Legitimately Urban

“But look what we have built... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace”- Jane Jacobs

                The above photo depicts multi-storey rented apartments located on upper Charlotte Street, Port of Spain. Urbanization of the city has attracted a number of migrants seeking greater opportunities, particularly with regard to education, health care and social life. Therefore, many locals, predominantly low-income groups, desire city housing for easy access in and out of the city, without the need for vehicular transport. Moreover, according to Richard Florida, the “creative class”, including artists, engineers, musicians and designers tend to prefer the dense, sociable nature of urban living (Zack, 2014).

However, the capacity of the city and its ability to accommodate this influx of people poses a problem as space in the city is largely limited. As such, the government of T&T, through the Housing Development Corporation (HDC), constructed several multi-storey apartment complexes in an attempt to provide sufficient housing for city dwellers. It also simultaneously provides low-cost housing for citizens, which the government hoped could replace squatter and slum settlements. Due to the limited government housing projects within the city coupled with the ever-expanding influx of potential residents, private individuals have also taken the initiative to develop of multi-storey apartments in an attempt to generate profits. This is in keeping with the theory of Marxism (Cunningham Wood, 1993) whereby the Bourgeoisie i.e. upper classes who own land within the city will continue to exploit the proletariat i.e. wage-earning tenants by renting apartments at high, exploitative prices. This, in turn, leads to a culture of poverty, similar to what was discussed in my previous post, which can generate status frustration (Cook, 2012). As a result of this stress, individuals may engage in negative activities such as crime and domestic violence. Moreover, the close proximity of tenants to surrounding neighbours also results in a lack of personal privacy (Gazeley and Newell, 2009) and allows the practice of negative activities to be spread and immersed into the socialization of the area. Thus, the formation of gangs is easily facilitated as juveniles are recruited from a young age when left unsupervised, as parents may be employed in one or multiple jobs. Therefore, a delinquent subculture may arise and the morals, in addition to the value system of young apartment inhabitants may be skewed. As such, the development of multi-storey complexes can be seen as a two edged sword as they concurrently combat the problem of a shortage of housing in urban cities, yet perpetuate capitalism and harbour negative subcultures.

References:

 Cook, Sam. 2012. "Subcultural Theories." Revise Sociology. Last modified May 12, 2012. http://revisesociology.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/3-subcultural-theories/.

Gazeley, Ian, and Andrew Newell. 2009. "No Room to Live: Urban Overcrowding in Edwardian Britain." Last modified June, 2009. http://ftp.iza.org/dp4209.pdf.

Wood, John Cunningham. 1993. Karl Marx's Economics: Critical Assessments : Second Series. London: Routledge.

Zack, Dan. 2014. "Housing shortage or urbanism shortage? | Better! Cities & Towns Online." Cities & Towns Online. Last modified February 18, 2014. http://bettercities.net/news-opinion/blogs/dan-zack/20965/housing-shortage-or-urbanism-shortage.