Joshua Sur­tees

Re­cent­ly I've found my­self out of town late at night, cov­er­ing po­lit­i­cal ral­lies in St Joseph and a place I still can­not pro­nounce in the Tri­ni ver­nac­u­lar, Bourg Mu­la­tresse. Which I lat­er found out means, "town of the fe­male mu­lat­tos," "city of the light-skinned ooman," or sim­ply "sexy town," de­pend­ing on which per­son I spoke too.

Com­ing home I drove through San Juan, the junc­tion of Sad­dle Road and East­ern Main Road.

Grimy, is a word one might use to de­scribe the am­bi­ence at that time of night. I shunned the branch of KFC and the one in Barataria and con­tin­ued in­to town.

While the provinces to the east were tinged with late-night dodgi­ness–shady char­ac­ters drink­ing shady liquor–noth­ing matched the grime of late-night down­town Port-of-Spain.

I cir­cled around, went up Aber­crom­by, across Knox and Prince and back down Char­lotte Street.

At the bot­tom of "the boule­vard"–a place bustling dur­ing the day with the sound of laugh­ter and heck­ling–I felt like I had en­tered a zom­bie town.

In the dark­ness, the de­tri­tus of the day's mar­ket still lit­tered the road. Home­less men wear­ing rags sat amongst the rub­bish sift­ing through it.

One man marched up the road shout­ing in­com­pre­hen­si­ble things over his shoul­der.

Stand­ing where the road turns in­to the square was a po­lice­man hold­ing a ma­chine gun.

There didn't seem to be gang ac­tiv­i­ty in the area (maybe be­cause of the armed of­fi­cer), just des­ti­tute, drunk­en, high peo­ple, some with men­tal health prob­lems.

Oth­er than these peo­ple, sleep­ing or shuf­fling about cling­ing to their pos­ses­sions, the place was de­sert­ed.

I work down­town. Dur­ing the day, it's a bustling com­mer­cial hub with every kind of busi­ness there. Ex­cept nice bars and restau­rants. Those es­tab­lish­ments all closed down from the mid-90s on­wards, ap­par­ent­ly.

Old timers tell me there was a time when the streets sur­round­ing the Guardian build­ing were lined with bars where peo­ple would lime af­ter work.

No­body limes down­town these days. Peo­ple flee be­fore night­fall, de­sert­ing in cars and taxis. Like re­verse vam­pires, scarper­ing lest the moon turns them to dust. Af­ter dark, down­town be­comes a ghost town.

It's a tale of two cities, un­recog­nis­ably al­tered be­tween night and day.

The fear of crime has fright­ened peo­ple away. Even though, re­search shows, fear of crime is dis­pro­por­tion­al to crime lev­els them­selves.

I know peo­ple who've had phones snatched down­town, but most street-crime I hear about ac­tu­al­ly takes place in more af­flu­ent ar­eas.

The ques­tion was asked this week: is Port-of-Spain a dy­ing city?

I was con­cerned about how a head­line like that might look like to out­siders.

Lo­cals know that it refers to a spe­cif­ic area bor­dered by Pic­cadil­ly Street to the east, Rich­mond Street to the west, Park Street to the north and the City Gate to the south.

But out­siders might think it refers to the whole ur­ban sprawl, in­clud­ing the pleas­ant res­i­den­tial and nightlife sub­urbs which are part of the met­ro­pol­i­tan city area.

The Prime Min­is­ter was quot­ed as say­ing she will not let PoS die. Dis­miss­ing claims that in­vest­ment was be­ing di­vert­ed away from the cap­i­tal she said ur­ban de­vel­op­ment would con­tin­ue un­abat­ed.

This will be mu­sic to the ears of PoS may­or Ray­mond Tim Kee, Bhoe Tewarie, Cather­ine Ku­mar, Lawrence Moses and Gre­go­ry Aboud, all of whom want to see de­vel­op­ment.

