Feature Address at BITS 2005 Lunch - M.Fifi of HCL

[NarendZORCE]

Heavy reading for some but an excellent synopsis, Scully was also there to hear this speech at the BITS luncheon. Special thanks must go to Brian Stollmeyer for his assistance in obtaining this information:

Address by:
MICHAEL A FIFI
Managing Director/CEO
HCL Group of Companies

BITS 2005 � Building & Interiors Trade Show
Luncheon
Saturday 8th October, 2005
Centre of Excellence
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Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I would first of all like to congratulate the promoters and organisers of BITS 2005 for their excellent effort in putting on a show which can be considered to be of an international standard.

We in the business sector, and in this case, those of us with specific interest in the building sector, should encourage this type of effort which allows us not only to promote our products and skills nationally and internationally, but also gives us an opportunity to hold discussions with each other on the subject of new products, techniques, skills, problems and solutions.

I would also like to thank the organisers of BITS for allowing me to speak to you this afternoon at your luncheon. I sincerely hope that what I have on the menu for you will stimulate and assist the digestion.

I choose to speak today, rather briefly, on a subject which hopefully is one which is topical not only to the special focus of the companies that I head � the HCL Group � a community developer, but one which I feel is also very relevant, indeed central, to the quality of life of everyone present � our urban and residential environments.

This afternoon I would like to raise, and forgive me if sometimes they seem disjointed, some of the major issues and problems affecting the quality of life of our communities, with special reference to our urban areas, and to indicate what and whose action I feel is needed to deal effectively with some of them.
Finally, I would briefly like to refer to some of the work that our company is doing and to show how we, in our small way, are attempting to come to grips with some of these problems by offering alternatives or as we say �Quality Solutions for Community Living�.

I understand that there will be a field trip after lunch for those interested in visiting our Millennium Development at Trincity. A similar visit to One Woodbrook Place can also be organised for those interested.

Ladies and Gentlemen, today we know that the majority of our population (approximately 75%) live in urban or suburban communities with the majority of them (65%) living in a dense conurbation stretching continuously for twenty odd miles from Carenage in the West to Arima in the East � this we refer to as the East-West Corridor. The remainder live in smaller but sometimes dense settlements in Caroni � Chaguanas/Couva, San Fernando, Princes Town/Rio Claro, Penal/Dibe, Fyzabad, Siparia, Pt Fortin.

We are indeed an urban nation.

We also know that we have a strong concentration, in fact to my mind, over-concentration of employment within our capital city of Port of Spain, and a very high level of facilities and utilities within this same area. Unfortunately, time does not permit me to go more deeply into the demographic and other physical characteristics of our urban landscape.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we also know quite clearly what contributes to quality community living. Simply put, as every community and town planner knows, the human unit, whether it be individual or family, needs certain functional requirements to enjoy a good quality lifestyle �

1. Shelter or a home in which to live supplied with an adequate level of utilities � water, sewer, electricity and today, communications � telephone, Internet. This house should be structurally sound, well laid out, and aesthetically pleasing.

2. Recreation � adequate facilities to recreate inclusive of sporting facilities.

3. Employment - a convenient place to work in order to gain a livelihood to support oneself at an adequate standard.

4. Shopping � adequate retail establishments to provide the home with the necessities for living.

5. Entertainment � adequate facilities to provide entertainment to the residents and for cultural development.

6. Education � an adequate number of good schools providing educational development at all levels. It is of interest to note that the single most important reason for the American family homeowner to buy in a particular location is based on the availability of quality education.

7. Social and Religious Facilities catering to the � social, cultural and religious demands of the community.

And all of these functions properly interconnected and accessed by an efficient network of roads and transportation systems, and supported with a good system of national and international communications.

And last but not least, especially today, a HIGH LEVEL OF SECURITY.

In fact, ladies and gentlemen, the United Nations, in its Standards for Proper Housing Environments, gives us a list of the relevant levels of service within each of these areas which must apply if we are to consider our communities as achieving �developed country status�. The relevance of this in the country�s Vision 20/20 quest must be obvious.

Having said this, let us examine the reality of our community environments in Trinidad and Tobago. These are characterised by :

1. Poor conceptualisation and planning
At a general level, communities are planned in an ad-hoc manner, unguided by any enlightened Vision and uninformed by any contextual master plan for the wider community.
Additionally, because of this lack of a wider framework, and because of the small scale of the average development, it is difficult for developers and the agencies to properly provide or schedule, in a timely fashion, adequate facilities and sometimes major utility infrastructure.

At a more detailed level also, layouts are poorly designed and infrastructural standards and land use concepts deficient.

2. Poor Building Unit Design
Unit design which very often is unprofessional in their aesthetics, internal layout and structural standards.

3. Inadequate Levels of Utilities and Facilities
A general mismatch very often between demand for facilities and the supply.

