Photo Blog Reflection

Photo Courtesy: Nisha Kong

Over the past ten weeks it has been a very enlightening educational journey posting to our blog. We set out with a new open eye towards our beautiful island of Trinidad in order to capture various instances of which urbanization has impacted negatively on our country. Visiting places from north to south of Trinidad we captured a variety of photos which efficiently illustrated the various negative impacts urbanization has caused. It is our hope that these photos capture the attention of our blogs viewers and educates them so that these effects can be reduced. 

We placed an emphasis on the degradation caused by urbanization mainly on the environment as it leads to a large number of interconnected impacts of which needs to be reduced for the betterment of society. This core theme has been visited by our fellow classmates, which indeed shows it is a cause for concern as it receives much attention. We have chosen three blogs which relate to ours in order to spread the awareness and show the severity of importance in taking action to reduce said negative impacts.

The three interrelating blogs to our theme were:

Darryl James and Jenice Culzac

http://costofurbanisation.blogspot.com/  

Related- pollution, traffic congestion

Darryl and Jenice's blog was one of our most interesting reads, it was written in a style that captures and keeps your attention while informing and educating you throughout the reading. They focused on topics similar to ours such as pollution, traffic congestion and to a lesser extent crime and air pollution. The incoperation of academic models within the posts further aided in their explanations of what their photo depictions show.

Kaaria Quash and Jameel Smith

http://urbangeographers.wix.com/port-of-spain 

Related- pollution traffic congestion

Kaaria and Jameel's blog focused mainly on the urban centre of Port of Spain, and they highlighted both the highlights and shortcomings of the city. The blog was insightful as we have not been to some of the places included, so it was a kind of mini-field trip of sorts. They backed up their photos and explanations with strong academic sources and reasoning. Their blog post on traffic was able to link with ours to show that the urban areas are high density areas plagued by traffic congestion issues. Similarly both blogs had posts which showed the pollution generated within the cities during the Carnival celebrations. This blog showed that issues highlighted in our blog were also present elsewhere, as seen in this blog.

Ryan Dhanraj and Rommel Dookeran
http://urbanslums.blogspot.com/ 

Related- Shows negative impacts of urbanization in the form of slum creation

The blog done by Ryan and Rommel was most definitely a very very long read, but also one that contained a tremendous amount of information as it contained posts that related to numerous areas within the country, and  also links to current events in the country with examples. They often showed the historical background of some places which further aided in showing how places developed to their current from. The blog focused on a similar topic of ours, which was the negative impacts of urbanization, they chose to be specific to the slum areas, and thus focused on the lower income, squatter settlements. They still showed that even in these areas issues such as pollution and crime, which was not only present in the urban centers, but also the suburban landscape and slum areas.

As we close the blog post, we will like to thank all of our readers and to our peers who often offered advice on our topics and posts. This had indeed been an eye opening experience as we both see urbanization and development from a different perspective, and question the implications of each stage of becoming developed. It also took us on a semester long journey across the country, compiling photos everywhere of possible topics and discovering places we have never visited previously. In closing we would like to thank Ms. Priya Kissoon and Ms. Karina Ali for allowing us to have this assignment which engaged our interest in the field of Urban Geography, our country and our environment. Thank You!!!