The future of Jamaica’s built environment took centre stage on Saturday, October 10, as Spaces founder and creative director Janelle Pantry-Coke hosted the Jamaica Observer’s Design Week Ja 2026 #ConversationsInDesign at her Ardenne Road showroom. With Hurricane Melissa’s devastation still weighing heavily on the island, the discussion turned to a pressing question: As Jamaica rebuilds, should the goal be to restore what was lost or reimagine what is possible?

Guests, many of them longtime clients of Pantry-Coke’s full-service interior design studio, mingled over cocktails from the Select Brand bar and hors d’oeuvres by Chef Shauniel Whitley’s Lara Luren Catering Company before settling in for the evening’s conversation.

Joining Pantry-Coke were Chris Williams, a business leader with more than 30 years of experience in investment and finance; urbanist and community development specialist Shunelle Nevers; civil and structural engineer Julian McMorris; and architect Omari Wright, whose work champions modern, tropical and sustainable Caribbean design.

Setting the tone, Pantry-Coke challenged the room to look beyond the immediate task of reconstruction and consider the kind of country Jamaica could become.

“When we first started thinking about this year’s Design Week theme, the obvious conversation was about rebuilding what had been damaged or lost. But I kept coming back to another question: If we have an opportunity to build the Jamaica of my dreams and yours, should we simply put back what was there before? Or should rebuilding also mean rethinking?” she asked.

“We live on an island renowned around the world for its culture and extraordinary natural beauty. And yet, somewhere along the way, I sometimes wonder whether enough of that has translated into the developments and communities we are creating.”

She pointed to the clearing of natural flora and fauna, buildings that bear little relationship to their surroundings, shrinking green spaces and outdoor living reduced to rooftop amenities rather than integrated into everyday community life.

“So tonight, the question isn’t simply, ‘What are we rebuilding?’ It’s also, ‘What are we rebuilding towards?’ And ultimately, what kind of Jamaica do we want to live in?” she asked.

The floor was open. McMorris began by making a distinction between having regulations and ensuring they are followed. From an engineering standpoint, he said, Jamaica had the necessary building codes and provisions in place; the real challenge was implementation and enforcement.

Nevers, meanwhile, urged the audience to think of community as something far more expansive than housing. “Housing is only one part of the community. When you think about the building blocks of a community, there is social infrastructure, physical infrastructure, parks, mobility and connectivity — and we don’t have that,” she said.

“We are focused on housing, but what about the light posts in the middle of the sidewalk? Can we push our babies down the road in a stroller? Can we run to the park with our puppies? Is there somewhere we can sit on a block and say, ‘I want to veg out right here and read a book in my Alo sweatsuit’?”

It was a vision of community built around the everyday experience of its residents, but Williams was quick to bring the conversation back to Jamaica’s economic realities.

Asked about the role developers and investors should play in delivering better communities, Williams argued that the country’s immediate priorities were more fundamental.

“Jamaica’s per capita income is about US$3,000 to US$4,000 a year. Forget community — Jamaica needs an economy,” he said, pointing to a reported 31 per cent decline in tax revenue following Hurricane Melissa, the tourism sector’s struggles and the thousands of people still out of work.

“This room is not even close to Jamaica. The topic alone and the questions — we’re nowhere near the reality. People are trying to get shelter. We don’t even reach the Alo sweatsuit conversation. I’m saying forget that goal; that is a conversation for another audience. We are in the middle of a massive recovery, a massive economic reconstruction. We’re under pressure.” Williams maintained that infrastructure investment was essential to economic development, arguing that the country needed roads, hospitals and other major projects to move forward. He also defended the need for cost-conscious construction, noting that a government responding to a disaster would first have to ensure that people had safe shelter.

Pantry-Coke, however, saw the urgency of the moment as an opportunity to do things differently rather than simply restore the status quo. “I know we’re under pressure, but it gives us an opportunity to finally do things the way they should be done, with an actual goal instead of a patch, instead of a Band-Aid,” she countered.

Nevers reiterated that community development encompassed the roads, drainage, sewerage, hospitals, clinics and social amenities that supported housing, arguing that comprehensive master planning and equity planning were essential to ensure that development served the people who lived there.

“We’re not saying housing should not be built, but we need to be building a comprehensive community for everybody. It should not just be in Kingston,” Nevers said. Equity planning, she explained, required asking three questions: “Who is harmed? Who is missing? And who is helped?”

“When we start to plan that way, we start to have proper infrastructure for the people who actually live there. The problem is, we’re focusing too much on housing without everything else that supports it,” she said, again calling for comprehensive master planning.

