benn announced recently that the Central Fire Station was to be relocated from Stabroek Market Square to somewhere in the vicinity of D’Urban Park. This would remove it from a very congested area, he said, and thus improve the Fire Service’s response times. There is no doubt that Stabroek Market is not a suitable location for the main station, although at least it is in the centre of a major commercial district where many of our past more destructive fires have occurred. As such, whether siting it at D’Urban Park would have a major impact on response times for our larger conflagrations is perhaps a moot point.
But there is a more fundamental issue. This decision comes not as part of a larger Georgetown plan, but as an isolated move where the authorities looked around for a suitable vacant space, of which, it must be conceded, there are precious few in the city. Some years ago a previous PPP/C government had plans for building on D’Urban Park, which even Mrs Jagan raised queries about on the grounds there was need for green space in the capital. The plan came to include a sports track and a park for residents, but no action ensued.
Then of course in 2016 we had the fiasco of the stadium perpetrated on the city by Mr David Granger. This calamitous project encompassed Revolution Square and a portion of D’Urban Park in circumstances when all the then President needed to do for the purposes of the 50th anniversary Independence celebrations was rehabilitate the National Park.
Governments have been fairly cavalier about our few open spaces, although the residents of Bel Air Park did manage to check a PPP/C administration which had designs to build on theirs. The city council has been no better, in recent times ruining Merriman Mall even further by granting permission for the Sleepin hotel and casino to have a parking lot there. Needless to say, the hotel should never have been granted planning permission in the first place if it did not include arrangements for parking, even assuming it was appropriate to have a casino in that location at all.
But green spaces are only one aspect of the problem with Georgetown, which becomes more and more cramped in circumstances where there is no town plan. As a consequence, officialdom both at the municipal and governmental levels takes ad hoc decisions which often have deleterious results as in the case of the Sleepin. There are, it is true, some regulations in place, such as those relating to zoning, but they are simply ignored by the authorities both central and local.
It is not as if Georgetown did not have a draft town plan at one time. In 2001 Pakistani Town Planner Akhtar Khan submitted a Greater George-town Development Plan with a view to upgrading the city while at the same time preserving its colonial heritage. Mr Khan was attached to the Central Housing and Planning Authority, and his work was funded by the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation.
The intention was to return the capital to its ‘Garden City’ status, and to have the plan implemented by 2010. To this end it required in the first instance the drafting of modern legislation to replace the obsolete Town and Country Planning Act, which among other things would see the creation of residential, business, entertainment, recreation and conservation zones. These, said the plan, would have to be strictly enforced.
In addition, Mr Khan adverted to the need for an overall development policy, an immediate moratorium on ribbon development along the main roads, the separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic and the creation of residential settlements away from the city. Addressing the problem of traffic congestion which as everyone knows has become infinitely worse over the past twenty years, the suggestion was that there should be a new four-lane road south of the east coast railway with another lane to serve as a bypass for the East Bank.
Mr Khan also envisaged creating roundabouts at critical junctions, and recommended landscaping and the identification of conservation zones. He also thought the Georgetown prison should be relocated in addition to some of the services of the police and GDF, which were taking up prime areas in the city which could be put to more beneficial use. One can only remark that the occupants of Camp Ayanganna at the least, would put up strenuous resistance to removal, and it is difficult to see any government being prepared to confront them at the moment.
As for moving the prison, that has been under discussion for more years than anyone cares to remember, but apart from the expense involved, it is convenient to have remand prisoners especially based so near the courts, so the police do not have to find transportation for most of them when they have to appear before a magistrate or judge. Parts of the plan came under criticism at the time, such as the proposals with regard to minibuses, which would require commuters from outlying parts of George-town as well as those from outside the city to take two buses to reach the centre. Whatever its flaws, it was nevertheless a starting point for discussions on how to make the capital an infinitely more liveable place.
The government did embark on a large-scale housing programme outside the city, but that had nothing to do with any town plan, in addition to which both PPP/C and coalition administrations pursued the East-Coast-East Bank bypass, again with no reference to any town plan either. Recently too, the government has embarked tentatively on the building of roundabouts by virtue of necessity to ease the flow of traffic.
In 2002 Cabinet Secretary Roger Luncheon told the media that Cabinet was giving “strong support” to the Greater Georgetown Development Plan. What happened after that was an example of this country’s version of bureaucratic musical chairs. It was Minister Shaik Baksh who had first presented the plan to the Cabinet, which he had listed as one of the Ministry of Housing and Water’s achievements. When tackled on the subject later he responded that the last he knew of the plan was that it was with Central Housing and Planning, and that checks should be made there. As for Mr Hamilton Green who was Mayor at the time, he told this newspaper that every time he encountered then President Bharrat Jagdeo and the relevant minister, he tried to “nudge” them into acting on it, but to no avail.
The PPP/C at the time had no interest in restoring Georgetown for political reasons, but the coalition government should have had no such inhibitions. There was indeed a fairly wide-scale consultation with interested parties in January 2017, with a view to coming up with a structured plan for the orderly development of the city. Among other things, it was proposed to review the academic and technical studies conducted over the years, presumably including the Khan plan, and find solutions to the capital’s various problems. Again, nothing much seems to have eventuated from this.
However shortly afterwards, there was a massive public protest against new parking meters being installed at the instigation of the City Council, a contract which had little to do with town planning and the convenience of citizens and everything to do with money. Suffice it to say that the citizens had a rare victory on that occasion.
And the latest little glimmer on the town planning horizon comes from none other than President Irfaan Ali himself. As it happens this falls well within the ambit of his academic endeavours given that his thesis was on the topic of regional and urban planning. Last week found him delivering the keynote address to the Caribbean Urban Forum, which was looking at the challenges of urbanisation and examining a range of policy responses. We reported the head-of-state as saying that his government’s vision for urban transformation included a modernised city with a vibrant waterfront, the conversion of depressed rural areas into new urban growth centres, the development of hinterland urban centres and improved infrastructure in the urban settlement roads now appearing.
Well there are no details here about how Georgetown is to be modernised, let alone, it might be added, any mention of green spaces, conservation and yes, heritage, even although government has committed to rescuing City Hall. (On that topic, one can only wish they would hurry up about it, and move the council to temporary accommodation elsewhere until its new quarters are finished.) Since this topic is so much within the President’s sphere of knowledge, can we expect a new draft town plan, taking into account all the proposals which have gone before, including those of Mr Khan?
And what would it take to implement such a plan, apart from the obvious things like co-operation with the municipal authorities, a course to which this administration has so far appeared antipathetic? The President told the conference that “urban transformation … does not happen independently; it requires visionary and transformational leadership.” The residents of Georgetown wait to see what form this will take, and what the latest chapter in the town plan saga has in store for them.
