Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Kingston College (Kingston, Jamaica)'

The process of shelter consolidation which has been observed in spontaneous settlements gave rise to the idea that it could be transferred to formal housing projects. The development and improvement of shelter for the urban poor through formal channels has also often followed a model of progressive development based on the provision of tenure and basic services. This was done through "sites and services" and "area upgrading" projects.
An assessment of this process was carried out by observing two sites and services projects, Nannyville Gardens and De La Vega City, located in the Kingston Metropolitan Region, Jamaica. The manner and extent of consolidation is analyzed from data gathered during a survey which consisted of interviews with key informants and residents through a questionnaire, observation notes, physical measurements, slides and aerial photographs. The analysis dealt with variables such as; changes in the habitable area, the level of finishes undertaken at each stage of addition and the incorporation of space for home-Based Enterprises. The participants' physical priorities for housing are identified through the changes that have occurred in the variables over the life of both housing schemes.
The results indicate that sufficient habitable area takes precedent over the level of finish in the early stages of dwelling development. The findings also suggest that the economic use of dwellings (renting, vending, trading and the provision of personal services) in formal low-income housing projects is an inevitable part of the consolidation process which should be given serious consideration when formulating such projects.

Kingston is a city facing serious environmental challenges. In common with other Third World cities, these have usually been documented from the perspective of affluent and powerful urban residents. Very little research has explored the spatial and social distribution of environmental problems in the city, or has examined the ways that individual citizens from a variety of backgrounds understand the urban environment. These problems have often been packaged as discrete issues, when in fact they cannot be understood or alleviated without knowledge of their economic, political, and cultural aspects. Urban environmental problems require political solutions that address uneven power relations and ineffective structures of urban governance. In this thesis, I address these issues in Kingston through an application of the themes of nature, power and participation. A mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods were used to explore the ways in which urban residents from different age, gender and class backgrounds construct the city and its environmental problems. The knowledge of marginalised individuals and groups is placed in the foreground and is used to provide an alternative analysis of Kingston’s ecology. These understandings are then used to assess critically the structures of urban governance, and to suggest possible changes that could be made to these. The research confirms that there are significant environmental problems in Kingston, and that these have serious negative impacts on many urban residents. It shows that these problems are understood differently by the various social groups within the city, and that the burdens of environmental problems vary socio-spatially across the Kingston Metropolitan Area. Despite this, there is a general consensus that environmental improvement is desirable. However, for this to be achieved there need to be fundamental alterations in the social structures and political organisation of the city.

Input-Output Assessment (IOA) was employed to quantify a likely range of annual lead and cadmium fluxes and to discern their possible flow paths in the water system of the Kingston hydrological catchment in south-eastern Jamaica. This technique was useful to understand how cross-sectoral mass exchanges of these heavy metals ultimately impacted the water resources of the basin. Initially, based on deterministic principles of the urban hydrological cycle, a foundational IOA matrix model was formulated to represent the basin’s typical annual hydrological regime. Here, flows of the water-using or water-impacting sectors that comprise the basin’s water system were identified and quantified. Hereafter the realistically possible cases of minimum, average and maximum direct cross-sectoral mass flows of lead and cadmium were estimated. The heavy metal mass flows of each case were calculated by multiplying the various annual cross-sectoral water flux volumes by corresponding lead and cadmium concentrations. The resulting direct flow matrices  were then stochastically recalculated to succinctly represent the most statistically likely coupled direct and indirect lead and cadmium mass flows in models. After the flux modelling was completed, backward and forward tracing of the mass fluxes identified natural water resources as recipient of most lead and cadmium in the basin. This is arguably the most noteworthy finding of the study as the natural water bodies were loaded even when the water system was modelled to show the minimum likely mass flows of lead and cadmium. From the average and maximum likely fluxes of lead and cadmium, not only did the loading of the natural water resources increase but they in turn started to distribute lead and cadmium to other water bodies. Tracing also identified anthropogenic activities as the driver of lead and cadmium cycling throughout the system. The study was concluded in the recommendation of a strategy to improve wastewater treatment facilities and coverage as the most efficient and cost effective way to ameliorate the degree of lead and cadmium cycling and loading in the water resources of the basin.