The open­ing of the Radis­son ho­tel op­po­site the Hy­att, just this week, an­oth­er five-star ho­tel at the oth­er end of zom­bie town is a clear sign that things need to change or we will be left with a sit­u­a­tion like in down­town San Fran­cis­co where tourists and busi­ness­men leave plush ho­tels and walk straight in­to ur­ban de­cay.

I don't mean pover­ty should be swept un­der the car­pet like in Van­cou­ver, dur­ing the 2010 Win­ter Olympics when the city au­thor­i­ties tried to move thou­sands of drug-ad­dict­ed va­grants from a down­town area so as not to spoil the scenery.

Pover­ty and de­cay needs to be ad­dressed. Prop­er shel­ters, hos­tels, coun­selling, men­tal health and re­hab cen­tres must ex­ist for the home­less.

This week I was up on the 17th floor of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, one of the twin tow­ers opened in 1986. Twen­ty-eight years lat­er, while they are still im­pres­sive, the view from up there (ship break­ers yards, aban­doned lots, con­crete, un­in­ten­tion­al­ly bru­tal­ist ar­chi­tec­ture, tired pub­lic squares) told me that parts of the city need to be torn down and built again from scratch. You can see what the de­sign­ers in­tend­ed, but it needs up­dat­ing.

In Lon­don, if you leave for six months and re­turn, in that space of time alone, brand new build­ings have emerged and oth­ers have dis­ap­peared.

The in­vest­ment in Lon­don's in­fra­struc­ture is phe­nom­e­nal.

Mon­ey from for­eign in­vest­ment (Russ­ian oli­garchs and Gulf state Arabs) and gov­ern­ment spend­ing has pushed up prop­er­ty prices to lev­els so ex­tor­tion­ate that it is said the in­dige­nous Lon­don­ers have been "eth­ni­cal­ly cleansed" in­to the sur­round­ing more af­ford­able coun­ties of Es­sex and Hert­ford­shire. If PoS could build and mar­ket both high-end and af­ford­able res­i­den­tial apart­ments above busi­ness­es it could re-en­er­gise the place.

Oth­er parts of Lon­don, for­mer ghet­toes like Hack­ney, Brix­ton and Peck­ham, were places where grow­ing up in the mid-90s you sim­ply did not go to. Now, they are gen­tri­fied.

Very few parts of Lon­don could now be de­scribed as no-go ar­eas.

The atro­cious "sink" es­tates built by coun­cils to house the ur­ban poor af­ter the war are be­ing steadi­ly de­mol­ished.

Most of them were eye­sores that blight­ed com­mu­ni­ties.

Down­town PoS has its fair share of eye­sores, most­ly to­wards the east.

Pull down River­side Plaza, a dis­gust­ing build­ing over­look­ing the high­way, and its mul­ti­storey car park, as well as the mon­strosi­ties that over­look Colum­bus Square. They are relics of the past in an oth­er­wise glo­ri­ous city.

Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have man­aged to gen­er­ate enor­mous rev­enue through con­struc­tion projects. Why not con­struct a new heart for the cap­i­tal?

It will take years and the city will be a tan­gle of scaf­fold­ing and cranes for years, but it will be worth it.

If you don't be­lieve me, look at Kings Cross in cen­tral Lon­don. For years the haunt of pros­ti­tutes and drug ad­dicts, a waste­land of in­dus­tri­al es­tates, canals and rail­way arch­es.

Af­ter a sev­en-year re­de­vel­op­ment project it is now a swanky area com­bin­ing res­i­den­tial hous­ing, pub­lic squares, eater­ies, the Eu­rostar ter­mi­nal con­nect­ing Lon­don to Paris and Brus­sels and the HQs of Google, the Guardian and the cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts, a mod­ern col­lege con­vert­ed from an old gra­nary build­ing along the canal.

Which goes to show, not every­thing needs to be ripped up. Some of his­to­ry's for­mer glo­ries can even be sal­vaged.

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