The concept of growth and prosperity for all suggest creating a balance between material and social wealth. Social wealth speaks to the quality of life enhanced by developing sustainable public infrastructures around community values, expectations, and priorities.
Too often developing countries are ignoring these basic rules pursuing public-private partnership in building community infrastructures. We see modern toll roads, while the majority still drink contaminated water or served by poorly developed water distribution infrastructure, while many rely on rainwater stored in open tanks providing a breeding ground for mosquitoes.
Many communities in Jamaica do not have piped water, while low water pressure and stoppage plague most urban communities. For growth to occur infrastructure development must be prioritized, water is key to food security.
Observer 2014, “for the past 10 years, 69-year-old Kenneth Richards has been riding his trusted donkey a mile down the hills of Holland Mountain, in St Elizabeth, to a standpipe in Lacovia to catch water to feed his animals and supply his household. The trip, for a man like Richards who is accustomed to the convenience of potable water, can be as taxing on the brain as it is on the body, and he yearns for the days when the precious commodity flowed in his pipe.” http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/A-community-without-running-water-for-50-years-_17895797
If farmers cannot use the North-South Highway to transport their produce to the largest public market in Kingston; Coronation Market, due to the high cost of the toll then government infrastructure planning is not inclusive and won't drive the desired economic growth.
Globalization is the embodiment of the "Central Place Theory" on a global scale. It is a concept in the study of economic geography which seeks to illustrate why human settlements are centrally located in a hierarchy from higher order centers such as Urban Metropolis to lower order; Cities, Towns, Villages, and Hamlets. If you can extrapolate the effects and impacts of the “central place theory” on a global scale you will understand the rise of populism within the rural-urban divide and the widening gap between rich and poor.
The theory was first developed by the German geographer Walter Christaller in 1933 after he began to recognize the economic relationships between cities and their hinterlands (areas farther away). He mainly tested the theory in Southern Germany and came to the conclusion that people gather together in cities to share goods and ideas and that they exist for purely economic reasons.
One of the impacts of the "central place theory" is the ever concentration of capital and specialization of goods and services in higher order centers to the extent that some lower order centers will disappear and ceased to be economically viable over time as population tends to move to where there are more opportunities. In a global context this in true in part for countries that are considered failed states and hence the rise the global refugees and the displacement of a significant portion of the world’s population.
"The primary purpose of a settlement or market town, according to central-place theory, is the provision of goods and services within a uniformly defined market area. Movement across market boundaries are uniformly easy in any direction, transportation costs vary linearly, and consumers act rationally to minimize transportation costs by visiting the nearest location offering the desired good or service....The determining factor in the location of any central place is the threshold, which comprises the smallest market area necessary for the goods and services to be economically viable. Once a threshold has been established, the central place will seek to expand its market area until the range—i.e., the maximum distance consumers will travel to purchase goods and services—is reached. “
As higher order centers become more specialized and specialization increase growth and production of goods and services lower order centers are often times consumed into the market area of higher order centers by the expansion of the threshold due to lower transportation cost.
"In addition, the threshold is an important concept in Christaller's study. This is the minimum number of people needed for a central place business or activity to remain active and prosperous. This then brings in the idea of low-order and high-order goods. Low-order goods are things that are replenished frequently such as food and other routine household items. Because these items are purchased regularly, small businesses in small towns can survive because people will buy frequently at the closer locations instead of going into the city. High-order goods though are specialized items such as automobiles, furniture, fine jewelry, and household appliances that are bought less often. Because they require a large threshold and people do not purchase them regularly, many businesses selling these items cannot survive in areas where the population is small. Therefore, they often locate in large cities that can serve a large population in the surrounding hinterland."
When the threshold is extended beyond borders as globalization seeks to lower the cost of goods and services and technology increases specialization transforming urban metropolis into City State. With the rise of the City State being the high order centres and seamless movement of capital and economic resources across borders, some lower order towns and villages around the globe which are resource deprived or otherwise will cease to be viable as population moves to urban centres within viable states or become refugees or displaced within fail states.
