Yes, this is still a column about urban development. Our monument laws cannot be implemented and applied if there’s not enough mutual trust or information. Between owners and government. And actually that’s strange because the owners, as part of our people, ARE the government! So to those family heads in their 60s: we made the rules ourselves, or that is: our children made them. They visited those universities abroad, where white folks know how the world turns, and where we asked them to become just as intelligent and wise as them. The kids came back and imposed those ‘big country systems’ of all kinds of rules and regulations on us. And we wanted them to do that too, we thought that was the way our country could grow to a brighter future!!
I’m talking about the eighties now, and in the meantime your kids have already raised another generation.
They also went abroad, just as their parents, but now what they chose to learn from the white folks is marketing & communication, business skills either as a tradition in the family or personal interest. This generation is coming back out of free will, not to pay back their college money to their home country. They know they have to make Curacao benefit from their knowledge in order for them to be able to raise a family here according to their standards, to spend their days in the sun instead of in the cold big cities where they got their grades. At the same time they value their parents because they know they thank their indepedence to their generosity. So in sharing familiy values they take career steps and at the same time they don’t offend nobody ‘because we live in a small community’.
A lot of property owners in their 60s trust their kids, but not the system that they created. Because the system is putting people in charge that their fathers never trusted. In fact they don’t trust the system when it comes to their money. Money has always been an important instrument to ‘buy space’ (read: real estate) into the (colonial) community, in order to be able to close off if needed, to keep those ignorant and violent people out.
There they go, making one big mistake in the value of money: it was never intended to take power over people, but invented to trade with other people in order to get want you need. That’s what we started calling the Economy, now developed into a global system. In changing economic relation all over the world, I notice that communication skills are taking power over money. So if Curacao wants to survive in the global economy, real estate - including our collection of monuments - has to return to its original value: something to trade.
On this point I’m optimistic: legal and financial systems are in place, as part of our economic heritage. In the end we once were part of a superb trading business in colonial times!! We only need time for the next generation property owners to take over to save our most precious monuments. But they will, eventually, as part of their family heritage. So leave the old guys to enjoy their last years in business, the more mutual trust they create within their families the better. Decay is everywhere, and always will be, as a compliment to growth and new life.
So my advice for developers and city planners of today is to focus on owners that are in their forties, fifties, with bright young kids, they are most likely to understand those family and business values to create good partnerships in our small community. That way we might create the dynamics our real estate market needs to move to the next level of development.
Read about the next step in the rescue of our Art Deco heritage of Cinelandia in our newsletter next Urban Thursday! To subscribe to the newsletter, click
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