An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Hous­ing must be at the cen­tre of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ur­ban trans­for­ma­tion, with greater em­pha­sis on re­silient com­mu­ni­ties, af­ford­able homes, smart cities and in­fra­struc­ture that can with­stand cli­mate shocks.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr David Lee made the point on Mon­day at the Chi­na Caribbean Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment and Trans­for­ma­tion Fo­rum host­ed by The UWI Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness and the Chi­nese Em­bassy at the Brix Ho­tel.

Lee said ur­ban de­vel­op­ment could no longer be viewed sim­ply as the con­struc­tion of build­ings, roads and in­fra­struc­ture.

“It is about cre­at­ing com­mu­ni­ties where peo­ple can live with dig­ni­ty, where fam­i­lies feel safe and se­cure, where busi­ness­es can thrive, and where our cities and com­mu­ni­ties are equipped to with­stand the so­cial, eco­nom­ic, and en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges of the fu­ture.”

He iden­ti­fied hous­ing as cen­tral to that ef­fort, ar­gu­ing that a home pro­vides more than shel­ter.

“A home is much more than four walls and a roof. It pro­vides safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, sta­bil­i­ty and dig­ni­ty.”

Lee point­ed to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s work on pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships and in­no­v­a­tive fi­nanc­ing mod­els as part of the Gov­ern­ment’s plan to de­liv­er thou­sands of af­ford­able and sus­tain­able homes.

He al­so stressed that ur­ban de­vel­op­ment must in­te­grate hous­ing with roads, drainage, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, trans­porta­tion, pub­lic spaces, em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and so­cial ser­vices.

“A house with­out prop­er roads, drainage, wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, trans­porta­tion, and com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties can­not on its own pro­vide the qual­i­ty of life our cit­i­zens de­serve.”

Cli­mate re­silience, he added, must al­so be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to hous­ing be­fore dis­as­ters oc­cur, with stronger foun­da­tions, re­in­forced struc­tures, for­ti­fied roofs, im­proved drainage, im­pact re­sis­tant win­dows and doors, en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy and ap­pro­pri­ate con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als.

Lee al­so point­ed to the Min­istry’s Ur­ban Up­grad­ing and Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Pro­gramme and own­er-dri­ven home im­prove­ment ini­tia­tives, ar­gu­ing that not every hous­ing prob­lem re­quires a new de­vel­op­ment.

“Some­times the most ef­fec­tive in­ter­ven­tion is to strength­en the home that al­ready ex­ists.”

The min­is­ter al­so out­lined the Gov­ern­ment’s push to­wards smart cities, in­clud­ing greater use of dig­i­tal da­ta and tech­nol­o­gy in trans­porta­tion, pub­lic ser­vices, ur­ban plan­ning and in­fra­struc­ture.

He linked this agen­da to the na­tion­al re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion blue­print an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar, not­ing that more than ten flag­ship projects had been iden­ti­fied and would re­quire ma­jor in­vest­ment in build­ings, roads, drainage and trans­porta­tion sys­tems.

At the fo­rum, Chi­nese Am­bas­sador Ren Hongyan called for greater co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Chi­na and Caribbean coun­tries in af­ford­able hous­ing, sus­tain­able cities and mod­ern ur­ban sys­tems.

Hongyan said both re­gions faced hous­ing chal­lenges and shared the goal of en­sur­ing low-in­come fam­i­lies, young peo­ple and new ur­ban res­i­dents had ac­cess to safe and dig­ni­fied homes.

The am­bas­sador al­so pro­mot­ed greater use of re­new­able en­er­gy, smart in­fra­struc­ture and na­ture based so­lu­tions.

Bei­jing Con­struc­tion En­gi­neer­ing Group In­ter­na­tion­al Con­struc­tion Co Ltd chair­man Gao Qiang point­ed to the Phoenix In­dus­tri­al Park as an ex­am­ple of Chi­na-Trinidad and To­ba­go co­op­er­a­tion.

He de­scribed the project as the first smart in­dus­tri­al park in the Caribbean with full 5G cov­er­age, with BCEG serv­ing as the en­gi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment and con­struc­tion con­trac­tor.

Gao al­so pro­posed greater de­vel­op­ment of the Cou­va area, cit­ing its prox­im­i­ty to the Port of Point Lisas and Phoenix In­dus­tri­al Park, trans­porta­tion links and avail­able land as ad­van­tages for in­te­grat­ed in­dus­try and ur­ban de­vel­op­ment.

The fo­rum fo­cused on how Chi­na and Caribbean coun­tries can ex­change ex­per­tise and de­vel­op new ap­proach­es to hous­ing, in­fra­struc­ture, con­struc­tion tech­nol­o­gy and ur­ban plan­ning.