Acknowledgment to My former Economic Geography Professor at Ryerson University:
Dr. Ken Jones is the Dean of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University. Dr. Jones has earned an international reputation for his expertise in retail research and business geomatics. He founded and directed the Centre for the Study of Commercial Development (CSCA), a world-renowned not-for-profit research centre at Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management that provides information and analysis to Canada's commercial and retail industries. In his current role as Dean, Ted Rogers School of Management, Dr. Jones leads Canada’s largest undergraduate business school. Located on Bay St., in the heart of Toronto's business community, the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson is recognized for its innovative programs and for producing students who are immediately able to contribute to Canadian business.
Professor Jones holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from York University and has published extensively, including three books that have examined the contemporary retail environment in Canada: Specialty Retailing in the Inner City; Location, Location, Location and The Retail Environment. Ken has contributed chapters for a variety of university texts and has been published in many professional journals. These works have discussed issues associated with retail site selection methodologies, market area analyses, retail corporate concentration, e-commerce, and future trends associated with Canadian retailing. In addition to his activities as a researcher, Ken has been a consultant to numerous retail chains, financial institutions, and shopping centre developers on aspects of store network planning, sales forecasting, market area evaluation, and site evaluation.
Submitted by Silbert on Tue, 07/22/2008 - 19:08. RenewCanada Infrastructure Magazine
www.brittenwoods.com
If the experience of Australian Accounting Standard Board (AASB 116: Property, Plant and Equipment) in the implementation of infrastructure accounting is any indication of how this process might play out in Canada, municipalities are in trouble.
Audit results out of local Australian governments, particularly in Queensland and Victoria, have been studied in current and past financial reporting periods. In most cases the audits found that inaccurate definition and methodology were used in valuing and depreciating infrastructure assets. More importantly, they give no significant supporting evidence to justify key assumptions in the valuation processes, particularly road pavements. These audit results show that some local Australian governments are not correctly defining fair value and are applying the simplified straight-line depreciation method to infrastructure assets.
In the absence of cash inflows and an active market for infrastructure assets such as roads and bridges, the most reliable estimate of future economic benefit or service potential is condition-based depreciation—and not the stable condition state method being used in the United States. The condition-based valuation method is more likely to produce a lower annual depreciation rate than the simplified straight-line method. What’s needed is an asset consumption model that can predict the effective age of successive capital improvements on a declining balance ratio (or factor) correlated to an assessed condition index.
The cost of maintaining infrastructure assets often represents a significant portion of a municipality’s operating budget, so it’s important to agree on depreciation estimates. For a municipality to determine whether or not it’s financially sustainable, managers need to calculate the ratio of capital spending to annual depreciation charges. Both sides of the equation are affected by the state and condition of municipal assets like roads and bridges. Equally important in this equation is the public’s expectation of service levels within the context of current social, economic, political and environmental realities. These are the dynamics in the infrastructure investment gap that are causing disagreement between engineers and accountants. Asset management and financial accounting are out of sync.
One incentive to work things out is the Public Sector Accounting Board’s (PSAB 3150) ever-nearing deadline (see page 36). But it’s unclear whether PSAB’s requirements will lead to more sustainable infrastructure management. Municipalities that use the conventional straight-line depreciation method because it’s easier and that fail to recognize the link between strategic asset management and financial accounting will just continue to argue over unfunded depreciation of our assets—the infrastructure deficit. Canadian cities like Hamilton and Edmonton are less likely to make significant material misstatements in their financial reporting because their managers recognize that asset management is a corporate, not just technical, responsibility. They’ve taken the necessary steps to integrate asset accounting with financial reporting. Those who don’t will end up like some Australian towns, where the absence of a strategic framework for valuing and measuring depreciation expenses has led to a huge deficit.
