Island City Lab

https://lnkd.in/eSaUh5ub Join us Tuesday Oct 15 @ 12P (Jamaica Time) for the final conversation in our ‘capturelands’ series titled LEGACY LAND: Disaster Capitalism and Land Grabs. The process of dispossession and formalization work in similar ways to draw land and people into a market economy governed by rules of private property rights (Goffe, 2023). After emancipation from slavery, the tiny British outpost of Barbuda was left in common ownership of the descendants of the slaves. The concept of private property and the sale of land was impossible for almost 200 hundred years. In 2017 Barbuda was devastated by Hurricane Irma and their communal land tenure was overturned by the government in Antigua. Since then, foreign developers have taken advantage of their forced displacement to clear acres of forest to build a playground for the ultra-wealthy. In this webinar, we talk with John Mussington of Barbuda Land Actors, a group working to protect the communal land tenure of the island for environmental, social and economic self-sufficiency as well as professor Amanda Byer an environmental lawyer from Grenada.

https://lnkd.in/gnxP4jzT. Earlier this summer we spoke with a dedicated group of folks from Caguas, Puerto Rico who are saving spaces from abandonment by collectively occupying them. Their guerilla strategies rooted in a commitment to Caguas, force us to interrogate notions of private property and the idea of who "owns" versus "occupies" land.

Join us Tuesday Sept. 17 @ 12:00p (Jamaica Time) for the second conversation in our captureland series. https://lnkd.in/ehmCvCGB Self-built or self-help housing refers to dwellings to which the inhabitants have contributed all or most of the construction input themselves. By the 1990s, more than two-thirds of the population of Montego Bay and half of Spanish Town fell into this category. Island-wide, the state estimates that over 20% of the population is living “informally”. Despite this legacy of people incrementally improving and expanding their accommodations over time, state resources have gone almost entirely toward facilitating the private housing market through the financing of long-term mortgages for sprawling suburban housing units. This option has always been out of reach of Jamaicans most in need of housing. In this webinar, we explore how a self-built community in Puerto Rico achieved land tenure security through communal land ownership. Residents of the Caño Martín Peña created the first community land trust in Latin America, ensuring affordability and protection from displacement and gentrification. Rejecting the approach of individual titles, communal ownership has been an instrument of emancipation and community empowerment.

The unforgiving link between living and livelihood is felt most acutely by women who continue to earn less than men and are systematically made financially dependent. For generations, Jamaican women navigated a patriarchal housing system where their access was mediated by their adjacency to a man. Written in 1989 this Sistren Magazine article captured the experiences of working-class women employed in Kingston in the pursuit of decent and affordable housing. Thirty-five years later and this article and its solutions are still as relevant as it was then.

Join us Tuesday Aug 13 @ 12P EST (Jamaica Time) for the first conversation in our 'capturelands' series FI-RE ISLAND Planning a Housing Crisis. RSVP https://lnkd.in/gWZNKx-p FIRE - finance, insurance & real estate. With real estate as the primary commodity, revenue stream, and political priority; urban planners are increasingly tasked with using their power over land use, regulation, and incentives to increase land values (Stein, 2019). The Development Order for the Kingston Metropolitan Area was the first attempt to guide the urban development and growth of Jamaica’s capital city since 1966. The Provisional Development Order, released in 2017 and confirmed in 2023, radically increased the allowable densities across most of the metro area. The resulting land speculation and ballooning price of housing is not simply an unfortunate byproduct or inevitable result of market forces at play but the intended result of planning policy. The housing crisis across many Caribbean cities, and indeed globally, is often reduced to a matter of supply and demand economics, but is actually a political process, with the government marshaling investment, boosting land values, attracting desired residents and industries [and] chasing away threats to profits (Stein, 2019). In this webinar, we chat with Prof. Raul Bartolomei about the rise of short term rental platforms like Airbnb and VRBO in Puerto Rico and how government policies are making housing unattainable for the its residents.

Since the 1950s, Jamaica has struggled to provide housing for the descendants of enslaved people who were leaving rural plantations for the city in droves. With population growth and increasing rural-urban migration, the rate of housing supply has never been able to meet the need for housing for purchase or rental. With 70% of the housing need being for lower-income populations, policies to increase the housing supply have not made a dent in addressing this most critical human need. The result has been generations of self-built housing and communities, with an estimated 20% of the nation living with insecure tenure. “Capture land” is a phrase that rose to prominence in the 1970s following a wave of organized land occupations that took place with the implicit support of the state. Capturelands webinar series examines the legacy of our approach to providing affordable and social housing since independence to the present and its outcomes. We will explore alternative approaches from peer cities in the Caribbean that have used radically different planning, policy, legal, and design frameworks to provide decent and affordable housing for their residents.

https://lnkd.in/evXZUPMr

This year's Emerging Practice Lecture Series is now available on YouTube. https://lnkd.in/ezH4jbw6

We spent two days immersed in urban greenspaces and nurseries with Day & Day Company, as part of our ongoing initiative to develop pathways for nature-based solutions to manage stormwater run-off across the Kingston Metro Area. They will be working with us to design solutions to mitigate the flooding issues that the Abilities Foundation has experienced since the expansion of the Constant Spring Roadway. We are also excited about the potential of this collaboration to expand accessibility for students on the campus and regenerate their urban agriculture and horticulture programs.

Island City Lab is seeking a motivated and organized Research & Publications Assistant to join our team. In this role, you will work closely with our research team to support ongoing projects, contribute to the advancement of our research objectives, and play a crucial part in our efforts to understand the contemporary urban issues affecting Caribbean cities.