Public
consultation is a statutory requirement for plan preparation. In pursuance of that intention and to meet
the dictates of the current legislation, stakeholder consultation and a public
meeting presentation were included in the Conceptual Plan exercise for Port
of Spain. In the light of the experience
gained and in furtherance of the intent of the proposed legislation to devolve
development planning to the local area jurisdiction, a greater level of relevant
community participation will be applied to this Port of Spain Area Plan.
In
this context, a Local Area Planning Committee will be established. It will involve and preferably be led by the
principal Local Government Authority for the area, the Port of Spain City
Corporation and will include key stakeholders and agencies including representation
for the other affected regional corporations – Diego Martin and San Juan/Laventille.
The consultation will be managed by the (Interim) Physical Planning
Commission and will use the Interim Report of this Port of Spain Area Plan
as the basis for discussion.
The
Committee will identify all the key agencies and major stakeholders that affect
the physical development of Port of Spain as well as non-government organisations
(NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOS) that can be determined by
special interests, issues and problems as well as geographical districts.
A
schedule of individual or group discussion meetings will be prepared and held
at which relevant aspects of the Interim Report will be presented and explained
and in which appropriate issues and problems will be debated.
Recommendations,
ideas and suggestions will be collated and the Area Committee will co-ordinate
the views and put together a summary of the results of the individual consultation.
This
summary will then form the basis for a seminar/symposium/meeting at which
the public, groups and interested parties could participate in order to achieve
as much of a consensus as possible on the contentious issues.
Decisions
will arise from this final public consultation/ symposium which will inform
the Draft Final Area Plan.
The
local planning team will to the extent of their contribution to the plans
take part in the exercise of individual consultation and public symposium
and would assist in formulating the amendments where necessary to the Interim
Report.
The
process will begin in January and will spread in time during the first quarter
of the year dependent on the extent of individual consultation required and
on the judgement needed to make this attempt of meaningful community participation
as effective as possible.
In due course a variety of implementation mechanisms
are likely to be required for this Local Area Plan following the consultation
process outlined below . These include:
Government can establish a series of zones for
development action and can describe them as designated Protection or Action
Areas, Special Development Areas and the like.
Designated Action Areas can be ones which are to be re-developed due
to urban blight, rural deprivation, application of new technology to processing,
establishment of a new port or a new urban center.
A
Housing Action Area can be one that suffers from anomie and requires some
specific attention. An area with a concentration of material and spiritual
poverty and thus a high rate of unemployment, crime, teenage pregnancy, school
dropout rate, and other behaviour that the Society finds unacceptable can
be so designated. Special Development
Areas are those for which a special activity or set of activities are to be
encouraged based on peculiar or unique characteristics. They may be waterfront redevelopment areas,
historic city quarters or cultural centres. They are areas that have some
intrinsic value, which is seen as worthy of conservation, or need to accommodate
a different use by rehabilitating to enhance city value.
The
State can and should establish a number of instruments to meet the range of
development issues identified and these are discussed later. A number of incentives should be established
and should take effect within some specified time when the State declares
an area a “designated development zone”, a “housing action area”, or a “special
use area”. Some of these policies;
which have been successfully utilized to turn around aging and derelict areas
of cities, water fronts and played out quarries and mines in other parts of
the world; should be reviewed and adopted (with modification of course) to
meet the local conditions in Greater Port of Spain.
Indeed,
the use of new and novel technology, generating new employment and training,
introduction of special programs to socialize youths and service the elderly,
undertaking mixed use development of recreational, residential, performing
and visual arts and commercial, are all activities which can be provided incentives
including tax deduction, grant funds, low interest loans and the like. As well, the old planning gains approach should
be reviewed and applied as a mechanism to direct new development activities
or re-direct old ones like re-populating an area of the city, encouraging
greater use intensity or simply directing activities away from areas of tremendous
growth.
Along
with the instruments to facilitate development are the commitments to engage
the residents as both beneficiaries and participants in their own development.
This requires a willingness to organize planning and implementation
schedules within the context of the community’s or residents’ own learning
curve. They too, need to understand the process and to appreciate the nuances
of the alternative solutions recommended by them or others.
While it is not being advocated that the planning
agency goes to the community with a blank sheet of paper, it is clear that
the solutions cannot be so finely detailed that participation becomes listening
to and querying solutions by others to be imposed from outside.
These come in a variety of forms
, the more popular of which are identified below.
Development
Control Standards
Use
of traditional development control standards such as minimum plot size, minimum
building setbacks, maximum building height and minimum parking requirements
provide a formulaic approach to facilitating development. Such standards are
not always successful in encouraging creativity or innovative solutions for
problem sites. They can however provide some certainty for developers on scale
and bulk permitted on a site.
Performance Criteria
The use of performance criteria rather than standards
is a more proactive way of guiding development. Performance criteria use aims,
objectives and guidelines to encourage development. Criteria can include influencing bulk and scale
by policies to protect strategic views, ensure new development respects overall
scale of the area and addresses streetscape and accessibility factors.
Density criteria can be used such as floor space areas but these should
allow bonuses to be achieved if other performance criteria are met (for example
allowing additional floorspace for accentuating gateway sites, or for achieving
community facilities within a development).
