Resumen de Caribbean Island Cities: Urban Issues, Urbanization Processes and Opportunities for Transformation
Caribbean cities face urban issues that warrant transformative solutions for inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable urban development. Urban planning policymakers and practitioners, as they launch a multi-pronged approach to address rapid urbanization; increasingly high levels of urban population; and rising demands for land, housing and basic urban services, are confronted by climate change and the socio-economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. These unprecedented combined challenges require a bold, innovative reimagining of what the urban future will look like in a Caribbean context. A new urban orthodoxy is central to achieving transformative urbanization. The key ingredients of transformative urbanization are enabling processes aimed at improved urban governance and citizen activism, strengthening a pro-marginalized perspective geared toward inclusivity, fiscal autonomy of urban agencies, effective climate change adaptation and mitigation in cities and efficient use of information communication technology to improve the science-policy-practice interface. This chapter first provides a historical overview of the urbanization process experienced in the Caribbean. A critical analysis of the main urban issues is then provided, followed by a discussion of what has been done so far to confront such issues. The conclusion is then presented.
