The downtown communities, commercial district and main streets developed because it was the physical focal point of early Kingston.

This was the one place that every resident could reach places of least cost and highest-efficiency access for the entire metropolitan community.

It still is. Downtown Kingston, as the larger area is normally referred to, was up to the 1960s the commercial hub of the port of Kingston. The original gridiron street plan, which dates as far back as 1692, remains virtually unchanged today.

As Kingston expanded over the years this area still remained the major commercial centre.

By the early 1960s downtown Kingston had become increasingly congested and cramped. Narrow streets, lack of adequate parking and an increasing population density now characterised it.

The Port of Kingston, the island's main link to the outside world, was as this time inefficient and difficult to manage. A local entrepreneur conceived of the idea of relocating the port facilities.

Thus, Newport West was created and an important aspect of the downtown area was lost from the CBD. By the 1970s, the CBD and the surrounding areas recorded some of the highest population densities in the urban area.

During the mid-1970s, the problem of uncontrolled street vending, a source of livelihood for many, also became evident.

The CBD had now become an example of urban decay and blight. This situation was further exacerbated by the establishment of new commercial centres, more closely located to the suburbs, and which had a magnetic effect on commerce and the economy of downtown Kingston.

Improvements

The Urban Development Corporation (UDC), with the re-development of the waterfront, initiated improvements in the city. This trend was continued with the construction of the Jamaica Conference Centre and the coast road, which provided a quick link from the city to the airport in the east.

The Ward Theatre restoration and the upgrading of the St. William Grant Park were also undertaken to respond to the many uses of the park and its immediate environs, and to make efficient use of the limited open space in the area.

In addition, the Kingston Restoration Company Limited was established in 1983 as a result of consultation between the UDC and private sector organisations.

Downtown, you can feel the possibilities, share in the dreams of its residents, sense the energy, see the vision and realise the urgency. The overriding urgency, though, is that it's time to act.

Downtown must act on a lesson that is relevant for every society.

A society that is worried about the limits of its physical and financial resources has no choice - it must maintain the viability of its best-situated spaces and the capacity of the public and private infrastructure that has developed because of that centrality. We must preserve the generations of investment that have created downtown Kingston.

Downtown is everybody's community. It is the one place in our country that potentially 'belongs' to everyone - rich and poor, black and white, sophisticate and derelict, old and young.

It gives us the opportunity to interact with, or at least acknowledge, people of different colours and backgrounds and degrees of worldly success. At the most distressing, downtown reminds us that our society contains ruined lives - runaway children growing up on the streets, alcoholics and drug abusers.

Natural downtown

Downtown has two realms that co-exist in splendid isolation of each other. Professional and managerial workers zip in early and run out at night. At night, the residents come out and you can always find a session or a game of dominoes. This confrontation with the unlikely is the wellspring of creativity. It is hard to form new ideas when we only talk with people who agree with us.

More than a century ago, John Stuart Mill, the British philosopher and economist, wrote that:

"It is hardy possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of human development, of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves; with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been one of the primary sources of progress."

What this suggests is the dangers of the socially divided community.

Downtown Kingston can be an incubator of new businesses as well as new ideas. Especially on its somewhat jumbled and messy edges, it can provide new enterprises with affordable space that is convenient to necessary services. It can provide the best locations for any type of business. We spend substantial time and money to develop formally designated support centres for small businesses.

The function that is severely restricted within the malls that try to internalise main street under one roof. What is really being done is trying to recreate natural downtown fringes and the neighbourhood business strips.

Downtown also has our primary civic spaces; the traditional main street - King Street - the commercial district, courts, and parliament. Downtown Kingston is where we enact the rituals that remind us that we are members of a larger society.

Downtown fills all these roles and more. The public spaces of downtown - King Street, Orange Street and the St. William Grant Park - are the venues for parades and celebrations: for festivals of food, folk-life, art and thought: for efforts to gather political support and to influence public opinion through rallies and petition drives.

These are functions that are vital for our sense of civic membership and for our survival as a country. Downtown contributes to the well-being of our country by helping to express its common identity. Downtown and its commercial district is the front door of our country.

Currently, specific issues are being merged into a planning process that draw in public officials, retailers, property owners, neighbourhood groups, professional and civic organisations.

The resulting plan must offer integrated solutions to a list of problems that has been approached piecemeal. It must be technically sound with proposals based on specific improvements. The plan must also be politically viable by prescribing trade-offs among different interests as part of a coherent strategy.

Redevelopment necessary

The emerging plan can seek as the vision to bind the fragments of our society. We must preserve access to our social environment. We must redevelop downtown Kingston.

With this effort, we can make a contribution to solving one of the great dilemmas of society - the problem of combining a commitment to self with openness to difference.

As a centre of society, downtown is a strong symbol of community individualism. As the centre of business and government activity, it is open to everyone. It has the potential to combine the best of society as community for everybody.

The joint efforts and objectives of all the projects previously and currently being implemented in downtown Kingston have begun, and will undoubtedly culminate in the revitalisation of the city by physical, social and economic improvements.