Introduction

‘In its old centre: a clear, regulated, standardized order. Around: a bubbling crown, indecipherable, impossible, masked by the misery and obscure charges of history. If the Creole city had only the order of its center, it would be dead. It needs the chaos of the fringes. It is the rich beauty of horror, the rich order of disorder. It is the thrilling beauty of the horror and the secret order in the heart of disorder’ Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco, Gallimard 1992

1The Caribbean city is unknown. Heterogeneous human settlements, legacies of early colonial times, shelter for the poor and homeless, mixed and fragmented, the Caribbean cities display the economic ambitions of these island territories and other shores bathed by the Caribbean Sea. Chaotic in appearance, juxtaposing fragments of modernity and exotic anachronisms, this city of corporate and political showcase, opens a particularly rich field for investigation. Sometimes European-looking, relic of Africa — some say –, American city – no doubt — , the Caribbean city is indeed an object of original study.

2These cities are part of a historical context, that of the colonization of the Americas, and in a singular geographical environment: island territories, more or less cramped, strips of continental land bordered by mountains on the shores of South America, at the mouth of vast rivers… It is in these dense and disparate human settlements that the economic and political challenges of these territories are concentrated. Conscious of their singularity, the richness of a heritage more or less valued and the development challenges they crystallize, these territories of urbanity offer a flourishing field for innovative projects, neighborhood renovation initiatives struggling to build buildings that meet the challenges of the 21^st century.

3These urban territories are first and foremost those of city-islands, like the diffuse urbanization that now covers most of the territories of Barbados, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Martin… They are also vast urban complexities such as the East-West Corridor of Trinidad which concentrates nearly half of the island’s population in a series of juxtaposed urban zones over thirty kilometers, from the coastal area of Port of Spain to Arima, contained by the heights of the Northern Range. From the ruins of Port-au-Prince to the ghettos of Kingston to the soft lethargy of the Cuban capital, to haughty Havana, the cities and forms of urbanity of the Caribbean space are rich and complex objects of study.

4Studies on Caribbean cities remain limited, especially in the French language. The main works - and the oldest - have been carried out by researchers from the English-speaking Caribbean, from the University of the West Indies. The works of Lowenthal (1972), Comitas and Lowenthal (1973) and Cross (1979) form a foundation for understanding the context in which these different urban entities are established. The first reference works that develop an overview of Caribbean cities were led by RB Potter with the publication of a first synthesis, Urbanization, Planning and Development in the Caribbean in 1989, and the reference book The Urban Caribbean in an Era of Global Change in 2000 – recently published as an enriched second edition in 2017. Other works also propose synthetic approaches, such as those of A. Portes, C. Dore-Cabral and P. Lanbolt (1997) and E. Rojas (2002), Jaffe, de Bruijne et Schalkwijk (2008) and more recently C. Klaufus and R. Jaffe (2015) and R. Jaffe (2016a and 2016b). The most advanced studies are devoted to the city of Kingston, in the Jamaican context. These are the works of C. Clarke, with her thesis on Kingston (1975, reprinted and updated 2006c), and those of H. Levy (2009). Studies carried out by the Jamaican school - the Mona campus - focus on the issue of violence (Clarke, 2006b), political violence and liberalism (Eyre, 1984, 1986; Clarke, 2006a, 2016; Jaffre, 2012), gangs and drugs (Clarke, 2016; Campbell and Clarke, 2017), poverty, exclusion and ‘ghettoization of paradise’ (Ford and Griffin, 1979; Eyren 1983; Moser and Holland; 1997; de Bruijne et Schalkwijk, 2008; Clarke, 2010; Jaffe, 2008, 2016a), urban poor’s vulerability (Rajack et Barhate, 2004; Winchester et Szalachman, 2009).

5In terms of French-language research, the city of Port-au-Prince is the most studied, both in terms of ‘failed modernization’ (Lucien, 2013, 2014) and that of natural disasters (Desse, Pierre and Lucien, 2010; Lucien, 2010) and the resulting vulnerability (Tamru and Piard, 2017). Studies on the French West Indies remain scattered, such as those of S. Letchimy (1992), D. Martouzet (2001 and 2002), J.V. Marc (2007) on the city of Fort-de-France. Recent works focus on the issues of risks (Terral, 2013a, 2013b), urban revitalization and its social dimension (Depault, 2016), urban agriculture and food sovereignty (Marc and Martouzet, 2012; Gignac, 2016), and tourist brownfields in urban landscapes (Dehoorne and Theng, 2016; Parent 2016). M. Sélise, as part of his thesis of geography (2010), undertook the first comparative approach to the two main cities of the French West Indies, Fort-de-France and Pointe-à-Pitre, and their neighbors Castries and Roseau, respective capitals of St. Lucia and Dominica.

