Economy before environment
Is the so-called smart city mega-project at Roches Noires unravelling the reputation of our venerated Minister of Finance? It was recently the subject of PNQ’s in the National Assembly and has become an object of concern for citizen organisations. Both reveal a disappointing lack of integrated thinking on the part of Mr Lutchmeenaraidoo. He cannot even elaborate on what form the project will take let alone the toll it will take on the environment.
The root cause of the problem seems to be that our financial wizard, who now confesses he is no magician, has raised expectations for an economic miracle without any substantive plans to achieve one – apart, that is, from turning Mauritius into an enormous building site. This raises the more fundamental question of how we want Mauritius to develop. Fortunately, the preposterous proposal of transforming Mauritius into a Singaporean city state is no longer flavour of the month. However, with 25% of Mauritius already categorised as built-up areas, surely the continued sacrifice of agricultural and forest land to urban development will eventually destroy the spirit of our beloved green island. Who wants that?
None of the eight proposed smart cities is located in a more ecologically sensitive area than the one at Roches Noires. Its vast barachois, protective mangroves and forests are a haven for fauna and flora and remain largely unexplored by both native and tourist. Some idiotic economists advocate for the exploitation of all our natural assets both on land and sea, while the Minister of Finance views smart cities as a legacy he can bequeath to future generations. However, will our grandchildren thank him for setting the precedent of eliminating the last of our relatively wild spaces in pursuit of ephemeral economic growth?
Cooperation or coercion?
Sir Anerood Jugnauth, oversaw the exercise to envision an inspiring future, Vision 2020, and the comprehensive blueprint for urban and rural planning, the National Development Strategy. At this time, Mr Lutchmeenaraidoo must have been deep in slumber during his extended period of hibernation and has now awoken dreaming of big projects instead of seeing the big picture. His sleight of hand to both balance trade and grow the economy – without spending a penny – is to seek the cooperation of his predecessor’s favourite saviours: the Chinese.
The oriental owners of the Roches Noires site purchased it to develop an IRS, presumably to sell villas to their excessively wealthy compatriots. Now that their “ghetto for the rich” has been torpedoed, our financial fox appears to be blackmailing them to support his dream. After all, if they don’t build him a smart city, how will they recuperate any of their investment? This is hardly the sound basis for a successful public-private partnership is it?
Follow the plan
The only rationale for building a smart city at Roches Noires, apart from it being in Mr Lutchmeenaraidoo’s constituency, seems to be that there are foreigners willing to invest in it. Since it may take some time to update the National Development Strategy, why not redirect their finance into its principle projects? A direct land swap, whereby the Public gains the Roches Noires site for the creation of a National Park in exchange for some state land at Highlands, would be a feasible approach. In this way, our nation’s diminishing ecological assets can be preserved, while giving this accessible, pre-approved town a better chance to finally see the light of day.
Meanwhile, we still await a government who will seriously make an effort to regenerate our deteriorating urban centres. It is easy to build a new shopping mall on a sugar cane field, but far more difficult to revitalise our traditional towns. But unless we do, new smart cities will be the exclusive playgrounds of the elite, while current municipalities will become ghettos for the rest of us, exacerbating the divide between the haves and the have nots. There was once an exodus of wealthier residents from Port Louis to the plateau, leaving a capital by day with no soul at night. Will history repeat itself?
Facebook discussion: https://www.facebook.com/WeLuvMu/posts/899619516743295
From an environmental point of view, it’s obvious that this should not go through, it will be a disaster for the island’s already shrinking natural beauty.
As for logistics, one needs to only look at other large-scale projects here to see that there is a general lack of vision and planning needed to properly execute something on this level. Plus, recent events show that there are so many layers to financial greed and nepotism here that any project of this magnitude should be given a complete audit from the ground up, with the full involvement of the public, through the media and other channels.
Take a look for instance at ‘Cyber’ city. What a serious lack of planning that went into this monstrosity. For example, lack of cohesive sidewalks throughout make it unsuitable for true foot traffic – add to that poor parking, with cars strewn all over the grass and side of the road – with a parking tower finally coming online, one can’t wonder if its a case of too little too late, none of these buildings really gel together, its just a series of office towers near one another, with no cohesion or sense of community.
What would have been an infinitely smarter tactic would have been to look at the likes of Apple, Google, Facebook or any number of Silicon Valley tech companies who built ‘campus’ style corporate headquarters, places that feel like villages/university layouts. Cybercity could have been built as a mixed live/work community with a central hub featuring an entertainment center, food court, shopping concourse – all with an emphasis on foot traffic and bicycle paths, with cars parked on the outside of the main layout, possibly even an electric vehicle carrying workers from each building (even Disney-style) golf carts would have been an improvement to having cars littered all over the place.
I think it’s glaringly obvious that Mauritius has a long way to go before its able to conceive of a project of this magnitude, therefore, any large construction projects are going to be obsolete before they get off the ground, I’d say the best bet would be to hold off and not ruin nature, until Mauritians are able to properly conceive of a working plan, not a cheap imitation that simply mimics what some developer with nothing but money on their mind considers to be ‘smart’ or ‘cyber’.
Very well said.
My instant and simple comment, we need to show our children where we spent our childhood .
how do we stop this?
It is so true about the fact that smart cities are imitations and if I am not wrong from the indian government who is building 100 smart cities in India while ignoring the existing problems in his country. It is awful what is happening in Mauritius. Ramgoolam has stolen the nation, and the population was expecting this government to be more concerned about the population. Natural beautiful places like l’ile aux cerfs and places in Mauritius have been privatised in the past for foreign investors to build hotels or simply wealthy people. This new government should have stopped this and found new solutions to help the population instead of destroying Mauritius’ identity in order to build a lot of “smart” cities. And fifteen cities not even one or two but fifteen on a small island which is losing its history already is too much and destructive. If only the island could get better people than these people at the government to lead the island. The island deserves people who have realistic vision on how to truly help the country without destroying the environment and the country’s identity.
Tax incentives, tax holidays.duty free materials?what does the average Mauritian get out of it? They will be left to grope at high end villas occupied by rich foreigners in smart cities where they cannot afford even the coffee.i do not see any performance targets specified, it is decided by who? By the promoters themselves? This is just an eye wash. The challenge is in our own exist urban fabric, why not tackle these? This can be opportunities for companies operating at the grass root level.