Williams pushed back, noting that a master plan for the south coast had already been completed. McMorris, however, questioned the tendency to rely on plans that had existed for decades without sufficient action.

“Too often we defer to these master plans. There have been master plans for 40 years. Too often we make excuses, only to come back and do the same thing we did before,” he said, adding that reconstruction and long-term planning can happen simultaneously.

The spirited exchange laid bare the competing pressures shaping Jamaica’s recovery: The need to restore homes and livelihoods quickly, and the opportunity to build communities that are better planned, more accessible and more resilient.

Pantry-Coke eventually steered the discussion back to the practicalities of building standards, asking McMorris and Wright whether the regulations were being implemented and enforced as they should be.

McMorris acknowledged that some of the infrastructure investment Williams had advocated was taking place, but warned that drainage remained a concern. Williams challenged the broad assessment of Kingston’s drainage problems, arguing that the issue needed to be examined by specific districts rather than treated as a citywide shortcoming.

The exchange reinforced a recurring theme of the evening: Sound plans and regulations mean little without precise implementation, accountability and an understanding of the particular needs of each community. As the conversation moved towards the next decade, Pantry-Coke invited the panellists to look beyond the immediate recovery and describe the Jamaica they hoped to see in 10 years.

For Wright, the future lies in embracing the country’s communities and rethinking how development was undertaken. “Sometimes, in other places, it’s a whole block that’s developed. With that comes the infrastructure, the schools, the shopping, and everything else,” he said, contrasting that approach with Jamaica’s tendency to develop individual lots in isolation.

He called for greater collaboration among developers to create projects with a wider community impact, while expressing a desire to see a more distinctly Jamaican and Caribbean architectural language emerge.

Nevers envisioned a sustainable Jamaica that could live up to the ambitions of Vision 2030, the country’s first long-term strategic development plan, which supported families and incorporated nature-based solutions alongside robust infrastructure and thoughtful architecture. “We want a Jamaica that is the place of choice to live, grow and build families. We need places that are sustainably built, with more nature-based solutions incorporated alongside the great infrastructure Julian [McMorris] is going to be building and the beautiful frontages Omari is going to be designing — in a cohesive way,” she said.

For McMorris, success would mean reaching a point where a severe weather event no longer automatically became a disaster. “To achieve that, we need to build resilience into all our infrastructure and housing,” he said, urging Jamaicans to educate themselves and demand better performance and greater resilience from the systems and structures on which they depend. “Only when we do that will we start to push Government to support it and get everybody on-board. That is what will get us where we need to go.”

Williams, meanwhile, challenged the panel to recognise the diversity of Jamaica’s real estate landscape, pointing to the island’s varied geographic characteristics and the different ways Jamaicans use and experience its communities. Citing developments in Portmore, including green spaces he had observed, he argued that design should respond to the particular character of each location.

“We want to design for the characteristics of our various geographical topographies. That’s what you do as a real estate developer,” he said.

His hope for the next decade is for Jamaica to become more deliberate about defining the distinct characteristics it wants to preserve and develop across the island. “We want to design the characteristics of our various geographical topography. That’s what you do as a real estate developer,” said Williams. “I want, in 10 years, for us to be way more definitive on the various characteristics we want across the length and breadth of our beautiful island.

A key takeaway came from entrepreneur and property manager Eroleen Anderson, who took the mic during the brief question-and-answer segment to underscore the importance of understanding Jamaica’s property insurance laws and ensuring they are properly applied.

The evening ended without a single blueprint for Jamaica’s future, but with a sharper understanding of what is at stake. Rebuilding may begin with shelter, roads and essential infrastructure, but the conversation made clear that the decisions taken now will shape far more than the structures rising from the rubble. They will help determine how Jamaicans live, move, connect and experience their communities for generations to come.

Spaces Creative Director Janelle Pantry-Coke (left) moderated the discussion with (from second left) Wright Plus Ltd Design principal Omari Wright; SN Global founder and CEO Shunelle Nevers; MSR Engineers co-founder and Managing Director Julian McMorris; and Different Capital co-founder and CEO Chris Williams. (Photos: Garfield Robinson)

Spaces Limited Marketing Officer Toni Hibbert gave opening remarks

As we start to rebuild, we need to have comprehensive and master planning. That is not happening right now, and if we continue to build without those things, we’re going to just continue building housing, housing, housing.” — Shunelle Nevers

”Forget community, Jamaica needs an economy” — Chris Williams