An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ap­proach to hous­ing, in­fra­struc­ture and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment needs a ma­jor re­think, with greater in­te­gra­tion be­tween Gov­ern­ment agen­cies and a stronger link be­tween where peo­ple live, where they work and where in­vest­ment is di­rect­ed.

That was a cen­tral theme emerg­ing from a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the Chi­na-Caribbean Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment and Trans­for­ma­tion Fo­rum at Brix Ho­tel on Mon­day. The pan­el, which was host­ed by the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, brought to­geth­er hous­ing of­fi­cials, plan­ners, econ­o­mists and a Chi­nese con­struc­tion ex­ec­u­tive who dis­cussed that hous­ing de­vel­op­ment can­not be planned in iso­la­tion from trans­porta­tion, em­ploy­ment, com­mu­ni­ty fa­cil­i­ties and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) chair­man, Feeroz Khan, said the coun­try con­tin­ues to face a short­age of ad­e­quate hous­ing across dif­fer­ent in­come groups, re­quir­ing a more tar­get­ed ap­proach to meet­ing de­mand.

He ex­plained that the HDC is fo­cussed pri­mar­i­ly on low­er-mid­dle and mid­dle-in­come house­holds. At the same time, oth­er Gov­ern­ment agen­cies are ex­pect­ed to ad­dress the needs of high­er-in­come groups as well as land­less and low­er-in­come cit­i­zens.

The is­sue, how­ev­er, ex­tends well be­yond the con­struc­tion of hous­es.

“At the end of the day, we need to have nec­es­sary hous­ing. Be­cause more than just bring­ing wa­ter and food, hous­ing must rep­re­sent com­mu­ni­ties. And al­so, hous­ing is a ma­jor dri­ver in the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty of the coun­try,” said Khan.

He al­so point­ed to Chi­na’s rapid ur­ban trans­for­ma­tion as an ex­am­ple of what can hap­pen when de­vel­op­ment is linked to wider eco­nom­ic ob­jec­tives. He high­light­ed his vis­its to Chi­na and the trans­for­ma­tion of cities such as Shen­zhen, where ur­ban de­vel­op­ment has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to na­tion­al eco­nom­ic growth.

The pan­el dis­cus­sion re­in­forced a grow­ing con­cern that T&T has his­tor­i­cal­ly de­vel­oped hous­ing and in­fra­struc­ture with­out suf­fi­cient co­or­di­na­tion among agen­cies or con­sid­er­a­tion of the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty need­ed to sus­tain com­mu­ni­ties.

Econ­o­mist and Cen­tral Bank board mem­ber Dr In­dera Sage­wan ar­gued that ur­ban de­vel­op­ment must be treat­ed as an eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy rather than sim­ply a pro­gramme for con­struct­ing homes and roads.

She said the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment de­ci­sions of­ten fail to es­tab­lish a clear link be­tween in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment and the eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties it is meant to cre­ate.

Be­yond hous­es

The con­se­quences of dis­con­nect­ed de­vel­op­ment were out­lined by Dr Derek Out­ridge, pres­i­dent of the In­sti­tute of Sur­vey­ors of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Out­ridge point­ed to com­mu­ni­ties de­vel­oped with hous­ing but with­out suf­fi­cient sup­port­ing fa­cil­i­ties, in­clud­ing play­grounds, open spaces, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, po­lice and fire sta­tions and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

He ar­gued that the coun­try’s pre­vi­ous ap­proach cre­at­ed res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties with­out the in­te­grat­ed ur­ban struc­ture re­quired for them to func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly.

“We start­ed to put in when I came back from schol­ar­ship in the Unit­ed King­dom. I was sent to the Na­tion­al Hous­ing Au­thor­i­ty. We were not putting in play­ing fields. That was in 1993. We were not putting in play­ing fields, bas­ket­ball courts. We were not putting in tech work cen­tres. We were not putting in com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres.”

For Out­ridge, the les­son is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant as T&T con­sid­ers a more am­bi­tious ur­ban de­vel­op­ment agen­da.

He pro­posed a more in­te­grat­ed Gov­ern­ment struc­ture, sug­gest­ing that the func­tions of works, hous­ing, plan­ning and lo­cal gov­ern­ment could be brought un­der an over­ar­ch­ing in­te­grat­ed ur­ban de­vel­op­ment ap­proach.

The is­sue is not sim­ply ad­min­is­tra­tive.

A frag­ment­ed sys­tem can af­fect how quick­ly projects move from plan­ning to con­struc­tion, how com­mu­ni­ties are de­signed and whether in­fra­struc­ture is de­liv­ered in tan­dem with hous­ing.

Out­ridge raised con­cerns about the de­vel­op­ment ap­proval process, point­ing to in­stances where plans can take more than two years to be ap­proved.

That de­lay, he ar­gued, is in­com­pat­i­ble with an in­te­grat­ed ap­proach to ur­ban de­vel­op­ment.

“If we’re mov­ing on in­to what we call in­te­grat­ed ur­ban de­vel­op­ment and have those what we call si­los still ex­ist­ing in terms of the ap­proval process, we need to have that.”

Sage­wan sup­port­ed the call for greater in­te­gra­tion, ar­gu­ing that ur­ban de­vel­op­ment should con­nect hous­ing, in­fra­struc­ture and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

She point­ed to the mis­match be­tween res­i­den­tial de­vel­op­ment and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, where peo­ple can be pro­vid­ed with homes in one part of the coun­try but re­main de­pen­dent on com­mut­ing to Port-of-Spain or oth­er es­tab­lished eco­nom­ic cen­tres for em­ploy­ment.

