Comparison to Colleague's Blogs

A synecdoche is what makes a city recognizable; a singular notion of how a city is perceived. In observing the culture of Port of Spain, we realised that the capital cannot be constrained to one paradigm- it has a multiplex nature about it. We therefore decided to focus upon the many different aspects of Port of Spain: the things which give the city life, what makes it pulse. Throughout our blog, we attempted to identify and define these things: the street vendors, the nightlife, the architecture. Upon review of our colleagues’ blogs, we realised that many of them related to our core theme, even if it was not their main theme. Below are a few of them in greater detail.

Architecture Through Time (Rana Sundar and Shariel Yarsien)

In The Pulse of the City, we touched upon Urban Architecture within Port of Spain, and cited a few examples, such as the Stollmeyer Castle and the Nicholas Tower. We compared the two very different buildings in terms of architectural styles of each structure’s respective generation. Architecture Through Time’s entire theme revolved around this: the changes in architecture throughout Trinidad and Tobago’s history. However, they looked at buildings not only in Port of Spain, but throughout the country. This gives a really good insight onto architecture nationwide rather than in just one city. Through their blog, we were able to see similarities with the architectural trends in Port of Spain on a larger scale. This helped show that Port of Spain, and to a greater extent Trinidad and Tobago, cannot be classified by one single type of architecture. Rather, it hosts multiple architectural styles of different time periods and different cultures, and this helps to prevent the country from being defined by a singular synecdoche. This relates to what Amin and Graham in 1997 stated: The strands of the new urban utopia tend to lead from paradigmatic examples which are not whole cities but specific 'time-space' samples of cities. Each offers its own partial and specific representations of the city.

Public Space or Wasteful Space (Renata Ramoutar and Adrianna Peters)

We found Renata and Adrianna’s topic to be rather interesting. Whereas we looked briefly on the use of public space with our post on the Queen’s Park Savannah, they looked at what public space is on various levels. They identified what makes a space desirable, the different social groups who use certain public spaces, and the politics of public space. The presence of public spaces is very important in the development of a city, as they allow more social interactions between citizens. Public spaces help to add to the multiplicity of a place, as they have various functions and can be used for a variety of uses (such as rallies, concerts or exercising).

Urban Pictionary (Joseph Weekes and Brendon Taylor)

In their blog Urban Pictionary, Joseph and Brendon had a post relating to street vendors. Within our blog the Pulse of the City, we realised that the street vending culture of Port of Spain is important in creating the city's identity, and helps to add variety and diversity to its image. Urban Pictionary helped to elaborate on some of the points which were brought up in Street Vendors, such as the Government’s move to removing the street vendors. Would this be effective? Whereas we believe that the vendors are important in maintaining that specific culture of T&T, which helps to give Port of Spain its unique identity, Urban Pictionary looked at it from a socio-economic standpoint. They focused their blog post on the importance of street vending as a source of income, and discussed the possibility of finding a balance between sustaining livelihoods and maintaining order on the streets.