My Thoughts, My Reflections, My Ending

HOW IT ALL BEGAN...............

This blog was assigned to me and my course-mates by my Geography lecturer, Dr. Priya Kisoon, as a part of the assessment for one of our Geography core courses, Urban Geography (GEOG 2007) at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad. Dr. Kisoon has truly been an inspiration to me and if it wasn't for her enthusiasm and constant encouragement to myself and my course colleagues to explore the different aspects of the urban world I probably would have never been able to complete this assignment successfully. I can now state that I am a budding Urban Geographer because of this :)

I decided to focus on the influence that culture has on the city of Port of Spain because culture has always been something that fascinates me. I love learning about how culture changes over space and time and when this blog assignment was given I automatically began to think about the various roles that culture plays in the functioning of cities across the globe. Port of Spain is a city bursting with cultural activities, some of which are not as openly visible to the naked eye like Carnival. Hence the reason I decided to look at some aspects of culture that do not stand out but have a great impact on the nature of the city, especially on its landscape and building designs. Not to mention the fact that it was interesting to see how theories of urban geography seemed to explain what was really happening in Port of Spain and why the city is ever changing. 

I will NEVER forget this experience of an assignment simply because of its highly interactive nature. I had to get up and go out into the field (sometimes unwillingly lol) to take ten photographs to explain my ideas, I had to do some research in order to back up my ideas, I had to incorporate videos and songs into my blog posts in order to further explain my ideas and finally I had to view and comment on a few of my course colleague's blogs to find similarities and contradictions between mine and theirs. In doing the latter I was amazed at how creative and intelligent some of my colleagues are and I wished that I had come up with some of their ideas myself (lol) but like all things in university life this was a learning experience and with their help I was able to understand aspects of urban geography even better than before. So thank you guys all so much! :) 

RELATIONSHIPS AND CONTRADICTIONS

The three students who's blogs I decided to reflect on were Shaniece Mitchell, Sevastar Ramlogan and Neisha Smith.

Shaniece's blog is about mobility in the city and it is entitled, "Travelling in, around and out the city of San Fernando". Initially her blog has absolutely nothing to do with my blog. However, on closer inspection I was able to find a unique and interesting link between mobility in the city and culture. Seeing that I did not focus on mobility in any of my entries her blog came in good handy. Firstly, she did not use Port of Spain as the city of focus and this is one of the major reasons I used her work as well. What stood out to me is the fact that she highlighted forms of mobility in San Fernando that the average person nowadays wouldn't even dream of considering such as pirogues and horse back riding. To me those forms of transportation are highly related to culture especially in Trinidad because they play an important role in the livelihoods (in terms of generating income) of several Trinidadians, namely fishermen and policemen. Fishermen need pirogues in order to fish, while policemen often use horses to patrol and maintain order in the city of Port of Spain and San Fernando during large cultural events e.g. carnival, independence day etc. These ideas truly would have added a nice touch to my blog. Here is the link to Shaniece's blog http://mobilityinsanfernando.blogspot.com/

Sevastar's blog fell a bit more in line with my blog's focus and it is entitled "The Arts of Trinidad's Cities" with emphasis being placed on the aesthetic and artistic side of such cities. This is definitely related to culture in cities. In two of my entries I used the Brian Lara Promenade to explain the topics "Cultural Aura" and "How  Urban Places are Valued". What captured my attention in Sevastar's blog was the fact that he also used the Promenade in one of his entries but to explain something totally different. He stated that the promenade was the country's first Business Improvement District (BID). This term was new and interesting to me! He then went on to explain how the Brian Lara Promenade has created an avenue for urban tourism through Carnival and how it is has also aided in the development of the informal sector e.g. food and art and craft vendors. This just goes to show how the development of urban spaces are heavily promoted and commercialized through culture. In my opinion, this could have also strengthened my blog. Here is the link to Sevestar's blog 

http://urbantriniart.blogspot.com/

Neisha's blog, just like Shaniece's, isn't exactly similar to mine. Her theme was "Urban Sprawls in Trinidad". I did not mention urban sprawl in any of my entries and as a result of this I challenged myself to find links between urban sprawl in Port of Spain and culture with the help of Neisha's creative work. I noticed through studying Neisha's entry on Sustainability that most Trinidadians by nature are law breakers (aspect of our culture). They hardly ever pay attention to warning signs posted by our local regional co-operations (e.g. NO DUMPING) due to the fact that there is a serious problem with law enforcement in the country and they know that the chances of them being fined for their actions are slim to none. Thus leading to serious problems with pollution in and around the city, especially in the areas of Eastern Port of Spain where increasing urban sprawl is actually proliferating the issue. Sprawl in Eastern POS is also strongly related to crime (as mentioned by Neisha). Crime is an unfortunate but very real aspect of Trinidad's culture. If it wasn't for those areas of 'cultural other' as I explained in my second blog entry, a huge chunk of the settlements that help make up the urban landscape of POS wouldn't exist. Again, I believe that including these aspects into my blog would have made it even better. Below is the link to Neisha's blog.
http://urbansprawl1.blogspot.com/

MY ENDING
I do hope that you enjoyed learning about the influences that culture has on the city of POS and that you found it to be a very enlightening experience as I have. I would like to leave you with the simple idea that culture is ever dynamic and without it the world's cities just wouldn't be as vibrant and as mysterious as we know them to be. Thank you for reading!

Sincerely yours,
Danielle :)