"The Summit of the Urban Life: The Utopia of the shopper "

The city grows and grows and grows….

Illustrated in the image is the view at the center of the commercial zone in the Arima area, also known as the “Dial”.

Commercial zones are seen to be the driving force of city centers as they allow for its day to day functions with the goods and services that it provides to the general public as well as with the trading processes that occur. Thus commercial zones are the number one income generators for the city area and this is why I choose to delve deeper into what exactly are commercial zones? As well as, what do commercial zones serve to accomplish? And with what resources? This was done with an analysis of the major activities present in a typical commercial zone located in Arima area of Trinidad.

It was observed that all of the activities in commercial zones be it clothing stores, sale of food, entertainment facilities or even people allow for income generation in the city center that in turn can be used to further develop the urban center.

It was also seen that these activities grow in response to human consumption levels. This means that when demand for a certain product is high because persons want them, certain activities are enhanced and expanded to meet this demand as a means to make people more comfortable; as well provide the service that they wanted but not necessarily needed. This also leads  more places producing the same specified good and service. This is a good thing for the consumer as prices would be reduced by stores who want to attract persons to buy their items over others in the commercial zone.

Likewise, it can be stated that there are many factors that allow businesses in commercial zones to make a positive turnover every year. One such factor is advertising. Companies use alluring marketing strategies to convenience persons they should buy an item or that they need to have an item although it is not needful to them.  This strategy is also adopted by side street vendors who use their “side street vendor’s language” to manipulate words to make an item seem perfect and useful to you as a means to sell their produce.

Correspondingly, advertising paired with a good location at the heart of the commercial zone in the city center allows for the success of many stores in the urban area. However, this encourages people to waste their money on something that is sometimes not needful for then and can thus leave them in debt when they have other expenses to cover throughout the monthly period until they get paid again.

Therefore, it can be stated that the commercial zone in urban areas is an open forum for social interaction and communication where persons of varying background can come together for one purpose, be it to buy a product or to just “lime” with their friends and co-workers. 

Similarly, the commercial zone especially the urban city center is a dynamic space in Trinidad as it experiences constant changes over time. This is also because of the fact that it is entrenched in the human dimension and local culture and heritage. This allows the city to develop in a certain structure and influences what activities are given prominence in the urban center.

On the other hand, it should be noted that with progress comes problems. Although, it was not developed in this blog series, it should be stated that with the construction of more and more businesses to meet the increasing demand, consumption levels become quite unsustainable. In addition, this leads to an increase in imports to meet these demands and is thus reflected in Trinidad’s high import bill. This can also have many detrimental effects on the environments through land, water, air, noise and visual pollution, all of which can actually discourage persons from visiting the commercial zones.

To me the commercial zone culture is quite multidimensional as it incorporates other small sub cultures such as the “clothing stores culture”, the “foods culture”, the “market culture”, “the entertainment culture”, the “banking culture” and the “people culture” to form what we see today. It forms a sort of community where the varying sub-cultures are the major players that in fact allow for the success and up-keeping of the community which in this case is this shared commercial space in city centers. 

To end in the words of Lewis Mumford “It is our utopias that make the world tolerable to us: the cities and mansions that people dream of are those in which they finally live.”