—Silbert Barrett These are the author’s personal opinions and do not reflect those of his employer. Nor is the author making inferences about how infrastructure assets are managed. The author bases his opinions on his involvement in the pilot implementation of capital asset accounting as a project manager for the City of Hamilton and the Ontario Benchmarking Initiatives (OMBI).
Significant portions of Jamaica should be designated World Nature Reserve. Jamaica has one of the most extensive systems of underground rivers and caves in the world constituting perhaps some of the most delicate eco-systems with a bio-diversity yet be discovered.
The North-South Highway Link in Jamaica is a costly environmental disaster waiting to happen, as the highway link is built on a sea of underground rivers with extensive connections through the island.
In 2012 the government was warned about the risk but went ahead with the project in the cheapest and most aggressive assault on the delicate eco-system using Chinese “Open-Cut and Fill” road construction instead of tunneling through portions of the mountain to save vegetation and bridging sensitive sinkholes.
““The north-south link of Highway 2000 is going to traverse the island, crossing the floodplains of at least five major rivers, requiring significant removal of forests and large-scale engineering works on steep slopes,” JET Chief Executive Officer Diana McCaulay wrote to then Minister of Transport, Works, and Housing Dr Omar Davies in December 2012. “It presents a range of serious environmental and public safety hazards, described in some detail in the EIA, yet inexplicably all these risks are rated as ‘minor’ and ‘small’,” McCaulay added.
She told Davies that she took no comfort in a statement that the risks would be mitigated or managed by the Natural Resources Conservation Authority (NRCA) and the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) because “environmental permits in Jamaica are too often poorly drafted and rarely enforced”. Despite the concerns, work on the US$730-million highway was completed in March this year. But JET, in a document compiled last month, pointed out that NEPA was lax in its monitoring of the project. http://m.jamaicaobserver.com/mobile/news/Highway-backlashGov---t-ignored-environmental-concerns-from-2012-------_69859
I wondered why the Jamaican government allowed the construction of a highway to literally sit on top of rivers not realizing the environmental implication and risk associated the project. It could well be that all those floodings in St. Mary is related to the blockage of portions of these underground rivers. The Highway cost US$730 million or US$18 million for 67 km of roadway making this the most expensive Greenfield highway project in the world.
The land of wood and water is systemically plagued with drought and lack of an effective water distribution system in most communities. “In the abundance of water the fool is thirsty....”-Bob Marley
Despite the fact that the island literally floats on a sea of interconnected subterranean rivers, chronic water problem is persistent in most areas of Jamaica. The problems have more to do with the inability and political will to harness the potential of this unlimited resource through an effective Water Resources Management Plan. http://dsidi.blogspot.ca/2016/07/why-water-is-becoming-new-oil.html
Jamaica Risk Major Flooding And Destruction To Local Businesses From The Environmental Impacts Of More Tourism Development. Jamaica may have exceeded its development capacity to support further major tourism and hotel development on the North Coast. Shoreline dredging and deep pile foundations cause soil densification and inhibit natural drainage of subterranean rivers along the North Coast out into the sea. This also adds to the depletion of sea corals and fishing grounds. Adding to the problem of environmental degradation is the growth of unplanned communities along the North Coast as result of migration of unemployed Jamaicans from other areas to work in low wage construction and hotel jobs.
A moratorium on further hotel development in the North Coast should be considered as a sustainable strategy. The Government should work with the existing capacity to create more linkages to local products and farm produce. Demand fair wages for hotel workers and levy market-based property tax assessment to renew and upgrade existing infrastructure such as sewage capacity and build a regional hospital in St. Ann's Bay or Ocho Rios.
Significant portions of Jamaica should be designated World Nature Reserve. Jamaica has one of the most extensive systems of underground rivers and caves in the world constituting perhaps some of the most delicate eco-systems with a bio-diversity yet be discovered.
