Title: The Caribbean City
Editor: Rivke Jaffe
Publishers: Ian Randle Publishers, KITLV Press
Reviewer: Paul H. Williams

The Caribbean City is a collection of academic papers presented at an international workshop, called The Caribbean City, held in Leidon, in The Netherlands, from December 1-3, 2004. The papers examine select Caribbean cities from anthropological, sociological, historical, political, geographical, literary and cultural viewpoints. In essence, a broad spectrum of the evolution of Caribbean cities is brought under the microscope by the following "experts from a range of academic disciplines":

Liesbeth De Bleeker from the Department of Romance Literature at the University of Leuven, Belgium; Ad de Bruijne, professor emeritus at the University of Amsterdam; Colin Clarke, emeritus professor of geography, Oxford University, and a senior research fellow at Jesus College; Zaire Dinzey-Flores, holder of a PhD in public policy and sociology and a master's in urban planning; David Dodman, lecturer in the Department of Geography and Geology, University of the West Indies, Mona; Mark Figueroa, senior lecturer in the Department of Economics, University of the West Indies, Mona; Franco Guadeloupe, holder of a PhD in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Amsterdam.

The others are Kathleen Gyssels, research professor in Francophone postcolonial literatures at the University of Antwerp; Anthony Harriott, professor of political sociology in the Department of Government, University of the West Indies, Mona; Richard Harris, professor of urban historical geography at McMasters University; David Howard, lecturer in human geography at the University of Edinburgh; Asad Mohammed, holder of a doctorate in city and regional planning from Cornell University; Nicola Satchell, researcher attached to the Centre for Public Safety and Justice at the University of the West Indies, Mona; Aart Schalkwijk, graduate in human geography from the University of Amsterdam; Marygrace Tyrrell, PhD candidate in History at Northwestern University; and Hebe Verrest, PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Amsterdam.

Jaffe, a lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and holder of a PhD on the urban environment in Curaçao and Jamaica from Leiden University, said in the introduction, "This volume combines insights based on different types of research in a variety of Caribbean cities, exploring which combinations of historical, social, cultural, political, spatial and economic processes and phenomena best approximate an urban Caribbean oikoumene (inhabited earth)."

In these inhabited cities, urban issues, such as planning, housing, ethnicity, segregation, uneven urban development, unemployment and livelihood strategies, crime and violence, popular culture, religion and symbolic aspects or urban space and citizenship are discussed. Port-of-Spain, Trinidad; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Kingston; Paramaribo, Suriname; Willemstad, Curaçao are some of the cities that were studied and explored.

Political economy

The city of Kingston is heavily featured as it is the subject of at least four of the papers. Chapter Five is about The Political Economy of Jamaica's inner-City Violence: A Special Case by Figueroa, Harriott and Satchell. They say Jamaica is one of many countries where urban violence is significant, and that certain features of Jamaica's political system make it a standout. "Central to an understanding of this political economy is Jamaica's experience with garrison politics and political tribalism that have produced communal voting patterns."

In Class, Unemployment and Housing Problems in Kingston, Jamaica since Independence (Chapter Six), Clarke and Howard, say, inter alia, "Jamaica has been independent from Britain since 1962 ... but its formerly protected economy has been turned inside out by structural adjustment. This, in turn, has increased unemployment or withdrawal from formal labour force, and exacerbated the housing situation, without increasing economic growth."

Income inequality

Jaffe calls Kingston and Willemstad, Curaçao (in Chapter 10), fragmented cities, in that urban unity is lacking in both cities since they are divided by colour and class, with Kingston being split into uptown and downtown. In Willemstad, there is a dearth of togetherness at the city level. "Both cities are characterised by a great measure of income inequality and high rates of violent crime, specifically homicides ... The socio-spatial fragmentation of these two cities, resulting from historical and contemporary processes, is evident in terms of community-level place attachment and localised social capital," she argues.

Smelting of scrap metal in Kingston is lauded for being "a positive endogenous response to the problems of solid-waste management and the high cost of metal goods which generates employment for marginalised young". Yet, Dodman, in Small-Scale Metal Melting as a Livelihood Strategy in Kingston, Jamaica, says the practice has negatively affected the urban environment. The result is "conflicting ecological and economic desires".

Some of the other topic presented are The Evolution of Urban Housing Policy in the British West Indies, 1929-1960s (Harris); Ethnic Residential patterns in Paramaribo -Spatial Segregation or Blending (Bruijne and Schalkwijk); Urban Space in the French Caribbean Crime Novel: Confiant and Chamoiseau (De Bleeker).