While the Urban Development Corporation, UDC has been “doing good work over the last five decades,” General Manager of the entity Dr Damian Graham says with 13 years left for Jamaica to achieve the objectives under its Vision 2030 strategic road map, the entity will go into overdrive.
“The UDC’s direction can be summed up in its Compelling Story 2031 that’s like a shot of adrenaline to the heart of an agency that has been around for the last 49 years …doing good work over the several decades, but with the requirements of Vision 2030 we have to look at a new focus,” the General Manager said during a recent televised appearance on current affairs programme Issues and Answers.
Vision 2030 Jamaica is a strategic road map to guide the country to achieve its goals of sustainable development and prosperity by 2030. Vision 2030 is in line with the inclusive development paradigm of the United Nations that integrates the standards and principles of human rights – participation, non-discrimination and accountability. The comprehensive vision of the national development plan is to make Jamaica the place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business.
“We see the UDC as driving that change instrumentally and the talent of the UDC will be used in a much different way,” the UDC General Manager told Interviewer Ian Boyne.
The UDC will in 2031 celebrate 62 years of urban development and envisions that by that time it will have added several structures to the built landscape inclusive of an iconic Music Museum, a newly built Henry Morgan Park in Port Royal, a newly built Freedom Park and Dead End Park in Montego Bay, a newly built Third City which will be the leading centre for high technology in the hemisphere.
It further envisions that Jamaica will by then become the fourth logistics hub with numerous urban development programme interventions led by the UDC in an economy which has been transformed to one of the strongest in the region towards developed nation status.
By that time it will also have created 12 new green spaces, 33 more public beaches and six eco-lodges with surrounding ecology habitat attractions.
And the UDC is equal to the task with some amount of re-visioning the Corporation’s GM reasoned. “The Board and the UDC management have looked long and hard at what is our best asset and our best asset at the UDC is our people. We have well over 130 highly qualified, highly trained technical professionals that have over the last four decades done impressive work,” Dr Graham pointed out.
“If you look at the Kingston waterfront, if you look at Montego Bay if you look at Ocho Rios all of that was done and planned by UDC. We brought the talent in, we brought the contractors and we got it done. In the future, we have to use those assets and use them much differently so for us our Compelling Story is about bringing them to life and using our assets in a much more effective way,” Dr Graham stated further.
In the meantime, the General Manager said the Corporation has cast its vision beyond the island’s shores as well. “We are looking at exporting talent and therefore the UDC being not just integral in the development nationally for the various towns and cities building new parks, building new areas of attraction causing development to happen such as redevelopment of towns- downtown Kingston, Montego Bay, Ocho Rios are examples; but also looking at entire islands and places that need talents like ours where we can export,” he noted.
“Then we would have truly fulfilled our mandate of making development happen not in a way that has an impact not just nationally but regionally as well. So we have a big heart and a big mind, we are refocusing …based on our heritage (of achievements),” Dr Graham said.
The UDC celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2018 since its inception on March 21, 1968 as government’s leading urban development agency.
For further information, please contact
The Corporate Relations and Marketing Department
Urban Development Corporation
12 Ocean Boulevard
Kingston, Jamaica
Tel: (876) 922-8310-4
Email cr@udcja.com
November 10, 2017