This 2009 article reported that Jamaica was launching a 10-year program to revitalize its capital city, Kingston.
REVITALIZATION readers familiar with the outcomes of this program, and the current state of the city, are invited use the Comments section below to share their insights.
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Gang-related violence has plagued Kingston, Jamaica’s so-called garrison communities since the 1970s, and the country’s high murder rate, though it almost never affects tourists, is a potent deterrent.
But new developments, high-end amenities and a cosmopolitan vibe are poised to change Kingston’s public face — and to drive home a point: bypassing Jamaica’s vibrant, culturally rich, music-soaked capital city is like taking a grand tour of America and skipping New York.
The Jamaican government is invested in making that point, having begun a 10-year revitalization plan last year for a place that, with upward of 700,000 residents, is the largest English-speaking city in the Americas south of Miami.
The current makeover has its roots in the 1960s, when a developing reggae industry offered the potential for revenue that, civic leaders feared, would be undermined by the city’s urban blight. Renovations were slow to be made, though, so the 2008 Urban Development Corporation plan is far-reaching.
Development incentive packages and public investment programs are scheduled to produce new government buildings, a 200-room hotel and conference center and a number of city parks, among other things.
Thus far, many of the city’s noteworthy new offerings, including Pure and the Spanish Court, are in tourist-friendly New Kingston, a triangular area whose skyscrapers and strip-mall-like boulevards have the feel of Anycity, U.S.A. Surrounding New Kingston, the city is divided, broadly speaking, into “uptown” and “downtown,” which are not so much indicators of geography as of class.
Like Los Angeles, Kingston is a car-friendly sprawl where the wealth gap is baldly visible.
Uniting uptown and downtown, though, is music.