The re­sult can be in­creased traf­fic con­ges­tion, pres­sure on trans­porta­tion in­fra­struc­ture and com­mu­ni­ties that func­tion large­ly as dor­mi­to­ries rather than cen­tres of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

Sage­wan ar­gued that roads and high­ways should al­so be as­sessed ac­cord­ing to the eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty they can gen­er­ate rather than sim­ply their abil­i­ty to move peo­ple from one lo­ca­tion to an­oth­er.

“We build high­ways, for ex­am­ple, sim­ply to con­nect one spot to an­oth­er spot, to get from one place to an­oth­er faster. But that re­al­ly is not suf­fi­cient of a ra­tio­nale to spend mil­lions and mil­lions of dol­lars.”

Her broad­er ar­gu­ment is that in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment should be guid­ed by an eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy that iden­ti­fies the in­dus­tries, busi­ness­es and ser­vices that can grow around new in­fra­struc­ture.

She point­ed to the area around the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal as an ex­am­ple of a lo­ca­tion that could po­ten­tial­ly sup­port a wider health­care-re­lat­ed eco­nom­ic clus­ter, mak­ing use of avail­able land and the con­cen­tra­tion of health ser­vices.

Plan­ning for growth

Aisha Don­ald­son, se­nior land-use plan­ner and head of the Pol­i­cy De­vel­op­ment Unit at the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion, high­light­ed the reg­u­la­to­ry changes that may be need­ed to sup­port in­creased hous­ing de­vel­op­ment.

De­vel­op­ers are al­ready ap­proach­ing the di­vi­sion about mea­sures such as small­er res­i­den­tial lots, which could help in­crease the sup­ply of hous­ing while mak­ing bet­ter use of lim­it­ed land re­sources.

But Don­ald­son stressed that in­creased hous­ing can­not come at the ex­pense of prop­er plan­ning.

Flood­ing, land suit­abil­i­ty and the lo­ca­tion of com­mu­ni­ties have to be con­sid­ered be­fore de­vel­op­ment takes place, rather than be­ing ad­dressed af­ter prob­lems emerge.

The di­vi­sion is cur­rent­ly work­ing on two lo­cal area plans and is en­gag­ing com­mu­ni­ties as part of the plan­ning process.

That com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment is in­tend­ed to en­sure that plan­ning de­ci­sions re­flect the needs of the peo­ple who will ac­tu­al­ly live in the ar­eas be­ing de­vel­oped.

Don­ald­son al­so raised the need to up­date the Na­tion­al Spa­tial De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy, which was com­plet­ed around 2013.

More than a decade lat­er, she be­lieves the strat­e­gy needs to be re­viewed to re­flect changes in the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment needs, al­though many of its orig­i­nal prin­ci­ples re­main rel­e­vant.

The strat­e­gy iden­ti­fies ar­eas for growth and pro­vides a frame­work for de­ter­min­ing where de­vel­op­ment should take place.

For Sage­wan, that type of spa­tial plan­ning al­so needs to be con­nect­ed to eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

She ar­gued that the coun­try can­not de­ter­mine the hu­man re­sources it needs with­out first es­tab­lish­ing where it wants its econ­o­my to go.

“If we don’t know where we’re go­ing, then how can we re­al­ly know what the hu­man re­sources we need in or­der to be able to get us there?”

She point­ed to grad­u­ates in pro­fes­sions in­clud­ing med­i­cine, law and en­gi­neer­ing who can strug­gle to find em­ploy­ment when the econ­o­my does not gen­er­ate suf­fi­cient op­por­tu­ni­ties in their fields.

The chal­lenge be­comes even more sig­nif­i­cant when ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing sys­tems con­tin­ue prepar­ing peo­ple for sec­tors that are no longer ex­pand­ing at the same pace.

Sage­wan be­lieves eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion must there­fore pro­vide clear sig­nals about the sec­tors the coun­try in­tends to de­vel­op, al­low­ing ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing, land al­lo­ca­tion and in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment to sup­port those pri­or­i­ties.

Link­ing in­vest­ment and jobs

The Chi­nese per­spec­tive brought an­oth­er di­men­sion to the dis­cus­sion: T&T’s abil­i­ty to at­tract in­vest­ment will de­pend not on­ly on its phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture but on the eco­nom­ic ecosys­tem sur­round­ing that in­fra­struc­ture.

Ma Shu­long, deputy gen­er­al man­ag­er of Bei­jing Con­struc­tion En­gi­neer­ing Group In­ter­na­tion­al Con­struc­tion Co Ltd, iden­ti­fied T&T’s ge­o­graph­ic po­si­tion, en­er­gy re­sources, Eng­lish-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion, le­gal sys­tem and po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty as po­ten­tial ad­van­tages for in­vestors.

He al­so ar­gued that the coun­try must look be­yond its tra­di­tion­al de­pen­dence on oil and gas.

For him, eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion should come be­fore or along­side large-scale hous­ing de­vel­op­ment be­cause sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties need jobs and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

“Af­ford­able, means you have the rich, you have the mon­ey. Even with­out all, with­out any op­por­tu­ni­ty to work, to earn mon­ey, this means you can­not af­ford any­thing, even the hous­ing, even the food and bev­er­age.”

His ar­gu­ment puts em­ploy­ment at the cen­tre of the hous­ing de­bate.

A com­mu­ni­ty can on­ly be­come sus­tain­able if res­i­dents have ac­cess to in­come, ser­vices and eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties with­out be­ing forced in­to long and cost­ly dai­ly com­mutes.