Delroy Chuck
IN A YEAR'S TIME, Jamaica will welcome visitors for Cricket World Cup. Thousands will visit the island for the first time and, if truth be told, perhaps for the last time. Cricket will be the main attraction but while here, is there anything in Kingston and Jamaica to encourage them to return? In fact, after visiting Kingston and its environs, would anyone want to return?
Kingston resembles a garbage dump. Its streets are dirty and ugly. Its buildings are old, fragile and falling apart. Chaos reigns, even though as night descends it takes on the appearance of a ghost town. New Orleans that was recently decimated by Hurricane Katrina is at present in better shape than Kingston, which has been destroyed by human conduct and governmental abandonment. No one can proudly proclaim Kingston as a capital city - it simply doesn't represent anything that looks like a capital.
REMODELLING SABINA PARK
Every working day, I drive to my office downtown and, in my imagination, I see Kingston as it used to be and could be. As a young schoolboy, I was proud to visit King Street and its environs and see the tourists and tourist guides. I wondered in the many department stores and bookshops, and window-shop as long as I could. It was safe and a pleasure to walk from Kingston College along the byways and main streets to downtown. In the past 30 years and more, everything changed for the worse. It is now time for a complete reversal to remodel, redesign and rebuild our capital city. In truth, I dream of a capital city that can become the business, tourist and commercial hub of the Western Hemisphere.
With Cricket World Cup approaching, the focus is on remodelling Sabina Park, but visitors will pass through and want to visit downtown and its environs, or will we warn them not to do so? If Kingston remains in its present dilapidated state, what impression and judgement will visitors have of Jamaica and its people? Enough is just not being done to clean, beautify and uplift the whole of Kingston. Surely, we can use the Jamaica Defence Force to remove the many abandoned buildings, which pose such grave danger and contribute to the escalating criminality around.
Most importantly, owners and occupants everywhere should be targeted and approached to give their buildings and surroundings a needed facelift, starting now and not weeks before the World Cup. Then, the Government should at least concentrate on the improvement and upliftment of the sidewalks and roads over which the thousands of tourists will walk and drive. Admittedly, we can only engage in a cosmetic facelift to Kingston at this time but if we are to welcome friends, relatives and visitors without shame and embarrassment it must be done.
In the long term, we need planners, architects and developers to redesign and remodel Kingston for the 21st century. Simply visit googleearth.com and view Kingston and the other cities of the world from space; the contrast can easily be discerned. No doubt, people will differ on how Kingston should be rebuilt. Many will want Kingston to remain a quaint, old-fashioned city. Yet, if Kingston is to become a teeming, hustling, prosperous, commercial centre, it has to attract thousands of visitors and business people and, thus, needs massive and extraordinary development. Yes, if Kingston is to become one of the preferred destinations in the Caribbean and the Western Hemisphere, which is my hope and dream, then it demands new, big, far-sighted and innovative thinking.
IT CAN BE DONE
When I see and read how the modern cities of the world were rebuilt, I know it can be done. Kingston does not have to remain a slum, it can become a peaceful, attractive and prosperous place again. In my reflections, I see high-rise buildings mixing commercial activity on the ground floors and residential apartments on the upper floors; I see modern shopping malls crawling with tourists coming from cruise liners docked in the Kingston Harbour; I see our people, happy, busy and smiling as they serve visitors from around the world; I see Kingston as it could become, and ask why not?
Delroy Chuck is an attorney-at-law and Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by email at delchuck@hotmail.com.
