John Rickman Thanks for taking the time for such a thorough update. Beside art, I have a background in community planning. It seems that SAB is on a trajectory that would be next to impossible to change. Just the same, I'll share the following for what it's worth. 


A Personal Note:

I was born in a home immediately adjacent a 17th century church ruin, and a few chains from the ruins of Sevilla Nueva, the first Spanish settlement in Jamaica. Maybe that gave me the disposition to pursue history. I have taken countless art and architectural history courses, including a brief stint in a post graduate architectural history course. So, while I'm not into the professional business of preserving architecture, I have an excellent feel for the subject. 


Cultural Tourism. 

Tourists visit places for their history. Paris and Rome aren't full of new buildings, and millions of tourists flock there to see the old ones. SAB is the oldest colonial site in Jamaica, and one of the oldest in the new world, and so visitors expect history, not just new buildings. it's a global disease that demolishes history due the worship of the new.


The Printery.

Shown at the top of this page, the printery, built in 1886 by my grandfather, was the first printery built outside of Kingston. It stood unchanged for more than 100 years before it was unfortunately defaced in the name of safety. There is no educational structure in SAB to encourage historic preservation. Safety is a legitimate concvern, but there are surely other means for safety--sprinklers being among them. The most central wooden building on the main road, opposite the central courthouse, a Marcus Garvey national monument should not have been treated like thart, and the national Trust should have been empowered to prevent this defacement, the horrendous loss of the precious Jamaica Georgian character.

I don't know which wharf structures have been demolished, but if this is one is an 18th century structure, you don't go tearing it down for joke. 



Sprawl:

Filling in the open space outside of the main town, extending the town's footprint by orders of magnitude, nlosing its green buffers is known as sprawl

Urban sprawl - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl 
Urban sprawl or suburban sprawl describes the expansion of human populations away from central urbanareas into low-density, monofunctional and usually car-dependent communities, in a process called suburbanization.
‎Definition & Characteristics · ‎History · ‎Effects · ‎Debate

So if people have to drive everywhere, you must expect vehicular congestion.

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/negative-effects-urban-sprawl-1716.html

Problems of Sprawl

 Increased Pollution:
More frequent use of automobiles can increase air pollution.
Longer and more frequent commutes are a major concern associated with urban sprawl. The average American spends the equivalent of eight 55-hour work weeks behind the steering wheel of a car annually, according to the Sierra Club. More driving leads to more air pollution, which can contribute to poor health and smog problems.
Water OverconsumptionThe perfectly manicured lawn comes at a price.
Spreading out development creates water distribution problems and can lead to water overconsumption. A typical low-density or suburban community uses more water than a high-density city community. Landscaping is the primary culprit for this excessive use of water. According to the EPA, 30 percent of the water used daily in the United States is devoted to outdoor use.

Loss of Wildlife Habitat
Forests are essential to the environment; they're also home to wildlife.
The San Francisco Bay Area, with over 400,000 acres of natural landscape, is one of the nation’s six hotspots for biological diversity, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. The region has a wide variety of plant and animal species; unfortunately, 90 of them, including the California tiger salamander, are listed as endangered or threatened. Rapid development can negatively affect wildlife by tearing down, clearing, or building over its habitat, potentially threatening survival. This is not only a problem in the San Francisco Bay Area; it’s a problem in all of America.
Increased Racial and Economic DisparityUrban sprawl leads to inner-city community problems.
When residents relocate outside of a city’s core, they take their tax dollars with them. Often, it’s the city’s poorest residents that are left behind. This creates economic disparity and stratification based upon location. It also creates funding problems for the core, which directly affects the money available for education, crime prevention, and maintenance and upkeep. Urban sprawl can also lead to economic “white flight.” According to “Urban Sprawl: A Reference Guide,” urban sprawl leads to racial segregation as minorities are often left behind in the poorest parts of a region. This problem may not be as widespread as it has been in the past, but it's present nonetheless.

