There is an in­ter­est­ing talk on the TED (Tech­nol­o­gy, En­ter­tain­ment and De­sign) Web site called "A new vi­sion for re­build­ing De­troit," de­liv­ered by Toni Grif­fin, an Amer­i­can ur­ban plan­ner and ar­chi­tect.Whilst the de­tails are spe­cif­ic to De­troit, there are par­al­lels with some of the chal­lenges faced in the ma­jor ur­ban cen­tres of T&T. Of par­tic­u­lar rel­e­vance is what can be learned from the process fol­lowed in De­troit.

The text de­scrib­ing the talk states: "Once the pow­er­house of Amer­i­ca's in­dus­tri­al might, De­troit is more re­cent­ly known in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion as a fab­u­lous ru­in, crum­bling and bank­rupt."De­troit in 2010 was de­scribed as a city in cri­sis, with a hous­ing and an au­to in­dus­try col­lapse, sig­nif­i­cant pop­u­la­tion loss and ur­ban jus­tice is­sues re­lat­ing to eq­ui­ty, in­clu­sion and ac­cess. This was the back­drop against which a city-wide plan­ning process was em­barked up­on to cre­ate a shared vi­sion for the fu­ture of De­troit.

The first stage com­prised a se­ries of com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings to in­tro­duce the plan­ning process. In the ques­tion and an­swer ses­sions, what emerged was the gap be­tween the in­ten­tions of those in­volved in the process, and the un­der­stand­ing of what the process was about on the side of the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion who were to be its ul­ti­mate ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

This un­der­lined the need for those spear­head­ing the ini­tia­tive to lis­ten and un­der­stand the needs of the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion. This was crit­i­cal for un­der­stand­ing their his­to­ry, ex­pe­ri­ences, fears, wants and po­ten­tial in­puts and con­tri­bu­tions to the suc­cess of the ini­tia­tive.Through­out the plan­ning process, which start­ed in 2010, there was an aware­ness of the fol­low­ing:

�2 The need for job cre­ation

�2 Ac­cep­tance that land use was go­ing to change

�2 The op­por­tu­ni­ty to match lo­cal labour force skills with land use change

In 2013, the De­troit Fu­ture City Plan was re­leased. Whilst it was ground­ed in an un­der­stand­ing of the his­to­ry of De­troit and its peo­ple, the plan fo­cused on what could be. It con­sid­ered new ways of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and growth, new forms of land use, re­or­gan­ised in­fra­struc­ture and height­ened ca­pac­i­ty for de­ci­sion mak­ing by lo­cal lead­ers.

In T&T, the cities of Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do are fac­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges–they ex­pe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant pop­u­la­tion loss­es of 24.4 and 11.9 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly, from 2000-2011.So what are the lessons for our na­tion?

1. Have a clear grasp of the start­ing point. A thor­ough and ac­cu­rate as­sess­ment of "what is" is crit­i­cal for mov­ing for­ward in a new di­rec­tion. As part of this, it is crit­i­cal to un­der­stand the re­la­tion­ships and in­ter-re­la­tion­ships be­tween dif­fer­ent and seem­ing­ly sep­a­rate ar­eas and is­sues.

2. Mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment with the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion. At lo­cal events, there is of­ten the cry of "con­sul­ta­tion fa­tigue." Par­tic­i­pants point out that they go to con­sul­ta­tion af­ter con­sul­ta­tion, say the same thing again and again, and it goes nowhere. Al­so, they feel that they are in­volved in the process at too late a stage i.e. when de­ci­sions have al­ready been tak­en, as op­posed to com­ing in at the start when they feel they might have a greater in­put in­to the fi­nal out­come. With­out ef­fec­tive en­gage­ment and har­ness­ing of lo­cal ex­pe­ri­ence, knowl­edge and po­ten­tial, both in terms of its tim­ing and ap­proach, change man­age­ment runs the risk of be­ing at best un­suc­cess­ful and su­per­fi­cial, and at worst, alien­at­ing those it is meant to ben­e­fit.

3. The process of change takes time. Plans for bring­ing about fun­da­men­tal change can­not be drawn up or im­ple­ment­ed overnight. Lo­cal ini­tia­tives are all too of­ten rushed through at the end of a fi­nan­cial year when there is still mon­ey in the bud­get to be spent. Or else there is fear and scep­ti­cism that far reach­ing ini­tia­tives will not sur­vive a change in ad­min­is­tra­tion.

4. Build on ex­ist­ing suc­cess. There are many things that we do well in T&T. We are an en­ter­pris­ing and cre­ative peo­ple and our tal­ents de­serve to be recog­nised and har­nessed ef­fec­tive­ly. If lo­cal strengths are prop­er­ly nur­tured and sup­port­ed as build­ing blocks, the de­vel­op­ment of in­dige­nous so­lu­tions is like­ly to be more sus­tain­able and last­ing than im­ports.

5. Im­ple­men­ta­tion is crit­i­cal. Whilst im­pres­sive plans sound good, un­less the means for their im­ple­men­ta­tion are prop­er­ly un­der­stood, the ap­pro­pri­ate stake­hold­ers iden­ti­fied and em­pow­ered and the mech­a­nisms for their ap­pli­ca­tion are put in place, they will sim­ply gath­er dust on shelves, as has hap­pened be­fore.

Grif­fin end­ed her talk by ac­knowl­edg­ing that "there are very im­por­tant peo­ple, busi­ness and land as­sets in De­troit and there are re­al op­por­tu­ni­ties there. So while De­troit might not be what it was, De­troit will not die."Whilst our ur­ban cen­tres may not die, we do have a choice as to how we move for­ward.