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Information about Kingston, Jamaica

Kingston and St Andrew Corporation
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Kingston skyline, circa 2003
Kingston skyline, circa 2003
Motto: A City That Hath Foundations
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Location of Kingston shown within Jamaica
Location of Kingston shown within Jamaica
Coordinates:
Country Jamaica
County Surrey
Area
 - City 25 km  (10 sq mi)
Elevation 9 m (30 ft)
Population (2004)
 - City 660,000
 - Density 1429/km (0/sq mi)
Time zone EST (UTC-5)


The City of Kingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica. It is located on the southeastern coast of the island country at Coordinates: . It faces a natural harbour protected by the Palisadoes, a long sand spit which connects Port Royal and the Norman Manley International Airport to the rest of the island. In the Western Hemisphere, Kingston is the largest predominantly English-speaking city south of the United States.

The local government bodies of the parishes of Kingston and St. Andrew were amalgamated by the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation Act of 1923, to form the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC). Greater Kingston or the "Corporate Area" refers to the KSAC, and not just the Parish of Kingston, which consists of only the old downtown and Port Royal.

Two parts make up the central area of Kingston: the historic but troubled Downtown, and New Kingston, which is home to the city's most visited attraction, the Bob Marley Museum (built at his former residence). Several other reggae stars, including Buju Banton, Sean Paul, Bounty Killer, and Beenie Man, also hail from Kingston. Other attractions include the nearby Hellshire and Lime Cay beaches, the National Gallery of Jamaica, the ruins of Port Royal, and Devon House, a mansion with adjoining park that once belonged to Jamaica's first black millionaire.

Kingston is served by Norman Manley International Airport and also by the smaller and primarily domestic Tinson Pen Airport.

Several annual and well-visited festivals are held in Kingston.

History

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Devon House, home of the first West Indian millionaire of African descent. Now a much visited reminder of the luxury in which the rich lived in the 19th century.
Kingston was founded in 1693 by refugees from the disastrous earthquake which destroyed much of the previous main port city of Port Royal. Initially the refugees lived in a tented camp on Colonel Barry's Hog Crawle. The town did not begin to grow until after the further destruction of Port Royal by the Nick Catania Pirate Fleet's fire in 1703. Surveyor John Goffe drew up a plan for the town based on a grid bounded by North, East, West and Harbour Streets. By 1716 it had become the largest town and the centre of trade for Jamaica.

Gradually wealthy merchants began to move their residences from above their businesses to the farm lands to the north on the plains of Liguanea. The first free school, Wolmers, was founded in 1729 [1], and there was a theatre, first in Harbour Street and then moved in 1774 to North Parade. Both are still in existence. As a centre of commerce and fashion, Kingston rapidly out-distanced the somnolent official capital in Spanish Town and Kingston continued to grow despite calamities: a devastating hurricane in 1784, a huge fire in 1843, a cholera epidemic in 1850, and additional fires in 1862 and 1882.[1]

In 1755 the governor had decided to transfer the government offices from Spanish Town to Kingston. It was thought by some to be an unsuitable location for the Assembly in close proximity to the moral distractions of Kingston, and the next governor rescinded the Act. However, by 1780 the population of Kingston was 11,000, and the merchants began lobbying for the administrative capital to be transferred from Spanish Town, which was by then eclipsed by the commercial activity in Kingston. This campaign was to continue for a century as Kingston grew still further as an important trading port during the Napoleonic wars. The city finally became the administrative capital of Jamaica in 1872. It kept this status when the island was granted independence in 1962.

On January 14, 1907, an earthquake in Kingston destroyed about 75% of the buildings. Fire broke out and spread widely, adding to the death toll which eventually reached about 800, rather less than some initial reports. The damage was estimated to exceed £2m. Brick and stone buildings suffered the worst damage. Reinforced concrete was widely used in the rebuilding of the city, and building heights were restricted to 60 feet. These building codes were considered to be progressive at the time.

The city became home to the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies founded in 1948 with 24 medical students.

The 1960s saw the commercial activity expanding north. The old Knutsford race course became New Kingston, and uptown shopping plazas were developed causing the decline of the commercial and shopping centres of King Street and Harbour Street. An area of 95 acres along the waterfront was redeveloped with wide landscaped boulevards and multi-storey buildings which include the Bank of Jamaica, Scotia Bank Centre, the Jamaica Conference Centre, and Kingston Mall. Later, from the 1980s, there have been continuing efforts by the Urban Development Company to improve roads systems and trading conditions in the downtown area.

In 1966 Kingston was the host city to the Commonwealth Games.

Demographics

The majority of the population is of African heritage. East Indians are the second largest racial group, followed by Chinese, Caucasian and Arab (primarily Lebanese). A small number of Hispanics, mostly from Latin America, also reside in the city.

Religion

There is a wide variety of Christian churches in the city. Most are Protestant, a legacy of British colonization of the island. The chief denominations are Church of God, Baptist, Anglican, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist, and Pentecostal. Afro-Christian syncretic religions are also widespread.

There is a Jewish synagogue in the city as well as a small number of Buddhists and Muslims. The major non-Christian religion is the Rastafari movement.

Climate

Prominent people

Notable people born in Kingston include:

Sister cities

Kingston has five sister cities.

