International city planner and urbanist Brent Toderian has challenged Jamaica to act with urgency in redeveloping Downtown Kingston, warning that the city cannot afford delay in unlocking the potential of its waterfront.

Toderian said his central advice to Jamaica, and to cities worldwide, is that progress is happening too slowly. “Even the things you’re doing well, you’re doing too slowly,” he declared, urging that every effort be accelerated.

Drawing on his experience advising global cities, including Paris and Vancouver, he explained: “My advice to [the mayor of Paris] was still, go further, faster. Because we have time limits… and there are consequences to going too slow.”

A planner for 33 years, Toderian dismissed the traditional approach of patience and incrementalism. “Planners are told, you make a plan and then you wait. No. You make the plan happen,” he insisted, stressing that urgency must become the culture.

At the heart of his message was the need to “change the conversation” around city development. He argued that many cities fail to act not because of resources, but because of complacency, fear of change, and misinformation. “So you need to be twice as persuasive, you need to be twice as deliberate in your conversation to get the truth out in a conversation, and when I look around in new cities, what I often find is there’s no conversation at all about city change. There isn’t a lecture series like this. Even once a year is not enough,” he added.

Delivering the keynote address at the Maurice Facey Lecture Series on Thursday, October 9, Toderian urged Jamaica’s leaders, business owners, and citizens to break free from this status quo. “People are inherently afraid of change… our natural human inclination is to think it’s going to get worse… You have to overcome that when you’re having a conversation about change in your city.”

He identified implementation—not vision—as Kingston’s greatest weakness. “You are a city that struggles with the implementation part, the follow-through, the action,” he warned, cautioning that plans risk sitting on shelves without deliberate execution.

To move forward, Toderian recommended focusing on “catalyst projects” that generate visible transformation, citing examples from Medellín, Colombia. “You can transform a street overnight. You can transform a waterfront overnight into something temporary,” he said, suggesting that underused buildings in downtown Kingston could be filled with creative, safe, and community-driven initiatives to spark renewal.

Closing with a challenge, Toderian emphasised that Kingston cannot afford inaction. “It’s not a matter of whether you can afford to do those moves; it’s whether you can afford to not do those moves. The absence of that action is costing you money.”