Every city, rather like every citizen, has parts that do not reflect well on it; eyesores, ramshackle bits, the odd carbuncle or blemish. Unfortunately, in the case of our capital, these parts threaten to overwhelm the whole. Georgetown, in its current state, is a case study in unregulated and ill-conceived change. After half a century of inadequate zoning, lax regulation of land use and inept traffic planning, the city is a chaotic jumble of buildings perched on potholed, overcrowded streets largely devoid of stop signs, traffic markings, pavements, pedestrian crossings and other basic amenities. A proliferation of squalor, noise and accident black-spots are the by-products of these omissions.
Our capital had a rather haphazard birth. More than two and a half centuries ago, the Dutch had their headquarters on a small island twenty miles up the Demerara River. However, in 1781, the British selected a site for a capital at the mouth of the Demerara. A year later, the colony was ceded to the French who divided the area into lots available upon application and payment of an annual tax. Some lots were reserved for government buildings. Two years later, the returning Dutch rulers named the town Stabroek. In 1812, Stabroek was re-christened Georgetown by the English. By now, it bore the hallmarks of the layout with which we are familiar, the interlocking grid system of canals built by the Dutch and roads and bridges designed largely by the English colonists. Photographs show wide roads and tree-shaded avenues serving the cluster of public buildings and commercial centre of the town.
Stabroek would evolve organically to embrace adjoining plantations (such as Vlissingen) by the time it became Georgetown. New districts were designed to be self-sufficient communities with their own churches, a market, schools and common public land. James Rodway’s The Story of Georgetown chronicles these changes and shows that the town’s development into a functional city was a gradual painstaking process. Taxes were levied to underwrite each new urban scheme. These and other changes were often stoutly contested by the residents, many of whom were only interested in short-term gains. However, a century later, Georgetown was the epicentre of a public transportation network that included a tram line (18 trams on 14 miles of track), a railway line and a fleet of ferries and other craft that made full use of our waterways.
In many places urban planning is now regarded as a priority of the first order. It is, though, a long-term undertaking requiring research and data collection, analysis of alternatives and drafts and the vision of an ultimately integrated transport system and community. It is not clear that we, in Guyana, have the long-term focus, the skills, the experience or, most importantly, the commitment and conviction to engage in this exercise. In recent years new issues such as heritage preservation, sustainability, public health and non-motorised transportation have come to the fore in this field. There is no sign that any of these has troubled our planners.
Planning decisions have a massive impact on our land use patterns and our environment. Poor land use planning generates thousands of unnecessary vehicle trips, creating dysfunctional roads. The decision to invest in infrastructure in a particular area or to change (or fail to enforce) zoning codes can have huge effects. Surrounding communities can either benefit accordingly or suffer the consequences. Changes in land use patterns affect travel behaviour; this, in turn, can increase crash risks, pollution emissions and quality of life. A responsible planning process evaluates and tries to predict this before it happens. We need to take a long hard look at our templates for urban design if, in fact, they exist. There is a growing sense elsewhere that monolithic concrete edifices and traffic-choked streets represent a failure of urban planning. We must design to suit our climate, our citizens and our environment and not parrot fashions from abroad.
Three key concepts, evaluation, sustainability and accessibility bear further examination. One way of evaluating plans and transport policies is by determining if they treat everybody equally. So, for example, at the beginning of a planning initiative, stakeholders should be invited to share their ideas and concerns. Stakeholders are not just road users but businesses and residents affected by a plan as well as public officials and interest groups. This input would help to shape the work undertaken. Conventional planning is geared to growth or increased quantity and asks ‘does it work?’ By contrast, sustainability planning concentrates on development, increased quality and asks ‘does it fit?’ A greater volume of traffic is not seen as an inherent success in sustainable plans. Access is the ultimate goal of most transportation; the ability to reach desired goods, services, activities and destinations. Land use (the geographic distribution of activities and destinations) affects accessibility. There is a delicate symbiosis between the mix of activities and buildings located in an area and the types of access (walkways, pavements, roads, bus routes) afforded to them.