6The ‘combination of territories’ (Roncayolo, 1990) and the ‘irregularities of the city’ (Roulleau-Berger, 1994) open multiple avenues of research such as the deciphering of social relations (Lefebvre) in these landscapes shaped by relentless dynamics of socio-ethno-spatial segregation. From exclusion to inclusion, with discourse on social diversity - illusory? – in these territories, dense and narrow, disjointed, which juxtapose fragmentations of spaces with exacerbated conflicts between exclusive islands that concentrate excessive wealth – ostentatious – at the foot of which extend gaps – refuges - where poverty, exclusion, and discrimination accumulate and build an everyday life within the survival economy, parallel economy, illicit economy… It is a question of investing these composite territories, to create a ‘readability of the urban landscape’ (Lynch, 1976), to decipher the meaning of the entanglement of more or less well-known symbols, to identify the coherence and the logics of the territories of everyday life.

1. At the foundations of the Carribean city

1.1 The stages of urban construction

7The embryos of urbanization in the Caribbean date back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the colonization of the countries and the establishment of a plantation economy to export their resources. Urban activity remained reduced as seen in Potter’s analysis of the successive phases of the ‘plantopolis’ model (see Figure 1). In the initial phase, the colonial city is the place of political power. From its port, it polarizes trade, agricultural exports, services and various commercial activities. In the middle of the 19th century, emancipation processes opened a second phase: the liberation of slaves gave rise to the densification of inhabited spaces with the construction of free villages in unoccupied, unsuitable areas around plantations, in the mountains - and more generally the hilly reliefs less suitable for large plantations - on the coastal strips. Urban and port settlements change little during this period.

8The third stage, beginning the 1950s, is that of the modern era. It is characterized by an extension and densification of urban spaces, with an intensification of flows and multiple relationships with the island’s interior. Population growth is concentrated in cities where there is an increased natural birth rate and migration inflows combined with an exodus of young workers from rural areas. Urban growth occurs starting from the 1950s and accelerates from 1970 onwards. The share of urban populations in the territories of the Caribbean rose from 36.5% in 1960 to 57.5% in 1990 to reach today’s share of more than 70%.

9In small island territories, the rate of urbanization rapidly exceeds 80% and can reach 100%, such as in Saint Martin and Cayman (see Table 1). Some rates may appear relatively low depending on the accounting principles and definitions used. For example, Barbados officially is only composed of 39% urban populations, but in fact, with the density of 642 inhabitants/km2 (and an area of 430 km2), the majority of the territory is marked by the spread of various types of urbanization. Lifestyles are closer to urbanity, and the costs of land and real estate draw the relentless zoning of an established social stratification.

Tableau 1. Evolution of urbanization in the Caribbean islands

Territories	Area	Density (hab/km2)	Largest city	Urban Populations urbaines (in thousands)			Rate of Urbanization (%)			Croissance annuelle moyenne 2010-2015
				1990	2014	2050	1990	2014	2050
Bahamas	13 940 km2	214	Nassau	205	317	430	80	83	87	0,1
Barbados	430 km2	642	Bridgetown	58	90	122	33	32	39	-0,4
Cayman Islands	260 km2	170	George Town	25	59	67	100	100	100	0
British Virgin Islands	153 km2	156	Road Town	6	13	20	63	69	78	0,4
Cuba	110 860 km2	102	Havana	7 777	8 666	7 833	73	77	83	0,1
Curaçao	450 km2	385	Willemstad	124	145	162	85	89	91	-0,1
Dominica	754 km2	96	Roseau	45	50	59	63	69	78	0,4
Dominican Republic	48 730 km2	204	SantoDomingo	4 001	8 019	12 003	55	78	90	1,4
Grenada	350 km2	258	Saint Georges	32	38	42	33	36	44	-0,1
Guadeloupe	1 628 km2	249	Pointe-à-Pitre	371	-	-	96	98	99	0
Haïti	27 750 km2	375	Port-au-Prince	2 027	6 009	10 936	29	57	76	2,4
Jamaica	11 425 km2	245	Kingston	1169	1 527	1 900	49	55	68	0,4
Martinique	1 128 km2	344	Fort-de-France	309	360	365	86	89	91	0
Puerto Rico	8 870 km2	420	San Juan	3 270	3 449	3 424	93	94	95	0
Saint Kitts and Nevis	261 km2	164	Basseterre	14	18	29	35	32	43	0,2
Saint Martin	87km2	850	Philipsburg	29	46	61	100	100	100	0
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	389 km2	304	Kingstown	45	55	69	41	50	62	0,7
Saint Lucia	620 km2	279	Castries	41	34	52	41	50	62	0,7
Trinidad and Tobago	5 130 km2	240	Port of Spain	104	115	123	9	9	11****	-1,5
Turks and Caicos Islands	948 km2	54	Cockburn Town	9	31	42	74	92	96	0,4
United States Virgin Islands	352 km2	302	Charlotte Amalie	91	102	100	88	95	97

