THE EDITOR, Sir:
NOWHERE IN the sensible world are Urban Planning and Management issues left to the hands of entrepreneurs and politicians. They might be the final word on what is operationalised, but the actual planning and strategy formulation is left in the hands of those who are trained meticulously to do so.
With all due respect the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC's) Town Clerk or any member of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC), none of the persons currently making decisions on what happens in Downtown Kingston and how the most important urban space in the English-speaking Caribbean is being managed are trained Urban Planners or have any idea on how to manage urban space.
Many national planning institutions and agencies such as the Kingston Restoration Company (KRC), Urban Development Corporation (UDC), National Environmental Planning Agency (NEPA) and the Jamaica Institute of Planners (JIP) are replete with research making sensible workable proposals for the Sustainable Urban Development and Redevelopment of our city. Additionally, if you look in the top of file 13 in many of these agencies you will find a collection of reports and research also making sensible proposals and recommendations for the development of Downtown.
Why have these plans not been put in operation? And in whose benefit are they shelved and ignored? Whatever the answers to these and many more questions they cannot be in the national interest. Bottom line, the development of Kingston needs (as a matter of fact demands!) the sensible intervention of Urban Management Strategies and thus Urban Planners! It is too doable for us not to do it.
I am etc.,
EARL BAILEY
President, Jamaica Institute of Planners
earlplanner@yahoo.com
Clifton Terrace
Constant Spring
Kingston 8
Via Go-Jamaica
