TOMORROW midnight is what is referred to as Happy New Year, when December 31 turns into January 1.
Some years I just call it December 32 and write it off, that’s how enthusiastic I feel about this particular holiday.
The dogs hate it, for a start, because people use it as yet another moment to let off late night fireworks just when they’ve settle down for a good snooze.
(With an ear up to hear any illicit or suspicious noises such as potential burglars and young persons trying to sneak home late).
Now there’s a good resolution … what about enforcing those regulations about only allowing fireworks for a limited period around Diwali, instead of for everything from a four year old’s birthday to football wins.
My idea of an excellent New Year celebration is to sit on the verandah at sunset with a glass in hand and watch the glow fade behind the trees in the compound, reflecting how lucky we are to be in this spot, in this country, in this time.
If I turn around I may contemplate the Suva skyline, but I won’t want to.
It will make me sad and angry.
Perhaps, this is what the people we recently elected to run the country on both sides of Parliament should do.
Take a look at what you are responsible for, especially in formerly pleasant, family residential areas where huge, overwhelming, multi storey buildings are now under construction or already overshadowing our lives.
The last town plan approved for Suva was apparently in 1976. In 2010, the benevolent military regime introduced Zone B, a broad area around Suva that allows the sensible residential leases to be varied to permit changes for overdevelopment, some might say gross overdevelopment.
Zone B remains to this democratic day.
While the ordinary residents in ordinary neighbourhoods, some with very ordinary incomes and resources, were largely unaware of what this would mean, approvals have been granted for the sort of monster buildings they now see only too well.
Nobody can, nor should they wish, to stop all development and not all development will meet with everyone’s approval.
Even in our little part of the world down in Darkest Flagstaff, we had only just moved in 40 years ago when the chap next door decided to build a two storey house in front of his family home.
What was once our peephole up the street, through the trees and over city roofs to the hills on the other side of the harbour became a view of next door’s new front verandah.
But hey, we were new and he was a nice neighbour and if we climb on the roof we can still see Joske’s Thumb, so we decided not to complain.
However, there needs to be proper planning and most importantly, effective community consultation, to have development that is acceptable to most citizens and appropriate for us, for Fiji.
Why do we have to look like any other developing country with grossly overbuilt cities and crazy traffic problems, when we have a chance to do it differently?
There are havens of pleasant estates and family residential areas in those cities too, but they are the havens of the most wealthy.
Just as the luxury flats with views over and around other tower blocks in Suva are affordable to the rich, including those from overseas.
They are not built as accommodation for the ordinary or less well off people, who are getting pushed further and further to the periphery or into spaces made uncomfortable, unhealthy and cramped by overdeveloped sites.
These are people who invested their life savings and paid long mortgages to provide a decent family home for younger generations, way before the goalposts were shifted.
Don’t even ask about parking.
The system for approving such plans needs to be made far more transparent and accessible to the communities involved
and their views seriously considered.
Including the plea for environmental impact studies to be made much more accessible, and not just available for a limited period at an outrageous $4 per page.
There are some decent people who got elected in the last round, and some senior civil servants who know their jobs and who seem to be making a difference to the public service “service”.
May they have a happy New Year and return to work fired with true democratic spirit to deliberate with fairness and
farsightedness on the future of our cities.
For the rest of you, have a wonderful time tomorrow night in whatever way that you choose, even if it is just sitting on the front verandah, and may 2019 bring you all the best of what you want most for you and yours and everyone else.
