The Chi­na­town arch­es erect­ed on ei­ther end of Char­lotte Street in Port-of-Spain may be an im­por­tant first step in bring­ing com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion to that sec­tion of down­town. How­ev­er, it is bare­ly a drop in the buck­et giv­en to com­plete the re­vival that the na­tion’s cap­i­tal ur­gent­ly needs.

For too long, the city has been left to steadi­ly de­te­ri­o­rate. It has now de­gen­er­at­ed in­to a filthy, con­gest­ed space with a grow­ing va­grant pop­u­la­tion where il­le­gal ven­dors in­flict un­fair com­pe­ti­tion on le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es, mak­ing it a very un­com­fort­able place to work or do busi­ness.

The flash floods that are in­evitable every time there is a heavy down­pour of rain quick­ly sub­side, leav­ing streets, pave­ments and drains filled with un­sight­ly de­bris.

It is not a space of which we can be proud, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the seat of gov­ern­ment. It is al­so not a user-friend­ly city.

While there are pock­ets of beau­ty here and there around the cap­i­tal, its true worth strug­gles to shine through the vast ar­eas of ne­glect and de­cay.

In this re­gard, while there is a crit­i­cal role to be played by the mu­nic­i­pal au­thor­i­ties in clean­ing up and trans­form­ing Port-of-Spain in­to the vi­brant, mod­ern city that it is sup­posed to be, sup­port needs to be pro­vid­ed by the cor­po­rate sec­tor and oth­er stake­hold­ers in res­cu­ing the cap­i­tal.

This is not about erect­ing more sky­scrap­ers like the ones that dom­i­nate the wa­ter­front. It is al­so not on­ly about restor­ing valu­able, his­toric land­marks, such as the Red House.

In­stead, the ma­jor­i­ty of the ef­fort needs to go in­to a mul­ti-faceted plan that in­cludes ze­ro tol­er­ance of il­le­gal vend­ing, traf­fic man­age­ment sys­tems to con­sid­er­ably re­duce ve­hic­u­lar con­ges­tion and pro­vide ad­e­quate park­ing at strate­gic lo­ca­tions. The lat­ter must al­so in­clude a sys­tem for prop­er use of taxi stands and even­tu­al elim­i­na­tion of the PH cul­ture that con­tributes in large mea­sure to the grid­lock and law­less­ness that pre­vails on most days.

Re­pair and prop­er main­te­nance of in­fra­struc­ture should be an­oth­er area of fo­cus. Prop­er­ly paved streets, pave­ments, well-man­i­cured green spaces, prop­er drainage and more ef­fi­cient san­i­ta­tion ser­vices are all need­ed.

For decades Port-of-Spain has been plagued by a va­grancy prob­lem which suc­ces­sive mu­nic­i­pal ad­min­is­tra­tions have been pow­er­less to re­solve. Once and for all, a sys­tem needs to be de­vel­oped to re­lo­cate these pave­ment dwellers to fa­cil­i­ties where their med­ical and so­cial needs can be at­tend­ed to.

But most of all, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), there must be an all-out crack­down on the crime that has made most city streets un­safe, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter dark.

For the cap­i­tal to prop­er­ly re­flect its com­mer­cial and ad­min­is­tra­tive im­por­tance, a range of re­sources will have to be mo­bilised to set in train this long over­due re­vival. How­ev­er, it will all be worth it if Port-of-Spain fi­nal­ly be­comes a true 21st Cen­tu­ry me­trop­o­lis—a clean, safe and pros­per­ous space of which will cit­i­zens will be proud.