PART 2

Last week, the as­ser­tion was made that pri­vate car own­er­ship should be deemed pub­lic en­e­my num­ber one. How could the one pos­ses­sion which has grant­ed us free­dom of move­ment, al­so in­ad­ver­tent­ly made us slaves to a lifestyle that is un­healthy, un­sus­tain­able, un­pro­duc­tive and un­nat­ur­al?

It is easy to over­look the dev­as­ta­tion caused by our dri­ving cul­ture. It has re­sult­ed in the ur­banised por­tion of Trinidad be­ing more or less one large, sprawl­ing mess of ar­chi­tec­tural­ly inar­tic­u­late sub­urbs, gener­ic au­to­mo­bile-ori­ent­ed shop­ping malls, seas of park­ing lots, and miles of scorch­ing as­phalt.

What does it mean for our qual­i­ty of life and the so­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the na­tion when the ma­jor­i­ty of us spend hours every day in traf­fic, on­ly to go home to a house lo­cat­ed in an eco­nom­i­cal­ly-ho­moge­nous en­clave, where one can't walk to a gro­cery store, a park, or for that mat­ter, even find a pave­ment to walk on?There is a con­nec­tion be­tween dri­ving, the health of peo­ple and the en­vi­ron­ment. The more we dri­ve, the less we walk or cy­cle, and the more we pol­lute our air sup­ply.

It should come as no sur­prise that walk­ing, the for­got­ten mode of trans­porta­tion, is in­cred­i­bly ben­e­fi­cial to our health. Re­search by the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Pre­ven­ta­tive Med­i­cine has shown that walk­ing to work in­stead of dri­ving makes one 40 per cent and 17 per cent less like­ly to de­vel­op di­a­betes and high blood pres­sure, re­spec­tive­ly.

In a coun­try where we are will­ing to adopt North Amer­i­can trends, will we take note of this an­ti-car move­ment, or will we dis­miss it as un-Trinida­di­an and com­plain that our hot cli­mate pre­vents us from walk­ing, as we line up at the fast food dri­ve-through dur­ing our two-hour com­mute home?

Clear­ly, our idea of what con­sti­tutes a well-func­tion­ing city is skewed. Long-term mo­bil­i­ty prob­lems can­not be solved by build­ing more high­ways, over­pass­es, and in­ter­changes. It has been proven and is in­tu­itive­ly ev­i­dent, that the more con­ve­nient you make it to dri­ve, the more peo­ple will choose to dri­ve, and the more con­gest­ed roads will be­come.

A change in men­tal­i­ty is key

We are col­lec­tive­ly striv­ing to im­i­tate a city that is des­per­ate­ly try­ing to rein­vent its own im­age. Yes, Mi­a­mi, in its cur­rent in­car­na­tion, is cer­tain­ly not an ex­am­ple of sound ur­ban plan­ning. If we want to im­i­tate Mi­a­mi, then we should look not at what it has done in the past, but what it is now try­ing to do.

Ac­cord­ing to a Mi­a­mi Her­ald ar­ti­cle ti­tled Mi­a­mi Wants Pedes­tri­an-Friend­ly Down­town, city com­mis­sion­ers want to turn the city's streets in­to a "Down­town Pedes­tri­an Pri­or­i­ty Zone" by widen­ing side­walks, cre­at­ing tree-lined canopies, re­duc­ing clut­ter, and slow­ing down traf­fic. In oth­er words, Mi­a­mi un­der­stands that its au­to­mo­bile cul­ture is hold­ing it back from be­com­ing a tru­ly great and live­able city.

Our prob­lems were cre­at­ed over decades and will take just as long to ame­lio­rate. The so­lu­tion lies in a func­tion­al, mul­ti-modal pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem; ur­ban de­sign stan­dards, retro­fits that cre­ate aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing streets and pri­ori­tise the needs of pedes­tri­ans and cy­clists, and den­si­fi­ca­tion.

A change in men­tal­i­ty is key. We can­not all live in a 5,000-square-foot house on a half-acre plot of land, and we can­not view sin­gle land-use dis­tricts as ide­al. Vi­brant, sus­tain­able neigh­bour­hoods are cre­at­ed through the adop­tion of mixed-use zones, where one can eas­i­ly walk to a park, phar­ma­cy or restau­rant.

Lim­it­ing our cities to ex­clu­sive­ly com­mer­cial us­es ex­ac­er­bates the prob­lem. In­creased den­si­ty ne­ces­si­tates de­creased home sizes. How­ev­er when planned right, the new-found prox­im­i­ty to ameni­ties and the abil­i­ty to eas­i­ly ac­cess your dai­ly needs by foot or bike in a plea­sur­able en­vi­ron­ment more than make up for small­er spaces.

There needs to be a re­vi­sion of ar­cha­ic plan­ning poli­cies at the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, to al­low for mid-rise build­ings rang­ing from four to ten storeys to be built in ma­jor ur­ban cen­tres, where cur­rent­ly on­ly two to three storey build­ings are al­lowed. From an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive, it is not at­trac­tive to de­vel­op a low-rise res­i­den­tial build­ing in the heart of an ur­ban area, as the cost of land is pro­hib­i­tive.

In ad­di­tion, fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives, pos­si­bly in the form of tax breaks, will al­so be need­ed for builders that con­struct hous­ing in the ur­ban cores, re­vi­tal­is­ing ar­eas like Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do, Ch­agua­nas, Point Fortin and Ari­ma.If you take noth­ing else away, re­mem­ber these three things: walk­ing is free; good pub­lic trans­porta­tion is your right, so de­mand it; and the love of dri­ving is en­slav­ing you. These are ex­cit­ing times, and it should be ev­i­dent that a par­a­digm shift will ben­e­fit all.