Global Culture and Port of Spain

Office building located next to the Hyatt Regency, Downtown POS.

In order to understand the manner in which culture develops one should know that culture exists on a range of scales. In other words, culture occurs on various local, regional, national and global scales in different countries. This is interesting because it allows us to see that there is a complex link between cultural divesity and the spatiality of culture with respect to geographic area (scale) or location (Hall and Barrett 2012).

The photo above depicts what is to me a very important aspect of Port-of-Spain's global culture. This building is an excellent representation of modern architecture that was adopted from the modern/international cities that are continuously in contact with Trinidad, for example England, America and Canada. Given the fact that several of the persons involved in the construction of corporate and commercial buildings in POS are usually from the countries listed previously, it is easy to understand why the urban lanscape of POS is beginning to resemble that of modern cities. Not to mention the fact that upon interaction with such persons Trinidadian locals quickly adopt their behaviours and attitudes toward everyday life and the world of work. This occurs mainly because those global cultures are percieved to be 'first world' and 'highly developed' in comparison to the 'third world' and 'developing' status with which Caribbean countries have been labelled. In the future there will be several more buildings like the one in the photograph in the city of POS as the country continues to strive toward becoming fully developed.

Another important point to consider is the fact that the spaces within and around such buildings will become the breeding grounds for more globally influenced cultural activities and even locally influenced cultural activities. This is evident in and around the office building in the photograph. An example of a significant globally influenced cultural activity that took place within the spaces around the building was the 5th Summit of the Americas in 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Trinidad. The Summit of the Americas is a continuing summit that brings together the political leaders of North America, South America, Central America and the Caribbean to discuss and find solutions to a variety of issues affecting the western hemisphere. This event had a tremendous impact on the city of POS because the government of Trinidad and Tobago invested unmentionable sums of money into the infrastructural development of the city in preparation for the event e.g. paving of roads, construction of the Hyatt Waterfront etc. The event also paved the way for local cultural activities to take place in the form of displays and performances that brought Trinidadian culture to the global forefront.This shows how much of an impact global culture has on the form and structure of cities, not only with respect to infrastructural developments but also cultural developments on a local scale.