What is needed to stem the coming tide?

Oct 04, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,
Guyana may be a good candidate for a new administrative capital. Fire risk, flooding and traffic – a well-known triple-threat in the Georgetown area is costing us dearly. This head-spinning troika unfurls while we continue to make bad decisions such as property development along the Railway Embankment Road, the existence of the ‘conversation tree’ road and others and the absence of a proper attitude toward the modern industry of flood prevention. We like to blame ‘koker men’ for our troubles but I digress! Editor, The New Administrative Capital near Cairo in Egypt intends to solve the congestion problem in the capital by relocating a number of civic buildings and government agencies to a brand new area, planned to include modern facilities and amenities. This mesmerising project has progressed rapidly since it was commissioned in 2015 and its many districts are nearing completion.
In spite of high modern desires, so-called mega-city projects usually do not succeed because they are often times enabled (and even inspired) by overly simplified instruments of legibility (like numbered house lots) that may impose, potentially authoritarian administrative grids on top of cosmically determined things like human communities, nature and the exchanges among them. The needs and destinies of communities come first and the organic way of selecting land for development – through demand-driven interactions and guided by sound planning principles – is shown to lead to maximum utilisation and financial viability. Our brothers in the USA know this all too well. Manhattan, with its many problems for example, is a hotbed of research in all the things we should avoid as city planners. An administrative capital though, in my view, would provide a significant measure of convenience, cost and timesavings for multitudes of government employees and processes while diverting traffic away from Georgetown, allowing for favourable proximity to transit hubs, like the airport and the stellings. Imagine navigating a beautiful walkable campus-like city complete with cafes, eateries, accommodation for foreign guests, residences, places for convening and especially for work places that function as growing temples of insight on the technology of governance. Editor, I believe that this is something that we can pull off. Our people are conscientious and loving, mysteriously diverse and therefore precious. Uniform codifications will not work – we must be lovers of complexity and scale, industrious in our aims and careful about inequality and social ills that tend to surround certain uses of land. Will the cities be built by our people, for our people or will they be built for foreign principalities? Could a New Administrative Capital, small enough to be possible, large enough to be impactful, be just the thing we need to stem the coming tide?
Sincerely,
Emille Giddings

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