Sights

 •  • [ e]
Capitals of North America
Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe – Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis – Belmopan, Belize – Bridgetown, Barbados – Castries, Saint Lucia – Charlotte Amalie, United States Virgin Islands – Cockburn Town, Turks and Caicos – Fort-de-France, Martinique – George Town, Cayman Islands – Guatemala City, Guatemala – Gustavia, Saint-Barthlemy – Hamilton, Bermuda – Havana, Cuba – Kingston, Jamaica – Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – Managua, Nicaragua – Marigot, Saint-Martin – Mexico City, D.F., Mexico – Nassau, Bahamas – Nuuk, Greenland – Oranjestad, Aruba – Ottawa, Canada – Panama City, Panama – Philipsburg, Sint Maarten – Plymouth, Montserrat – Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago – Port-au-Prince, Haiti – Road Town, British Virgin Islands – Roseau, Dominica – Saint-Pierre, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon – San Jos, Costa Rica – San Juan, Puerto Rico – San Salvador, El Salvador – Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic – St. George's, Grenada – St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda – Tegucigalpa, Honduras – The Valley, Anguilla – Washington D.C., United States of America – Willemstad, Netherlands Antilles
 •  • [ e]
Commonwealth Games host cities

References

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2000 2001 2002 - 2003 - 2004 2005 2006

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Coat of arms elements
A motto (from Italian) is a phrase or a short list of words meant formally to describe the general motivation or intention of an entity, social group, or organization.
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Motto
"Out of many, one people"
Anthem
"Jamaica, Land We Love"
Royal anthem
"God Save the Queen"

Capital
(and largest city) Kingston

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country, state, and nation can have various meanings. Therefore, diverse lists of these entities are possible. Wikipedia offers the following lists:

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Motto
"Out of many, one people"
Anthem
"Jamaica, Land We Love"
Royal anthem
"God Save the Queen"

Capital
(and largest city) Kingston

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Jamaica

This article is part of the series:
Politics of Jamaica

  • Queen
  • Elizabeth II
  • Governor-General
  • Kenneth O.

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Area is a physical quantity expressing the size of a part of a surface. The term Surface area is the summation of the areas of the exposed sides of an object.

Units

Units for measuring surface area include:
square metre = SI derived unit

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Square kilometre (U.S. spelling: square kilometer), symbol km², is a decimal multiple of the SI unit of surface area, the square metre, one of the SI derived units. 1 km² is equal to:
  • 1,000,000 m²
  • 100 ha (hectare)
Conversely:
  • 1 m² = 0.

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square mile is an imperial and US unit of area equal the area of a square of one statute mile. It should not be confused with the archaic miles square, which refers to the number of miles on each side squared.
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elevation of a geographic location is its height above a fixed reference point, often the mean sea level. Elevation, or geometric height, is mainly used when referring to points on the Earth's surface, while altitude or geopotential height
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1 metre =
SI units
1000 mm 0 cm
US customary / Imperial units
0 ft 0 in
The metre or meter[1](symbol: m) is the fundamental unit of length in the International System of Units (SI).
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1 foot =
SI units
0 m 0 mm
US customary / Imperial units
0 yd 0 in
A foot (plural: feet or foot;[1] symbol or abbreviation: ft or, sometimes, ′
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20th century - 21st century - 22nd century
1970s  1980s  1990s  - 2000s -  2010s  2020s  2030s
2001 2002 2003 - 2004 - 2005 2006 2007

2004 by topic:
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Jan - Feb - Mar - Apr - May - Jun
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Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, humans in particular.

Biological population densities


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time zone is a region of the Earth that has adopted the same standard time, usually referred to as the local time. Most adjacent time zones are exactly one hour apart, and by convention compute their local time as an offset from UTC (see also Greenwich Mean Time).
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Eastern Time Zone (ET) of the Western Hemisphere falls mostly along the east coast of Northern America and the west coast of South America. Its time offset is UTC-5 during standard time and UTC-4 during daylight saving time.
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UTC−5 is the time offset used in the North American Central Time Zone during Daylight Saving Time.

For North America see also Eastern Standard Time and Central Daylight Time.
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capital (also called capital city or political capital — although the latter phrase has a second meaning based on an alternative sense of "capital") is the center of government.
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Motto
"Out of many, one people"
Anthem
"Jamaica, Land We Love"
Royal anthem
"God Save the Queen"

Capital
(and largest city) Kingston

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geographic coordinate system enables every location on the earth to be specified by the three coordinates of a spherical coordinate system aligned with the spin axis of the Earth.
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harbor or harbour (see spelling differences), or haven, is a place where ships may shelter from the weather or are stored. Harbors can be man-made or natural. A man-made harbor will have sea walls or breakwaters and may require dredging.
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Palisadoes (word apparently of Portuguese origin) is the thin tombolo of sand that serves as a natural protection for the harbour of Kingston, Jamaica.

Norman Manley International Airport and the historic town of Port Royal are both on Palisadoes, as is Palisadoes Raceway, a
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spit is a deposition landform found off coasts. A spit is a type of bar or beach that develops where a re-entrant occurs, such as at a cove, headlands and known as longshore drift.
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Port Royal was the centre of shipping commerce in Jamaica in the 17th century. During this time, it gained a reputation as both the "richest and wickedest city in the world".
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Norman Manley International Airport (IATA: KIN, ICAO: MKJP) is an airport in Kingston, Jamaica. As well as Sangster International Airport, it is a hub of Air Jamaica. It was named in honour of Norman Washington Manley.
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Western Hemisphere, also Western hemisphere[1] or western hemisphere,[2] is a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian (which crosses Greenwich in London, England, United Kingdom), the other half being the
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English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
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Saint Andrew (capital Half Way Tree) is a parish, situated in the southeast of Jamaica in the county of Surrey. It lies north of Kingston, stretches into the Blue Mountain and at the 2001 census had the highest population of all the parishes in Jamaica.
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Kingston is a parish of Jamaica. It does not include the whole city of Kingston.


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Port Royal was the centre of shipping commerce in Jamaica in the 17th century. During this time, it gained a reputation as both the "richest and wickedest city in the world".
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