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2014)

1.2. Urban territories disarticulated: between industrial deficit and excess tourism

10At this point, two processes need to be addressed: excess tourism and industrialization by invitation. First of all, remember that the Caribbean city is not an industrial city. It is only an open door to the world that exports its raw materials and imports necessary manufactured goods (see Figure 2).

11The speed of urbanization is parallel with the emergence of tourist activities (Weaver, 1993). In parallel with the expansion of urban areas, the growth of tourism is essential: 1 million in 1960, more than 10 million in 1990 and more than 20 million in 2010. The importance of these flows must be seen in light of the small size of these territories, with much of the populations concentrated on the coastal fringes (continental and islands).

12In addition to the economic interests and limitations that accompany the assertion of this sector of activity (Dehoorne, 2013), it is important here to emphasize its impact on land prices and real estate speculation. Coastal fringes, yesterday neglected, where families live without title - the descendants of emancipated slaves, discriminated against, who have gradually invested in the trades of food agriculture and fishing - are brutally coveted in the view of juicy real estate and tourist projects. In 2014, on all Caribbean shores, approximately 29,500 hotel rooms are under construction, which corresponds to an increase of more than 18% in capacity.

13Tourist construction, with phases of acceleration and their share of real estate speculations, contribute to the urbanization of the shorelines and transform small islands into ‘island-cities’ with a disjointed urbanization where the wealthy residential districts accumulate in tourist complexes that give rise to urban corridors. These touristic processes inevitably contribute to the destabilization of fragile living spaces. Local people face multiple administrative constraints and other pressures - violent if necessary - to ‘help’ them leave these coveted places and reach the city: the refuge city and its interstitial spaces … In the Caribbean, tourism thus participates in the acceleration of urbanization and the destructuring of the rural fabric, which reinforces migratory processes towards the city.

14It is in this context that the challenges of industrialization in cities and, more broadly, in the Caribbean territories arise. Raw products are exported without valuation. Cities lack jobs for their populations; many unemployed or underemployed workers spend their days in the few open public places (such as squares and a few public gardens). In cities without major industrialization, development is conceived as part of so-called ‘industrialization by invitation’ strategies (Lewis, 1955). Launched in the early 1950s, these strategies aim to create the right conditions to draw investment by multinational enterprises. These are the operations ‘Boostrap’ in Puerto Rico and ‘Beehive’ in Barbados, as well as the ‘invitations’ of North American companies Reynolds, Alcan and Kaiser to Jamaica. Admittedly, opinions are divided on the results, which are often lower than expected, but the stakes are fundamental: for the host territories, it is both a question of creating jobs to absorb part of their abundant labor force, which lacks any real qualifications, and to stimulate exports. In return, multinational companies enjoy significant tax benefits and a favorable legislative framework, and their output can easily be sold in the neighboring North American market.

1.3. Crisis and Poverty pregnancy

15As B. Carrer (2009) explains, ‘if there is one dimension that does not escape any city from the continental Caribbean to the insular Caribbean, from the regional metropolis to the secondary city, from the collectivist regime to the liberal society , it is the crisis that the city is going through (…) that it is financial, economic and social in the image of a liberal world confronted with the shock of decline, whether environmental or climatic, making vulnerable and perilous territories subject to hazards sometimes uncontrollable or at least difficult to control ’.

16The urban structures of the Caribbean and the Americas, legacies of colonial times and new fronts, rich melts and original receptacles of diverse and mixed populations, nonetheless constitute dual societies where poverty and precariousness extend. At the feet of pockets of arrogant wealth. This duality, brutal and radical, is not without questioning us about perspectives of these cities. From island territories to the continental perimeter of the Caribbean Sea, all cities are affected to varying degrees by the problem of poverty and exclusion (Dehoorne 2013, Dehoorne et al., 2013). Urban policies must therefore support social inclusion strategies to respond to the challenges posed by violence and petty crime, the rise of illicit economies and their inter-island networks. In this context, urban projects must focus on addressing the essential issues of housing, mobility in the city, access to the city, living together.