Increased Risk of Obesity
Urban sprawl is linked to the growing obesity epidemic.
People living in suburban areas are more likely to be obese than people living in urban areas, according to the Ontario College of Family Physicians and the American Planning Association. Both studies show that people living in suburban areas tend to rely on their vehicles more often--even for short trips--instead of walking or cycling. This lower level of activity increases the risk of obesity, which can lead to other health problems such as heart disease, high-blood pressure and diabetes.



Historic Preservation

What happened to the Burrowes printery has undoubtedly happened to the vast majority of the town's 19th century buildings. This is a great cultural loss.

Cultural Benefit of Historic Preservation: "Architecture is a direct and substantial representation of history and place. By preserving historic structures, we are able to share the very spaces and environments in which the generations before us lived.Historic preservation is the visual and tangible conservation of cultural identity."

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This is from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the USA:

Six Practical Reasons to Save Old Buildings from PreservationNation

“Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.” 

1. Old buildings have intrinsic value.
Buildings of a certain era, namely pre-World War II, tend to be built with higher-quality materials such as rare hardwoods (especially heart pine) and wood from old-growth forests that no longer exist.
Prewar buildings were also built by different standards. A century-old building might be a better long-term bet than its brand-new counterparts.

Take, for example, the antebellum Kennedy-Baker-Walker-Sherrill House in West Knoxville, Tennessee. Until the City Council approved a zoning deal, the house was threatened by developers’ interests. However, following its classification as a historic site, the house―and its five-brick-thick walls―will be reborn as an office building that could withstand the fiercest of tornadoes.

2. When you tear down an old building, you never know what’s being destroyed.

A decade ago, the Daylight Building in Knoxville was a vacant eyesore. A developer purchased the property with plans to demolish the building to make way for new construction.
However, following multiple failed deals to demolish the building, the Daylight went back on the market. Dewhirst Properties bought it and began renovations only to discover the building’s hidden gems: drop-ceilings made with heart-pine wood, a large clerestory, a front awning adorned with unusual tinted “opalescent” glass, and a facade lined with bright copper.

Beyond surviving demolition and revealing a treasure trove of details, the Daylight reminds us that even eyesores can be valuable for a community’s future.

3. New businesses prefer old buildings.

In 1961, urban activist Jane Jacobs startled city planners with The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which Jacobs discussed economic advantages that certain types of businesses have when located in older buildings.

Jacobs asserted that new buildings make sense for major chain stores, but other businesses–-such as bookstores, ethnic restaurants, antique stores, neighborhood pubs, and especially small start-ups―thrive in old buildings.

“As for really new ideas of any kind―no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be―there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error, and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction,” she wrote. “Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.” 

Is it the warmth of thematerials, the heart pine, marble, or old brick―or the resonance of other people, other activities? Maybe older buildings are just more interesting.

The different levels, the vestiges of other uses, the awkward corners, the mixtures of styles, they’re at least something to talk about. America’s downtown revivals suggest that people like old buildings. Whether the feeling is patriotic, homey, warm, or reassuring, older architecture tends to fit the bill.

Regardless of how they actually spend their lives, Americans prefer to picture themselves living around old buildings. Some eyes glaze over when preservationists talk about "historic building stock," but what they really mean is a community's inventory of old buildings ready to fulfill new uses.

5. Old buildings are reminders of a city’s culture and complexity.

By seeing historic buildings―whether related to something famous or recognizably dramatic―tourists and longtime residents are able to witness the aesthetic and cultural history of an area. Just as banks prefer to build stately, old-fashioned facades, even when located in commercial malls, a city needs old buildings to maintain a sense of permanency and heritage.

6. Regret goes only one way.

The preservation of historic buildings is a one-way street. There is no chance to renovate or to save a historic site once it’s gone. And we can never be certain what will be valued in the future. This reality brings to light the importance of locating and saving buildings of historic significance―because once a piece of history is destroyed, it is lost forever.

This toolkit originally appeared on March 3, 2014, and was adapted from Jack Neely’s article, “Nine Practical Reasons to Save Old Buildings,” at Metro Pulse.


Julia Rocchi (author) is the director of content marketing at the National Trust. By day she wrangles content; by night (and weekends), she shops local, travels to story-rich places, and gawks at buildings.
@rocchijuli