4. Poor Communication and Transportation leading to major congestion and time lost in travelling.

5. Poor Levels of Community Management and Maintenance

6. High and Increasing Incidents of Crime arising out of poor policing of communities.

In the main, the problems arise from �

1. A lack at the highest level � the National and Local Government Levels � of an enlightened Vision for the Urban and Community Development of Trinidad.
And arising out of this a Master Plan complete with development standards to inform and guide the public and private sectors in the physical development of the country.

This plan should obviously be approved by the population of Trinidad and Tobago.

All of this is provided for in the Town and Country Planning Act. What is needed is action.

At our highest levels of physical planning in the country, the emphasis is on Development Control or the Control of Development. The irony is that there is no approved set of principles or plans which informs this control. The cart has been put before the horse and hence the descent into �ad-hocracy�.

Additionally, clear cut mechanisms and structures for implementation should be set up at local Government and other levels with provision for the inclusion of the private sector in this. This is the way the system operates in developed countries.

2. The lack of involvement by the private sector professionals in community and housing design. There is a distinct bias among our T&T design professionals against housing and community design. It appears that the glamour and fees of the large urban office jobs deflects most talent away from housing design, with obvious effects.

3. A lack of a cadre of professional large scale developers who are in the business professionally for the long haul and who are willing to stake their future on a high standard and quality of work.

4. Weak local government and central government bodies incapable of providing the necessary facilities at the times required � education, major roads, etc, and incapable, or unwilling, to negotiate this out to the private sector.

5. Poor levels of discipline by developers and control by the statutory authorities over developers or individuals who breach standards with impunity.

6. General indifference by the business community (in fact, sometimes connivance might be the better word) to poor standards of design and development. For instance the community of Port of Spain and elsewhere is already blighted by numerous building and sub-divisions developed sometimes by businessmen, or so they are referred to, built to atrocious aesthetic and other standards � offending, dysfunctional land use, poor or no parking, inadequate development standards.

The question of �corruption� amongst the business community must be recognised and addressed if we are to save this situation.
At this stage, I would like to move from the micro-level of our residential and urban communities and deal with some issues relating to the unattended negative forces at work within our general urban systems and within our capital city of Port of Spain, in particular. These forces, as I will show, do create certain problems which impact very negatively on the quality of life of our citizens.

At the general level, the over-concentration of employment opportunities in to Port of Spain, and the suburbanisation of our residential population out of Port of Spain into dormitory settlements, has led to a very dysfunctional system in which we have illogically moved our place of work well away from our residential areas, resulting in major traffic congestion at great economic costs both in terms of time lost and expensive highway construction and maintenance.

The city of Port of Spain has dwindled from a population of over 110,000 persons in 1970 to less than 50,000 persons today. Yet, we continue, the Government and the private sector, to displace the residential population in Port of Spain out, and businesses in.

At present, over 40 office buildings are planned � with many already under construction � for the Port of Spain area. This will add another two to three million square feet to Port of Spain. The implications for additional employment pull are obvious.

Not one major residential development � apart from our own One Woodbrook Place � is planned for the city.

Likewise, in the suburbs to the East where our dormitory populations reside, no major commercial buildings are planned consistent with the scale of what is going on in Port of Spain.

The implications are OBVIOUS.
Traffic jams and more congestion.
Flyovers and more flyovers, more money wasted.

I still remember my professors� warning at Planning School that building highways do not solve traffic jams. Proper land use planning does.
We would do well to listen to this advice.

Additionally, our cities in general and Port of Spain in particular, contain at present, the highest levels of employment, facilities and utilities, and hence, are really the least-cost, most efficient places at this time to house our residential populations.

At another level, also within the Port of Spain structure, permanent damage is being done by the rapacious forces of both Government and the private sector, uncontrolled and unguarded by the inaction and lack of foresight of a planning department which permits some of our best city residential environments to be taken over by business � the Savannah, the once elegant residential areas of uptown and St Clair, Woodbrook, St James - to name a few. What should be happening should be the opposite. We should be intensifying residential use in these areas and encouraging at least mixed-use development.

In conclusion, our thesis is that we should be effecting a policy which brings balance back into our urban structure. Residential populations should be taken back into central cities and employment facilities should be taken into the dormitory suburbs. And our new communities should be planned with a proper mix of facilities emphasizing convenience for the residents, less travel and quality lifestyle. This is the New Urbanism.

The HCL Group has built this philosophy into its approach to community development and today, we can proudly demonstrate through our two major projects and numerous others on the drawing board or at other stages of completion, our commitment to this idea which does produce quality environments where the population can enjoy quality lifestyles.

[NarendZORCE]

BITS 2006 starts today 12:30pm @ Centre of Excellence Macoya...

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[Plex]

this looks interesting..