I had the occasion to peep into the discussion going on with the future development of the North East Hamilton community. It’s difficult to realise how long it has been since that was a pet mission of mine. Some of my children are now entering their 40th year, some heading to 50 — and it was before most of them were born that I was most active. Then I connected its development as relevant to the whole notion of addressing economic disproportionality and whether economic diversity and balance were achievable at all.

I can totally relate to the area residents and landlords who fear that this idea of opening up the proverbial “back of town” to international investors sounds like gentrification. At first blush, it’s the simple idea of moving out the poor Black landlords and replacing them with more affluent international business owners.

One may argue that is what I was also planning back in the mid to late-Seventies — to move the residents out — when talked of high-rise, six to ten-storey buildings and thousands of city dwellers. Not really. I was fostering the idea of property owners forming corporations by joining small properties into larger land and city blocks, owning the leaseholds to the developments and leasing them out to international businesses and the like. This is an entirely different proposition from selling out to encourage investment.

The difference in my style would have been that, yes, we had foreign investors, but they only held a lease that could be renewed at the appropriate time. So in this scenario, the landowners and their families and future estate would be ultimately the beneficiaries of a much improved property.

That kind of scheme would ultimately benefit all the businesses in the area as well because of bringing persons into the area with more disposable income.

In summary, I am not here to re-promote my idea, but if it isn’t the type of scheme that the existing promoters have, then there is indeed a lot to be concerned about.