On May 26, po­lice of­fi­cers served "show cause" no­tices on 100 shacks built on King's Wharf, no­ti­fy­ing their in­hab­i­tants of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion's in­tent to de­mol­ish the struc­tures.The re­sponse was both im­me­di­ate and pre­dictable. Res­i­dents of the shacks burned tyres in protest and an­nounced that they were not mov­ing.On Fri­day, many res­i­dents had re­spond­ed more for­mal­ly to the cor­po­ra­tion, ar­gu­ing their needs.

It's on­ly the lat­est round of ef­forts by the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion to deal with the long-stand­ing shan­ty of hous­es and fish­er­men's struc­tures at the wharf that it needs to move to re­ha­bil­i­tate that part of the city.It's not the first time that the squat­ters have faced a chal­lenge from the City Cor­po­ra­tion. For­mer may­or Ger­ard Fer­reira re­lo­cat­ed some dur­ing his time in of­fice, but some re­mained, and new squat­ters have since moved in.

This time, how­ev­er, the show­down is not sim­ply about elim­i­nat­ing the pres­ence of an eye­sore and known haven for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.The San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion is mov­ing to im­ple­ment the first phase of its long over­due San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Beau­ti­fi­ca­tion Project, which will bring a board­walk, restau­rant and oth­er en­hance­ments to the area.

This will be an im­por­tant change to the wa­ter­front, a long ne­glect­ed space that has the po­ten­tial to open the per­cep­tion of con­ges­tion in San Fer­nan­do's heav­i­ly-built and well-pa­tro­n­ised city cen­tre.The po­ten­tial crime threat at the ex­ist­ing wa­ter­front slum was made clear dur­ing the State of Emer­gency of 2011 when a raid turned up drugs and firearms.

Clear­ly, King's Wharf has long been over­due for re­think­ing, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and re­con­struc­tion, but those plans, three decades in the mak­ing, must ac­knowl­edge the evo­lu­tion of the space and its cur­rent use as well as the cor­po­ra­tion's plans for its fu­ture.Any se­ri­ous ef­fort to re­ha­bil­i­tate a part of San Fer­nan­do that's as ex­pan­sive as well as po­ten­tial­ly im­por­tant to the city as its coastal front­line must con­sid­er what those who live and work in the space want while cre­at­ing an as­pi­ra­tional ar­chi­tec­ture for its fu­ture growth.

At least part of that de­sign plan­ning must ac­knowl­edge the his­tor­i­cal im­por­tance of fish­ing at King's Wharf. The fish­er­men who re­spond­ed to the no­tices plead­ed to be in­clud­ed in the fu­ture of the de­vel­op­ment.

Port-of-Spain's wa­ter­front, which was once pri­mar­i­ly fo­cused on ship­ping, now in­cor­po­rates up­scale ho­tels as well as pub­lic walk spaces that have been en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly em­braced by the pub­lic. While there re­main con­cerns about the con­struc­tion of the Port-of-Spain wa­ter­front project, pri­mar­i­ly unan­swered fi­nan­cial and pro­cure­ment mat­ters, there is ex­am­ple in the im­pact of that re­fur­bish­ment to guide the think­ing on the San Fer­nan­do re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

The San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion should re­view the re­spons­es to its no­tices care­ful­ly. Many of them will be re­quests for re­lo­ca­tion, but among them will be the col­lec­tive wis­dom of peo­ple who have lived in that space and un­der­stand its char­ac­ter.

What's need­ed at King's Wharf is not a repli­ca­tion of Port-of-Spain's wa­ter­front, but some­thing that re­flects the char­ac­ter and his­to­ry of that unique space. The plan­ning for the San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Project must both meet the city's prac­ti­cal needs while ac­cept­ing the chal­lenge to in­spire re­lax­ation and re­flec­tion.