17In the French departments of the Americas, the law against insalubrious housing constitutes a strategic entry point for defining new urban projects (Letchimy, 2009). The fight against unworthy housing in the overseas departments can support - and encourage - the commitment of public authorities. The circular of March 26, 2008 relating to the implementation of specific urban and social management operations insalubrity (MOUS insalubrity) defines a complete panel of operational and financial tools adapted to the specificities of these territories which are made available local authorities. The context is therefore conducive to the experimentation of new strategies of action in the French urban settlements of the Caribbean.

18Thus, if ‘the crisis is a breaking point, a decisive moment when the factors of tension and instability, where uncertainties and questioning confront each actor with his bearings and his ways of doing things, of thinking, of being, “as B. Carrer (2009) points out, the crisis opens new perspectives and the Caribbean city, ‘cradle of exclusions and matrix of inequalities’, must also be understood as” the space of the conquest of rights, of the community organization, the economic alternative and the creative imagination. It is just as much a victim of the crisis by the exclusion that it produces and welcomes as potential rebound, response, projection’.

2. For a reading of the Caribbean city

19The Caribbean city, between structural and economic crises, natural and societal crises (Carrer, 2009; Desse and Sélise, 2010; Jabouin, 2010; Lucien, 2010), constitutes an authentic laboratory, refuge or survival space, place of all possibilities in this ‘combination of territories’ (Roncayolo, 1990). The analysis of the Caribbean city, the apprehension of its foundations, processes and challenges can be considered from the following six entries.

2.1. The capital city

20‘Between resistance and performance’, the capital cities are based on fragile urban frameworks articulated around some deficient infrastructures which limit their attractiveness. They are confronted with this ‘dialectic of extremes’ between, on the one hand, a position of resistance, composite (identities vs. globalization, solidarity, informal, refuge space of the precarious and destitute) and, on the other hand, the imperatives of the performance and the unavoidable competitiveness to support their economic development.

2.2. Urban sprawl

21After the years of rural and agricultural exodus caused by the sugar crisis that led to an urban accumulation of destitute populations in hitherto undeveloped areas (steep or unstable landforms, marshland and mangrove areas, Letchimy, 1992), the late (and progressive) advent of ‘cars for all’ has produced new approaches to the diffusion of populations since the 1990s: urban sprawl and the sprawling of agricultural areas have lost their economic interest in the face of prospects for land appreciation allowed by this periurbanisation.

22Urban sprawl results in the spread and dilution of forms of urbanity in the rest of the island space, with these anarchic urban corridors that go up the valleys or stretch on the most popular coastlines. Daily shuttles on insufficient road infrastructure, more or less well maintained, are now the lot of the majority of the assets who spend daily hours in their isolation ‘automobile’. The inevitable traffic jams are part of the daily life of these super-urbanized urbanized islands where automobile catching up now imposes its undivided reign.

2.3. Closed cities vs. open cities

23Socio-economic inequalities are concentrated in the urbanized areas of the Caribbean, in a background of colonial history - sometimes unfinished - marked by the racial dimension (Mohammed, 2008; Rodriguez and Arriagada, 2004). These urban expanses made of ‘continuity and discontinuities, even’ discontinuous continuities ‘give rise to fragmented morphologies’ (Roulleau-Berger, 1995) with accumulations of wealth concentrated in favor of a few privileged places that emerge from the rest of the landscape urban. Closed residential areas (in the logic of ‘Privatoria’; Mckenzie, 1994), internationalized business districts and then multiple intermediate spaces, without a dominant function, sometimes a legacy of history, a relic of a colonial city drowned in the hubbub of automobiles; a series of ‘irregularities’, ruptures completed by deprived areas where informal activities and parallel economies are organized. These fragmented, closed, exclusive, violent urban spaces are far from tourist postcards (De Albuquerque and McElroy, 1999); Moreover, the famous tourist sites of the Caribbean are entrenched territories where tourists stay in exclusive, secure bubbles, alongside which are added new private residential areas (Dehoorne, 2004).

24Open or closed spaces, public or private spaces, strategy of openness, social inclusion or exclusion are all themes that open the reflection on fundamental concepts between ‘busy city or juxtaposition of secure environments’ (Mangin, 2004, 2006).

2.4. The refuge city

25The Caribbean city is also a refuge city with its various popular, precarious or unhealthy neighborhoods, neighborhoods of exile, ethnic minorities in a situation of social exclusion, young people who ‘galley’ … So many urban areas marked by the stigmas of poverty where precarious and unhealthy habitats are concentrated, these ‘unworthy habitats’ (Letchimy, 2009).

26Recall that in these island spaces where the land is the main wealth and source of enrichment, the dissemination of opportunities - and speculation - land and real estate, on the shores as in the interior of the land, leads to a destructuring of living spaces rural areas and, more broadly, a closing of the spaces that inevitably leads marginal or precarious people to converge towards this refuge city.

