http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/You ... 78241.htmlYoung people moving to Chaguanas
Urban shift in population to suburban areas
By Camille Bethel
camille.bethel@trinidadexpress.com Story Created: Feb 23, 2013 at 11:01 PM ECT
Story Updated: Feb 23, 2013 at 11:01 PM ECT
The recently released 2011 census shows a marked movement of the population from this country's major cities to suburban areas.
Less people are opting to live in Port of Spain and San Fernando, a comparison between the 2000 and the 2011 census figures indicate.
In 2000 there were 49,031 people living in Port of Spain, this decreased to 37,074 in 2011, which means that 11,957 people have left the capital city.
As for San Fernando a population of 55,419 in 2000, dropped to 48,838 in 2011 registering a drop of 6,581 people.
So where are all these people moving to?
Well according to the 2011 census suburban areas like Chaguanas, which has seen a marked increase in its population since the 2000 census.
There were 67,433 people living in Chaguanas when the 2000 census was done but the 2011 figures show that there are now 83,516 people residing there.
Economist Indera Sagewan-Alli told the Sunday Express she believes that there are several factors that account for the shift in the younger population to suburban areas since the last census.
"One of the important things that account for that shift is housing. The cost of housing in the city has gone up quite exponentially over the last few years, where demand is high because most of your jobs tend to be concentrated in the city centres.
"So young people are very hard pressed to afford the rent and the mortgages in these areas and simultaneously what we have had happening over the past few years is an expansion in housing development in the suburban area which is affordable."
"Secondly you have the quality of life. You have young professionals starting families and they want to have a home, so the quality of life now becomes important, so you find the movement away from the city centre is in support of that," Sagewan-Alli said.
She said Chaguanas which has been singled out as one of the areas with an increase in population has had a lot of economic development taking place and has really grown.
"We have had a lot of significant companies move headquarters out of Port of Spain into that area, and again a large part of it was because of the cost of office space in Port of Spain. So you have also seen a lot of movement of businesses in the suburban area.
"So if you have more people working in these areas it is almost a natural progression that they will start to look for housing around there," she said.
And although there are economic implications for the cities whose populations have declined, it is not necessarily a bad thing, she said.
"The economic implications are not straight forward. Certainly if you have people moving out of the city, that has implications for the city because you have less people there and so less physical economic activity.
"It will not impact on night life, it will impact on day time economics. So retail shops will be impacted upon, any restaurants and businesses that operate during the day time, because if you physically move away the people who are demanding these services the negative impact will obviously be there," Sagewan-Alli said.
She believes that this gives a city the opportunity to reshape and redefine itself.
"So it is not necessarily a bad thing. If you take Port of Spain for example, it has started to emerge as a sort of convention type centre, so it allows planners to be able to take a look and reshape its purpose."
"The Hyatt Regency hotel for example it is a very difficult place to get a booking if you want to organise a conference there, which says there is a heavy demand for that kind of service in our city that is Port of Spain. So the population shift creates an opportunity for planners to redefine the future of the city and change what it is and make it into something that is more of an economic resource rather than just a place where people live," she said.
Senior lecturer at the department of Behavioural Sciences, UWI, St Augustine, Dr Ronald Marshall believes the census figures are not to be looked at in a vacuum because they depict certain trends which have social and sociological implications and are generated by social and sociological factors.
"There are some causal factors behind them that have to be analysed to see why it is taking place because population shifts, ever so often and it could be driven by a myriad of things; availability of services, crime rate, etc.
"There could also be population pressures in terms of finding adequate housing and the whole issue of the availability of basic amenities like water supply and its frequency, garbage disposal and recreation.
"So if the cities have not been planned sufficiently to take the pressures as they develop then what you find is people moving to greener pastures because what you will find is rent will be less, the services may be less costly, in other areas."
Marshall said, some of the implications for the migration of people from the cities to the suburban areas can include a drop in the availability of services in the city centres.
"So the quality of life may drop or it may become more costly to sustain the quality of life for certain groups."
He said there is a whole issue of manpower as well and the accessibility of skilled labour to take up the jobs offered in the city.
"If those jobs are offered in the suburban areas as well and there is free parking, less congestion, there are the malls, and people are given inducements like cheaper housing etc, people will choose to work closer to home."
"So there are a number of different inducements taking place at the same time as the demographic shifts but remember that the demographic changes would have been occurring over time."
"So when you take this snapshot now, all it tells you is, here is a snapshot of the materialisation of some trends over what would have taken place over time," he added.
