Reflection

My classmate, Vanessa Boodoo's blog was very interesting to me, as it is gives a different perspective to what I was speaking about in my blog. Vanessa looked at the other side of the city, behind all the skyscrapers and the flashing lights (things that I primarily focused on in my blog.) My point of view, was that people make these public places so private, and for one of her blog posts, she looked at why these private places were so public to the extent that when taking a beautiful morning stroll and enjoying the scenery, one of the things I must see is a naked vagrant washing his clothes in the water by the Waterfront. Yes, these places are public places, but these scenes really do in fact take away from the beauty and aesthetics of places that are supposed to be pristine. She address the issue of pollution, the many street dwellers we have in Trinidad that seem to be all over the city and the problem of unused space within the city. Overall a great and very interesting post to me and it seems to be the negatives of all the positives I spoke about within the city.
Check out her blog!
Behind City Lights

Another classmate of mine, Nichel Pierre did a blog on the Urban Commercialism that we see everywhere. Nichel goes deep into the issues that contemporary urban communities face such as gentrification, the excess advertising everywhere you turn and one blog entry in particular "Public, Your Private is Showing" that I think is just the most creative and funny way to express a problem that seems to be very common among urban cities. In Nichel's blog she looks at how the urban realm has become about housing and nurturing many companies and businesses and exploiting them to make the maximin profit, because at the end of the day that is all the CBD and the city is about right? Nichel speaks about the occurrence of companies trying to "publicise" the private areas by placing entrance fees and physical barriers. Nichel went in depth with this topic and it was very closely related to mine. A very funny, witty, but straight to the point blog. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Check out her blog!
Urban Commercialism

For my last blog reflection, I decided to look at Terry-Ann Arjoon's blog, The Illusions of an Urban Paradise. Also highlighting the many negative aspects of the city life. I was particularly intrigued by two blog entries in particular, one where she focused on the importance of green spaces within a city and the other where she looked at how the city has changed over the years, looking at how most of the built up areas within the city once upon a time used to be coastline.
She talks about how most of Port of Spain was built on reclaimed land. From the fairly new establishment Movie Towne straight down to the Port and then to South Quay. This is one the main reasons why when we have heavy rains, Port of Spain is one of the first places in Trinidad to flood. All contractors did was fill the river or body of water with sediment and that is a big problem today.  Green spaces within the city have environmental, economic, social and many health benefits. I think sooner than later we will be seeing many contraction companies and urban planning companies creating buildings with many green spaces in an around the area. In addition to greatly assisting the environment, it will increase the aesthetics of the area and make it more friendly and serene, rather than having all this cold, harsh glass staring at you. It would really make the city a 'concrete jungle' where ever you go. Not just New York.
Check out her blog!
Illusions of an Urban Paradise.