Conclusion

This conclusion reconsiders the various themes depicted by spatial and longitudinal analysis, and reflects on the use of spatial and aspatial census data to construct the social geography of Kingston since sovereignty. In particular, the conclusion returns to the imposition of structural adjustment by the IMF-World Bank; the formal/informal split in employment; the persistent housing deficit; the demise of colour/race segregation and the enduring significance of class and pluralism in the social stratification; and the ghetto as a locale of deprivation and violence, as well as of creole creativity. Kingston is no longer the colour–class segregated entity that it was at independence, but it is broken, in a post-modern sense, into variegated micro-worlds of achievement and defeat, danger and safety, often spatially proximate or even juxtaposed. But Kingston is not unique. It is comparable in its employment and housing problems to adjacent Latin American cities that have experienced structural adjustment over the last twenty to twenty-five years, and to an even wider range of post-colonial cities that are undergoing rapid political or economic transformation, including globalization. Two obvious comparators are São Paulo in Brazil, which has suffered income polarization, and the massive growth of its informal settlements since the democratization of the military regime in the 1980s, and the cities of South Africa, where apartheid provided the basis for segregation on a massive scale until the early 1990s. Furthermore, São Paulo, Johannesburg, and Kingston have violent crime records among the worst in the developing world, largely because social polarization is rooted in class/race difference and deprivation. The conclusion turns first to the value of long-run census analysis, before it reviews the book’s major findings, considers Kingston’s place in a wider world, and assesses Kingston’s decolonization. This book has focused on issues of social development and spatial change covering the late-colonial and post-sovereignty periods in Kingston, and has drawn heavily on the census information covering the period 1943 to 1991. The 1943 census was carried out to provide statistical information essential for population registration prior to the first general election based on adult suffrage in 1944, and is regarded as the first modern census.