There are quite a few significant construction projects unfolding in the city at this time and the general reaction to the building boom has been to equate it with what we loosely describe as development.
There is a line of reasoning which says that a city is not a city in the absence of malls and other multi-storey structures and sometimes we follow that line of reasoning without taking account of what is often its serious downside. Georgetown, for example, is a small city with a tradition of relatively small buildings and there are those who have argued that two large shopping malls within touching distance of each other have provided the Camp and Regent streets junction with a uncomfortably, claustrophobic feel.
It is, however, the building boom that is the essence of this article and one’s first reaction to it has to do with its job-creation effect. While we have not, for years, been privy to the country’s unemployment figures it is reassuring to see scores of men reporting for work on construction sites and to know that after these structures