Parking Standards
Parking standards can also be addressed by performance
criteria such that a maximum level of parking is provided on site rather than
a minimum. Mechanisms to obtain planning obligations for parking provision
is also suggested as discussed below. Performance criteria can be assisted by the use of Development briefs
for specific sites or areas.
Development Briefs
Development briefs should be provided for key
redevelopment sites (e.g. for the area west of George Street, the vacant site
on South Quay, the group of vacant sites to the west of Richmond Street and
the gaol site). Development briefs
are particularly useful for complex sites which are affected by a number of
different planning policies or where there are conflicts over use and expectations
by other government bodies. Such briefs can clarify policy and expectations,
stimulate developer interest by identifying measures to overcome development
constraints and provide specific guidance on making best use of a site given
its location and surroundings.
Briefs typically prioritise key elements of the
sites, identify opportunities and constraints, ensure performance criteria
specified are relevant to the key issues, give an indication of the uses considered
appropriate for the sites/s, and provide a viability statement for the use
and floorspace likely to be achieved given the performance criteria. Such
documents can remove some of the risk for potential developers by clearly
indicating governmental support for certain forms of development. They improve the efficiency of the planning
and development process by reducing uncertainty and improve the quality of
the development by interpreting planning and wider government policy.
Mixed Use Guidelines/Urban Design Guides
Guidelines for mixed-use development are also
suggested. These guidelines should give worked examples which address issues
such as site consolidation, access and parking, use of communal open space,
urban design guidance on scale and density, internal building access and security
ideas for vertical mixed use developments as well as maximising densities
for more horizontal forms of development.
Other guideline documents should be considered
such as urban design guidance on building design, townscape elements, encouraging
diversity of building form but respecting townscape features, legibility particularly
for pedestrian movement and techniques for dealing with gateway sites and
corner sites. Parking guidelines should also be addressed. Restricting parking
on sites can assist in making best use of developable area, facilitate dual
use of sites (particularly in mixed use developments), and enable other communal
areas to be used for parking (multi-storey car parks) rather than dedicating
potentially lettable space for vehicles. Better use of road space such traffic calming
involving angled parking bays could also be included.
In addition to planning instruments other procedures
and processes could be undertaken to facilitate policy implementation. These
processes could include the following.
Area Improvement programmes
NIPDEC
are currently promoting a Downtown Management District (DMD) to build on the
success of upgrading Brian Lara Promenade. This concept could be expanded
for the Downtown retail core and Uptown, Tranquility and Newtown commercial
areas.
Similar to DMD the AIPs could become private companies
or an association with the purpose of supplementing basic city services (such
as security, maintenance and upgrading of public areas, rubbish collection,
and sanitation). Finance is raised through a compulsory tax levied on properties
and businesses in the area with the tax used specifically on that area. By
spending the finance on needs of the area a return for investment is achieved
by the stakeholders. Management of AIPs should contain a mix of property owners
and businessmen from the area and representatives from the City and appropriate
State agencies so that private and public interests are served.
Developer Contribution Plans
These documents are aimed at levying contributions
on new development, redevelopment of sites or buildings or from intensification
of use. A communal publicly available
plan should be prepared for the Downtown, Uptown and Tranquility and Newtown
areas covering capital costs for such aspects as parking levies, streetscape
improvement levies, drainage, sewer and water and open space contributions.
These plans are aimed at achieving contributions from development to provide
communal facilities within a nominated area rather than being dealt with or
provided on a site by site basis.
Developer contributions plans can assist in maximising
development on a site, control the location of facilities such as communal
parking areas, provide more useable open space (by upgrading and maintaining
existing space) than fragmented inaccessible and unusable spaces, provide
for streetscape improvements in a consistent and coherent way and assist with
the augmentation and provision of infrastructure.
Such funds should be overseen by Local Authorities
with annual accounts made publicly available. These funds could be supplement
by other government agencies’ budgets to jointly achieve improvements in areas.
In order for the Developer Contributions Plans to be accepted and implemented
they must be relevant to the needs generated by developments and their occupants,
be clear on what the contributions are for, specify where other government
budgets will complement facilities provided, indicate a timeframe for the
construction of facilities (such as multi-storey parking areas), outline how
the contributions were determined, be publicly available and include monitoring
mechanisms to provide a checking procedures during implementation.
Recommendations
of other studies addressing governance issues;
This
could include such issues as increasing tax gathering and spending powers
of local authorities, clarifying roles between nation and local government
and the roles of private/public partnerships.
These are considered relevant to facilitating development within these
areas and could assist in implementing the processes discussed above.
i. Port of Spain Drainage Study, page 1.8 and own observations.
ii Port of Spain Drainage Study, page 11-104
iii Port of Spain Drainage Study, page 3.10.
iv 2,000 tide tables by the Hydrographic Unit of the ministry of Housing and Settlements.
v See figure 28.5.6 on page 28.31 of Handbook of hydrology, by David R. Maidment. (ISBN 0-07-039732-5)
vi Table 4.1 Peak Runoff from natural catchments (St. Ann's and Maraval). This table shows that for both catchments the Capacity relates to the catchment area as roughly 30 Litre/second/Hectare.
vii Recommendation to remove outflow weir at end of
T&TEC Channel. See page 11-49 of Port of Spain Drainage Study.