Introduction: World Health Organisation (WHO) policy presents parental HIV disclosure to children as beneficial and encourages parents to disclose. Most research on disclosure has been conducted in high income countries and tends to represent women’s choices in terms of a disclosure/non-disclosure binary which, I argue, is premised on rationalist theory models of decision making and disclosure which fail to contextualise women’s experiences, particularly those women who live in the Global South. This research study aimed to address gaps in existing research by exploring the maternal disclosure experiences of HIV positive Jamaican mothers to their seronegative children and offers a critique of existing WHO policy. Methods: I carried out in-depth interviews with 15 HIV positive Jamaican women with at least one seronegative child aged over 10 years, associated with one clinic and one NGO in Kingston, Jamaica. I adopted a feminist approach to Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and applied Hochschild’s concept of emotion work to make sense of women’s experiences. In attending to the structural factors shaping health actions, a feminist approach highlights the relationship between Jamaican contextual factors of poverty, violence and complex familial formations and women’s disclosure decisions. Conceptual resources drew on feminist critiques of dominant discourses of motherhood, including governmentality and responsibilisation, which, I argue, underpin policy imperatives on disclosure to children. Results: Mothers’ experiences of maternal disclosure to children occurred on a spectrum, rather than a disclosure/nondisclosure binary, and included: full disclosure, partial disclosure, nondisclosure, denial of HIV, differential disclosure (telling only some of their children) and disclosure by others. Experiences of disclosure were affected by financial risks and practical issues as well as consideration of children’s long-term physical and mental health, education prospects and the impact on other family relationships. Mothering at a distance (mothers living apart from their child/ren) and the fear or reality of ‘downfallment’ (a child being HIV positive) further complicated disclosure experiences. The women described strategies which challenged negative characterisations of HIV positive women in order to present themselves as capable mothers and manage their own and their children’s emotions. Conclusion: Disclosure of maternal HIV to children is a complex issue, carrying risks as well as benefits, which are particularly heightened in low income contexts. When women disclose this could be seen as a form of governmentality and when they don’t disclose their mothering is called into question within policy discourses predicated on evidence from the Anglo North. The over simplistic disclosure /non-disclosure binary fails to consider the emotion work women engage in to manage their illness and their mothering identity in the context of their relationships with their children. This research adds to the HIV disclosure literature from low and middle income countries and extends maternal HIV disclosure research through the use of a novel approach, feminist IPA, to understand women’s experiences. The research findings point to the need for a more nuanced policy on disclosure in low and middle income countries.

The hardened inner city community of trench town represents one of several impoverished communities that form the heart of the Jamaican capital city, Kingston. As wealth and influence have moved inland, off the coastal plains on which the city was originally settled on, to the slopes of the surrounding mountains, the once vibrant downtown core has decayed. With this urban decay came the social ills that usually accompany failing communities such as crime, violence, shadow economies, health and sanitation issues. As has been the case with many urban centres worldwide, this problem was further exacerbated by an ever present influx of rural immigrants in search of a better life in the city. These associated urban problems not only affect the inhabitants of these communities, but they stifle the growth of the larger national economy. This thesis aims to explore and propose urban design interventions to the inner city community of Trench Town, that not only address the issues of providing viable shelter to the residents of the community, but also begin to set up a frame work of self reliance and economic sustainability and growth, so that the community members can begin to develop their lives for themselves. It also begins to look at ideas of communal living that have been experimented with at on a small scale over the years, but have never been fully integrated into the urban fabric. This thesis looks to examine one specific community within the urban fabric of the city, but all the while cognisant of the fact that this one community is but one in the overall urban fabric, yet recognising that as each informal inner-city community has developed out of a unique set of conditions and thus must be treated individually as such. Throughout the years, several interventions have been implemented to address the overall need to house the population of the expanding urban centres, with many variations of urban housing solutions being used, with varying degrees of success. This thesis will explore the implications of these solutions on the proposed site, and explore viable modifications and variations. Firstl an in depth exploration into the historical and cultural context of the case site will be explored to gain important background knowledge of known factors of spatial development and community needs, and this will form the foundation of any further development going ahead in the case study, which will provide the analytical breakdown of the site and influences. The thesis will then explore international case studies of various approaches to similar situations to identify challenges that have been experienced elsewhere and that may inform the design site. From this research information, parameters and principles will be distilled to inform the overall design intervention. Finally, the proposed design intervention will be reflected upon, and evaluated to try to determine any shortcomings and indentify how the design might be replicated in other communties in Kingston facing similar social and economic conditions.