By the Honorable Ford-Smith
Associate Professor, Cultural and Artistic Practices for Environmental and Social Justice
Associate Director, Center for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean
University of York, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change
What do you want for your cities, your villages, your communities, this region that is our home, the home of our children’s future?
What is Kingston to us other than a break to pull out when we want to showcase reggae? Kingston is the place where the ideas of Garveyism, Rastafari and reggae flourished. It was the place where the minds of Jamaican philosophers Sylvia Wynter and Mortimer Planno, poet and playwright of St. Lucian Derek Walcott, St. economist Lucian Arthur Lewis and others were nurtured. In small neighborhoods like Hannah Town in Kingston you can see the charm of walkable neighborhoods with homes designed for our climate.
What is Kingston now? Is it a place where human relationships can thrive? A place where we take care of ourselves and provide shelter for the people in an environment that is relentless and astonishingly beautiful despite the evil doing and done to it?
Aye, Jamaica will break your heart. And he will break it again and again. BUT … and here’s the BUT …. The brightest, original, talented and yes loving and caring people you’ll ever know are from there. Why can’t they defeat?
Why do the Johncrows who follow in the tradition of teefing conquistadors, plantation owners and pirates prevail? Money loves money … that’s the essence of the system we live in – But why do we allow them to govern us?
Yesterday one small, seemingly minor incident triggered this explosion. It was one small incident – nothing compared to the murder statistics, the flamethrower, the absence of chairs in school rooms and the lack of computers in schools and homes in these times of virtual education. Nothing compared to the bribe we give it a pass, destroy what’s left of our beaches and dig our hearts out.
Yesterday I learned that developers are tearing into one of very few beautiful old houses left in the Seymour grounds of Kingston. Built in the North African style of architecture, it stood on green spaces and was not yet hidden behind the high prison as walls that have become the norm in Kingston. I am not here arguing for preserving the icons of the rich. I argue for the importance of public space and green space in a rapidly changing city. I argue for us to use the natural assets we have and not commit to imitating the profound ugliness and alienation of the cities of north Wales.
This dilapidated old house on Seaview, like many others before, could have been a stunning public space – a place to take your children for an experience of the vast collection of nationalist art anti-social who lived until recently. He had held a collection of the work of the emerging artists of the 1930s, including Albert Huie, Edna Manley and the works of Karl Parboosingh and other artists who followed them and others. That collection could have been extended on site and shared with the public.
The Cuban Revolution oversaw the development, not destruction, of many sites like that. Santiago, our twin city, is full of lovely old houses that have been re-occupied as a public space. They are still beautiful and can be enjoyed by everyone. Barbados seems to have done a better job of transforming some of its former colonial sites into places where people can go to relax. Trinidad and Tobago as well.
We, in Jamaica, on the other hand (to the extent there are … do we?) Seem to think that our architectural heritage should be a chain of derelict cars, smoked concrete boxes and car markets dotted around the countryside on land where we should be growing food to fill our children’s hungry bells. YES, I said hunger. There is a famine in Jamaica despite the elitist myth that you cannot go to bed hungry for what used to be wood and water land and is now a cement and carbon country.
A recent scare report published in the Jamaican Gleaner newspaper shows that hunger is still with us. And malnutrition worries us too.
How is hunger related to the destruction of an old house? It is connected because it signals a cynical disregard for the environment and the needs of the people in it. It is a sign of contempt for our children. And it signifies dangerous worship at the altar of private profit when all religions and philosophical traditions tell us loudly and clearly that money cannot buy happiness and health.
Ex-covid, every weekend Devon House, one of very few green spaces and looking after public spaces in Kingston, would be rammed into its capacity because Kingstonians have nowhere to take their kids for a cheap afternoon out . People long for a peaceful and beautiful place where they can go to relieve the stress of activity. God knows they can’t go to the beach. They are locked out of most of those. At the end of the week or a holiday at Devon House you would have to arrange for hours to buy ice cream. Even Hope Gardens – another old and historic park – has shrunk dramatically as pieces have been sold and Hope is far from the city center. You can’t get into Bob Marley’s museum on Hope Road because it costs a bomb. Who can pay that access to their children? Even church yards and churchyards have become untidy and inaccessible.
This old house on Seaview Avenue or any of the many that have been torn down recently could have been another such site. It could have been an alternative. It is built around a central courtyard with the interior opening to it. Every detail of the interior was carefully designed with tasteful use of Jamaican hardwood and incredible ironwork. There could have been a shop selling ice cream and snacks and there could have been places to sit under the cool shade of huge trees. He could have had a vegetable and herb garden. Everywhere else in the world is trying to get urban agriculture going. We who have a tradition of kitchen gardens seem to be ashamed of ours. Houses may also have been in a small part of it. The best way to keep cultural sites alive is to combine them with housing. It could have had people living there – affordable housing that would allow people to get to work easily without sweating and penalizing traffic for hours and tying up because our public transport system is a four-letter word. It was an easily accessible place, as many buses run up Old Hope Road and from there you could look up to what’s left of the Long and Blue Mountains (which destroying them soon).
I don’t think the people of Jamaica would approve of what’s happening in Seymour lands or in many other places. But they were not asked. No one is asking. It’s just a matter of “I want to get my share now of what I have and to hell with you!” This is intimidating in one of Kingston’s only suburbs with the potential to offer a centrally located green public space. Why? Because this is a relatively affluent suburb. While many Kingston nobles have fled to the salubrious heights of the hills, this area is still home to people who should be able to make a difference. It is home to business leaders, owners of large corporations as well as lawyers, architects, doctors and other professionals. It is also home to students and non-middle and upper class students. It has a housing trust scheme built for the poor in the past. He has small restaurants like the exclusive Lady Musgrave that sells the best soup in Kingston. As it stands, it holds the seeds of something quite extraordinary, if only we came together and took it seriously and supported it.
My understanding is that there is a neighborhood association, in one part of the area that has been raising concerns about what is happening. The Golden Triangle Neighborhood Association has been raising concerns. Why is no one listening? If this affluent suburb can’t hold back the pirates’ hands and tasteless neogiberal guinea, what hope then for the rest of us? Is the next building to be demolished the one at the corner of Hopefield and Lady Musgrave, the historic site where the University of the West Indies started? I can see the developers fluttering now, their wallets bubbling as they look at the green space, around this building.
If we continue in this race, it will be all over people. Carbon and disease forever and the hinges of hell will be colder than our city if we can’t offer an alternative to enjoying my life. The trees are being destroyed to make way for concrete structures and the birds have already fled.