Pip: Dennise Demming is thinking about the city — specifically about what a city quietly trades away when nobody's looking, one "temporary" structure at a time.

Mara: Today we're covering the Queen's Park Savannah in Port of Spain — its history, what's threatening it, and why green space in a flood-prone capital is a practical argument, not just a sentimental one. Let's start there.

Don't Pave Paradise: Save the Queen's Park Savannah

Mara: The Queen's Park Savannah has been around since 1817 — 232 acres purchased from the Peschier family under Sir Ralph Woodford. It has been pasture, racecourse, airstrip, and is currently the largest roundabout in the world by Guinness record. The post opens with a simple claim: this place belongs to every citizen, present and future.

Pip: And the piece quotes Olga Mavrogordato's description directly — "the lungs of the city." That phrase does a lot of work.

Mara: It does, because the post immediately cashes it out practically. Green, permeable land in the heart of a flood-prone capital absorbs rainfall that concrete sends elsewhere. Losing it isn't aesthetic loss — it's a drainage problem.

Pip: The pattern the post traces is worth sitting with. Structures arrive labeled "temporary." They don't leave. A Carnival Centre is now proposed to replace the Grand Stand entirely, over what the post describes as considerable public objection. Temporary is doing a lot of heavy lifting as a word.

Mara: A resident, Maria Rivas-McDonald, is quoted observing that a previous administration paved another section of the Savannah — and the result was flooding. She raises the same concern about this year's Independence Day parade grounds near the Botanic Gardens: if the goal is giving VIPs dry footing, grass can be cut and temporary flooring laid.

Pip: No permanent road required. Funny how the permanent solution always seems to involve concrete.

Mara: The post makes the logic explicit: "What is paved is rarely unpaved. What is built rarely comes back down." Each incursion gets defended as isolated and small. But precedent compounds. The post calls on planners, heritage bodies, and ordinary citizens who walk the perimeter every evening to say plainly — enough.

Pip: The Savannah holds cricket matches, joggers, family picnics, vendors, Carnival. All of it depends on the ground staying open. That's not nostalgia — that's the use case.

Mara: And a city that grows hotter every year needs that permeable green core. The post ends with a clear ask: let this generation be the one that held the line.

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Pip: Lungs of the city. It's a good phrase because it's accurate — you don't notice them until they're compromised.

Mara: Something to carry into the next conversation about what cities quietly give up in the name of progress.

I write with growing concern over the encroachment on the Queen’s Park Savannah — a heritage site that belongs not to any administration, but to every citizen of this country, present and future.

The Savannah has stood since 1817, when 232 acres were purchased from the Peschier family on the direction of Sir Ralph Woodford. It has survived as pasture, racecourse, airstrip, and finally as what Olga Mavrogordato so aptly called “the lungs of the city.” It is, by the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest roundabout in the world — a distinction found nowhere else, and one we are quietly allowing to erode.

A pattern we’ve seen before

Structures and car park facilities, each billed as “temporary,” have crept onto its grounds for decades. A Carnival Centre now threatens to replace the Grand Stand entirely, over considerable public objection. And this is not the first time we have watched it happen. As one resident, Maria Rivas-McDonald, recently observed online, a previous administration paved another end of this same beautiful Savannah — and the result, beyond the eyesore, was flooding. She raised a similar alarm about this year’s Independence Day parade grounds near the Botanic Gardens: if the concern is simply giving VIPs a dry place to stand, grass can be cut and temporary flooring laid. There is no need to pave a permanent road just so vehicles can drive in.

That question deserves an answer: what do we have against green space? Each incursion is defended as necessary, isolated, small. But precedent does not work that way. What is paved is rarely unpaved. What is built rarely comes back down. Bit by bit, we are trading an irreplaceable public commons for parking spaces and permanent concrete — and calling it progress.

Why this matters

This is not nostalgia. It is practical. Green, permeable land in the heart of a flood-prone capital plays a real role in absorbing rainfall that concrete simply sends elsewhere. It cools a city that grows hotter every year. It gives space to the cricket matches, the joggers, the family picnics, the vendors, and the Carnival itself — uses that depend entirely on the ground remaining open.

The Savannah does not need improving. It needs protecting. I call on our planners, our heritage bodies, and the citizens who walk its perimeter every evening to say plainly: enough. Let this generation be the one that held the line, not the one that let the lungs of the city quietly close.

Last week, I told you this country took a shoemaker’s daughter and gave her three degrees and a safe road home. This week, I want to tell you the truth: that same girl, starting over in 2026, might not make it. Not because children got weaker. Because the ladder got pulled.

When I was climbing, I didn’t know what nepotism was. I learned the word later. Some hand-washing-hand always happened, but it wasn’t the main road — merit was the main road, and a poor child could walk it.

Ask a young person today how to get ahead, and they’ll tell you plain: “You have to know somebody.” Connection stopped being a shortcut. It became the road. Merit became the long way around.

Here’s the pattern, and naming it is the beginning: a country that runs on contacts is a country that has stopped believing its own children are enough.

Two promises, one break

The two promises I named last week — opportunity and safety — fell together, not separately. The same year the ladder was pulled, the road stopped being safe. Our children don’t feel safe walking in daylight, let alone at 2am. These aren’t two problems. Opportunity and safety are the same promise. Break one, and both break.

The therapist’s view

When someone is betrayed by a person they trusted, they don’t just get angry at that person — they stop trusting the system of trust itself. Every rule becomes optional, because “the rules were never real anyway.” Every time an unqualified person gets the position, every time the contract goes where everyone knew it would, it teaches every young person watching: don’t bother. And they make one of two choices — join the game, or leave.

In my office, we have a name for the third group — the ones who stay and stop trying: learned helplessness. When effort stops producing outcomes, healthy minds stop making effort. That’s not laziness. That’s learning. Our young people learned it from us.

And here’s a therapist’s hard truth — the same one I give couples: the betrayer doesn’t get to demand trust back. Trust is rebuilt one kept promise at a time, in public, over years. No speech fixes it. Only behavior does.

What one person can do

Be somebody’s ladder this week. Somewhere near you is a young person with merit and no contacts. Make a call for them. Write a recommendation. Open a door. Ask for nothing back. That’s the difference between a contact and a ladder. A contact says, “Remember me?” A ladder says, “Climb.”

Come back and tell me — not their name, just: “I was a ladder this week.” Let’s see what this little corner of the country can build while we wait on the big people to keep their promises.

Dennise Demming, Almost Fearless