The City of New Providence
by Simon
Nassau is often used as a shortcut or synecdoche for New Providence. There is a logic and history behind this: For most of its history the majority of its residents lived in the City of Nassau and its immediate environs. Understandably, they more easily identified with the town in which they lived rather than the expanse beyond the actual and imagined town-limits.
We call residents of Nassau, Nassuvians. Yet, unlike Abaconians, Cat Islanders and Inaguans, what is the demonym for those of us who live at New Providence?
During the 20th century the population of Nassau climbed significantly through a combination of high birth rates among Bahamians and an influx of immigrants from Haiti who also tended to have high birth rates. The influx of Family Islanders also boosted the capital island’s numbers.
Beginning around the middle of the last century, the mutual forces of majority rule and black economic empowerment ignited an urban expansion. With considerable rapidity, the majority of the island’s population shifted beyond Nassau.
Urbanization has engendered many benefits as well as significant challenges for New Providence. These varied challenges include ongoing infrastructural needs in the areas of housing, ground transportation networks, public services and facilities, and reliable utilities, among others.
There are also a complex of sociological challenges including increased crime and violence, social alienation by some and the changing nature of social networks such as neighbourhoods. The environmental and health challenges related to urbanization are also significant.
What we are continuing to get our hands and collective imagination around are a broad variety of interrelated challenges cum master questions. The questions have been provoked by the transition from the City of Nassau to the City of New Providence, a geographical reality and an idea that is coming of age. To face the challenges of urban development, design and renewal, we have to think and plan in terms of an extended city.
URBAN ADVENTURE
A fitting metaphor for this transition is those motorists on New Providence’s roads who drive at a pace more appropriate to some of our more leisurely Family Islands. We can extend the metaphor to those who recklessly go way beyond the speed limit.
Our task is to get the speed and tempo of New Providence right, maintaining much of an island flavour and the capital island’s historic identity while embracing necessary change. In this urban adventure we might borrow a question from I.M. Pei, one of the masters of modern architecture: “Can we make the past serve the present?”
The journey from Carmichael to Saunder’s Beach may now take as little as 15 minutes courtesy of the new road corridor connecting north to south. Many residents from the eastern end of the island commute daily to jobs on the western end and vice versa.
This road network is one of many networks, which, over several decades resulted in New Providence developing into a highly integrated city. This integration will continue to intensify. It will do so in ways not immediately expected.
Even as more of their grandparents and parents retire to the Family Islands, a younger generation of Bahamians, excited about city living, will imagine, design and build the City of New Providence.
Their enthusiasm will extend to Nassau, Over-the-Hill and areas such as Chippingham and the Fort Hill. They will be joined by Bahamians returning home, who, after living abroad, often in cities, may find city living in Nassau more to their taste.
All of these city enthusiasts will not only play and recreate in downtown Nassau’s hotspots, restaurants and other entertainment venues. They will also begin to live in apartments, condos and cooperatives in historic Nassau and its environs.
Imagine, a group of young Bahamian professionals investing in a cooperative housing development somewhere in historic Nassau and its environs. Of course, this gentrification will be driven by more than a passion for city living. It will also be driven by economics, by supply and demand.
As prices continue to climb for suburban property and the amount of that land decreases, younger Bahamians will look to available land in unexpected areas. This will carry over to long-term investments, with younger Bahamians buying real estate in currently lower income areas of New Providence. Over time a number of these areas will be redeveloped.
COMMUNITY GARDENS
As we only have so much land at New Providence, we will have to think creatively about how it is developed over time. Critical to that development is the use of urban design to respond to two long-term challenges: crime and urban poverty.
Of course, these challenges will require a myriad of responses from economic empowerment to education. But, the way we refashion and redesign New Providence will make an enormous difference.
Take for example the idea of community gardens. Not only do they provide open green spaces, they also have the potential to renew community life while providing young people opportunities for positive alternative activities.
What if, for example, the government made available to a community association part of the large track of land east of Market Street where City Market once had a store?
The idea would be to use the allocated space as a community garden, where residents from Grant’s Town and Bain Town might grow vegetables and other produce for their own consumption and possibly for sale. Students form C.R. Walker may also be granted some space for that school’s agricultural programme.
Similarly, space for community gardens throughout New Providence may have various beneficial effects. So might land set aside for the development of community centres. These centres would host a variety of functions, including space for the development of local government councils and community development associations.
OPEN SPACES
The centres may also host a broad variety of activities related to the arts, youth development, health and well-being, after-school homework and mentoring programmes and parenting classes, among others.
Of course, all of the aforementioned would have to be properly conceptualized and managed. But if we are interested in genuine urban development and community renewal the way we build will help to determine what we build in terms of community life and a shared future.
Our multifaceted approach to crime and violence will have to include preventing such crime, including through various social programmes and alternative sentencing avenues. These programmes need space in our urban landscape, both imaginative and physical.
Despite the number of gated communities we have built, crime has not abated, and we all remain at risk even in some of the supposedly securer areas of New Providence. In that light, in addition to our protective fortresses, we may consider also using open spaces and community gathering places as crime prevention measures.
The contours of the new City of New Providence are emerging. It will include a blend of historic Nassau and the concept of town centres built during a previous administration of Prime Minister Ingraham. It will also include the unprecedented infrastructural investment undertaken by the current Ingraham administration.
As importantly, it will include the reimagining of New Providence by its residents inclusive of various community-based groups, artists and businesses, all working to fashion at New Providence a city with an outstanding quality of life. If we work hard at it, that quality of life will make New Providence one of the more liveable, coolest, funkiest, and safest cities in the Caribbean.
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