27To respond to the major challenge of social exclusion (Dubet and Lapeyronnie, 1992), the intervention of public policies is essential to carry out urban renewal operations in favor of the inclusion of marginal populations; beyond the traditional ‘security-enforcement-closure’ approach - the protection of private goods - it is necessary to imagine other strategies, to develop new tools to build new social compromises.

2.5. The city faces the risks

28In this regional area, which is very exposed to risks and natural hazards, cities are particularly vulnerable. These densely populated settlements face major events such as the earthquakes that largely destroyed Kingston in the early 20th century or Port-au-Prince a century later, not to mention the importance of the hurricane season, with the memory Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and the recurrence of damage on the Haitian territory, like the city of Gonaïves in 2008. These brutal events highlight ‘the unequal territories in the face of natural disasters’ (Desse et al., 2010; Lucien, 2010) as illustrated by the contrast between, on the one hand, the resilience capacity of Cuba Island and, on the other hand, the resonance of Haitian chaos faced with irreversibility environmental degradation of the country with its share of Eco refugees (Lucien, 2010, 2013, 2014).

2.6. Urban renovation, recomposition of living spaces, the city project in question

29The history of the city comes out of the shadows through the process of heritage that gives the city its ‘lost consideration’. Depending on the projects of cities, these operations can have a social and cultural significance essential for the (re) construction of the social bond, the building of a conscience, the cultural awakening. Conversely, when they are part of financial strategies that go beyond local issues, patrimonialization favors the replacement of populations in favor of the gentrification of protected neighborhoods, as is the case in San Juan or Santo Domingo. The production of the city requires to find the right balance between the demolition and the rehabilitation and to question the interest of the ‘restorative practices of the degraded districts’.

30The most vulnerable populations concentrate and organize themselves in interstitial spaces (urban mangroves, industrial wastelands, sectors with a topography that is constrained or at risk: steep embankments and river beds). Far removed from the control of forgotten public policies, they develop ‘socializations producing cultures of randomness that can be mobilized in processes of affiliation, disaffiliation and urban and economic réafiliasation’ (Roulleau-Berger, 1995).

Conclusion

31In the islands won by a badly digested urbanity, where the confines of urbanization enclose tourist enclaves, it is the whole of a territory which knows an ill-being. Nuisances, fragmented urbanization, islands of ostentatious wealth surrounded by pockets of poverty, territorial disorder, shantytowns of yesterday and squats of today, the urban question and the urban project are at the heart of the challenges of development in these territories in search of attractiveness. It is through the urban dimension, the reinterpretation of urban space, and the reinvestment of centralities that these islands will be able to initiate a voluntary conversion of their economy. Getting out of the plantation economy (from the dominance of a cycle of agricultural production like bananas to that of monolithic seaside tourism production) (Britton, 1988; Dehoorne, 2007) requires the creation of capital cities driving strategies. Promising economies.
In addition to the social and cultural dimensions, which in particular feed into heritage-making processes, it must be recognized that the economic stakes that are concentrated in these cities are crucial for the development of their respective countries. The economic future of Caribbean territories inevitably passes through the urban and the definition of innovative and daring projects. In fact, given the small size of these island territories, which still bear the stigma of the plantation economy and the extent of tourist rights-of-way on the most coveted coastal areas, still under the influence of extroverted economic logics. , the city, space of production, of creation, space refuge, privileged space of social and cultural recomposition, is at the heart of the stakes of development of the Caribbean territories.

32For the moment, the Caribbean city responds to the fragmented city model, far from the concepts of ‘Métis city’ or ‘homogeneous city’ (Mangin, 2004), far from a virtuous urban planning idea that would be sociability, social inclusion, a certain conception of ‘living together’. These are liberal economic logics and political motivations that fuel the springs of an urbanism of reality from which urban landscapes consist of a juxtaposition of secure bubbles – keep to themselves, the will to avoid, self-segregation -, intermediate spaces more or less functional and multiple interstices, these spaces of ‘others’: little money, poor, discriminated, invisible, refugees … These dense urban societies are the crucible of segregation, deprivation of places where ‘secure environments’ ‘contribute to a drastic reduction of public space in the strict sense of the term, that is, free and accessible to all’ (Mangin, 2004).

33Given the challenges of development, the challenges and problems of specific renovation, the inevitable experiments to initiate in governance, these urbanized areas offer a remarkable field of investigation, a sum of possibilities that are as many opportunities to be valued on the economic, social and political plans, for a recomposition of these areas of everyday life.