Whether from force of habit or because they have no alternative, many people (and children) continue to walk and cycle on our busiest roads. We need a change of perspective in our approach to urban planning. One theory, for example, identifies streets as being people-oriented and roads as being designed for cars. Cities need both. Pedestrians, per se, are not the problem; they are part of the solution. Our terrain is flat and ideally suited to pedestrians. Many cities are spending huge sums to encourage their citizens to walk. We simply need to make it safer for pedestrians with pavements on narrow streets, traffic calming (lower speed limits, speed cameras) in built up areas and a coherent system of zebra crossings and walkways on our main streets. Cyclists, similarly, should be encouraged and protected with their own lanes along major routes.
Our recent forays in road-building have not been impressive. A highway cannot simply be created by adding extra lanes to an existing main road. A highway is a route along which a high density of motorised traffic is expected to travel at a consistently high speed. Highways therefore need to be created away from major settlements. You will not see pedestrians along the sides of an American freeway or a European motorway. The attempt to turn the East Bank road into a highway pays scant attention to the rights, interests, habits or safety of the people who already live there. It assesses transportation needs primarily in terms of motor vehicle mobility. The street has been widened to facilitate high traffic volumes and speeds with no provision for pedestrians and cyclists to cross it or continue to use it. Highways can also stimulate the ‘sprawl’ (dispersed, low-density, automobile dependent land use) visible at the periphery of Georgetown. The more desirable option is ‘smart growth’ (compact, mixed and multi-modal land use) or, in layman’s terms, self-contained neighbourhoods with schools, clinics, shops, parks and recreation facilities within them. Policies that encourage this include land use allocation, pedestrian and cycling provision, traffic calming and traffic speed reductions and public transportation improvements.
Many cities are engaged in a reassessment of how they function, what their priorities are and what infrastructure they need to put in place to for the future. A few weeks ago, a New Cities Summit in Paris highlighted three central needs: top-rate communications, sustainable growth solutions and public-private partnerships. Urban planners, architects and activists also gathered at the improbably named Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) in Florida. In America, as recession bites and the era of cheap gas draws to a close, the car culture is receding. In the post-war era, Los Angeles led the ‘car is king’ approach to urban planning and was copied by other American cities. Now it is engaged in a lengthy, costly and ambitious attempt to configure an integrated public transit system. Its boulevards are being re-designed to incorporate multiple modes of transit and to become places to live again. A few weeks ago, its Mayor announced a plan to extend a half-cent sales tax (to fund transportation projects) that Angelenos voted in four years ago. A month ago, a new 8.6 mile light rail line, the Expo Line, opened; this service expects 27,000 boardings a day. There is also an environmental review underway for two streetcar routes, each four miles long, in downtown LA. If approved, the streetcars would run for 18 hours a day and service the 500,000 workers and 50,000 residents in the area. One study estimates the streetcar scheme would generate 9,300 jobs and US$24.5 million in new annual tourism and consumer spending. One observer described these initiatives as part of the city’s efforts to re-embrace the public realm.
We need to construct a comprehensive vision of how our city, its commercial and industrial districts and its communities are to develop. We then need to tailor our transport and land use policies to address this. It is a process that requires patience and cannot be held hostage to short-term political gain. The town of Chattanooga in Tennessee provides an interesting example. Over the course of several decades, a depressed downtown area was transformed into a major commercial and tourist centre that attracts millions of visitors a year. In 1967 the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce created an Air Pollution Control Board consisting of business leaders and citizens. They set a five year deadline for all major polluters to be in compliance with emission standards. In 1982 a task force was appointed to consider the development of the 22-mile Tennessee River corridor. Thousands of citizens attended hundreds of meetings. The resulting plan was implemented over a 20 year period and co-ordinated commercial, residential and recreational development. Chattanooga is now the beneficiary of major investment such as a US$ 1billion assembly plant for Volkswagen and a huge Amazon distribution centre.
Every city, like every citizen, is a work in progress. The form of a city evolves over time. It is a process that must be nurtured, over decades rather than years. Our urban spaces have suffered from a tendency to allow slapdash, hand-to-mouth initiatives to triumph at the expense of careful research, planning and evaluation. We are living (and dying) with the results. Public transportation systems will not work if they cater solely for those who have no other choice. They must be attractive to people who have other choices.
Urban planning is not an optional extra, something we can bolt on later when we have dealt with what we may deem to be more pressing matters. It is a fundament. Without it, we will continue our downward spiral to complete traffic mayhem, permit the further degrading of our cityscape and lose myriad opportunities to develop our city and our country. It takes decades to effect certain changes. We had better start soon.
