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The ravines of Port-au-Prince (part 1)

March 12, 2013 By Dave Hampton

rue dalencourt ravine
Ravine near Rue Dalencourt in Canape Vert neighborhood.

The ravines of Port-au-Prince represent for me a perfect distillation of adjectives about this city.

Interesting.
Unusual.
Disgusting.
Extensive.
Problematic.

Dynamic.
Maddening.
Beautiful?

In the six months since I wrote the first edition of this post (for my own blog), and after having left Haiti to return to the United States, travel a bit in South America, and now back in Haiti, I see some notable changes in Haiti’s capital city: a (more) modern airport arrival experience greets the visitor. More public spaces are either accessible or are being improved. ‘Tent cities’, for better or worse for the residents, have been removed from their former and very prominent locations near the now-demolished Presidential Palace, the formal axes of the Champs de Mars – a vestige of colonial French planning – and other public spaces.
Ravines, however, despite some cosmetic efforts at community-led cleanups and municipal trash pickups, can still be counted on to belie both specific challenges and the broader challenges still facing Haiti: deep, (infra)structural, inherently tied to environment and ecology, and inextricably linked to the communities around them and the people who live there.

The ravine is both a set of specific challenges in an urban environment and a perfect analogy for what has occurred and still occurs in this country where people and environment intersect.

carrefour feuilles ravine
A typical view in a ravine in Port-au-Prince: retaining walls needing repair or replacement, ill-constructed squatter housing, people bathing and washing clothing, prevalent garbage, and… gorgeous trees!

After walking through more than one ravine – places where many Haitians dump their trash, direct their bodily wastes, and all too often wash clothes and even retrieve their water, the last adjective above – ‘beautiful’ – seems particularly out-of-place.
Yet, as they say, there is much beauty in strangeness.

In the summer of 2012, while gathering feedback from the community for a project, I met a man who built his home – a fairly substantial reinforced-concrete roofed affair complete with toilet and rooms to rent – in a ravine 25 years ago. Just above the floodwater mark, his is a relatively safe and stable location, which many would view as illegal since currently in a no-build zone, as well as for the fact that most ravines are considered state land. Compared to many homes nearby which overlook concrete, concrete, and more concrete with smatterings of asphalt and the all-pervasive vehicular traffic, his existence seemed, by contrast, almost rural with views of red-flowered flamboyan trees, patiently munching goats, and the gentle sound of water.

A major problem with living in a ravine, however, is the negative amplification of seemingly natural processes.

[mappress mapid=”9″ alignment=”left”]

Port-au-Prince lies in a valley bounded to north and south by mountains, to the east the bay of Port-au-Prince, and to the west Lake Azuei and the Dominican Republic beyond. With vistas to the sea from multiple vantage points and views of ‘mountains beyond mountains’, the perfect confluence of geography, hydrology, and biological diversity, the region could be considered an unparalleled and ideal place… except for the city situated right in the middle.

erosion in furcy fields
Erosion in agricultural fields above Furcy. This is where ravines are born.

A subject for future posts, suffice to say that Port-au-Prince tests every conceivable input or output common to cities, with its own special vibrancy and flavor.

But back to ravines.

The region roughly to the north-northwest of Route National #8, bisected by Route National #1 could be considered a floodplain at the foot of the Chaine des Matheux mountains. The southern portion of the Port-au-Prince watershed is formed by a nearer chain of mountains on which considerable parts of the city are built. Since unchecked development spurred by migration of rural populations to the cities following the departure of Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier in 1986, more of these hillsides have become densely packed with informal settlements filling in between the occasional elite hilltop aerie: Martissant, Villa Rosa, Jalousie.

Trickling waters flowing from higher up – agricultural areas above the towns of Kenscoff and Furcy largely stripped of trees since colonial times and more recently by cottage industries that collect charcoal for cooking – become torrents in the rainy season, flowing through communities on hillsides, and accumulating in low-lying areas, rising during periods of heavy rains to 3 meters (10 feet) or more in height of garbage-choked rushing rapids. Cars have been known to be washed away in these floods. Erosion, usually held in check in healthy watersheds by stable vegetation, is made progressively worse by the action of surface, rain, and drainage water, rendering banks of the ravine more prone to degradation and eventual collapse.

All along the way, people, of course, interact with water, and the paths along which it – and they – travel.

Next time, we will explore some responses to the complex challenges ravines present and how people are increasingly involved (or not), from simple canals and retaining walls to integrated communities along their banks.

Please stay tuned!

Note: Portions of this post were originally published as ‘The ravines of Port-au-Prince’  on June 10, 2012 at http://davehamptonjr.blogspot.com. This version is updated, revised, and -hopefully- much cooler.

Filed Under: Chicago, Ecology, Environment, Feature Posts, Planning, travel Tagged With: community, green infrastructure, Haiti, participatory design, Port-au-Prince, ravine, redevelopment, sustainable, urban planning, water quality

avatar for Dave Hampton

About Dave Hampton

Dave Hampton has a 22-year background in architecture, planning, international development collaborating with governmental, NGO, private sector, and professional organizations to plan, program, and implement disaster risk management and climate change adaptation strategies with multi-disciplinary teams in both domestic (U.S.) and developing country contexts (Small Island Developing States/Caribbean).

  

His professional focus is how to involve stakeholders in resilience through the integration of the built and natural environment.

 

During his 10 years in Chicago, he engaged actively as a practitioner, advocate, and citizen during a notable period of municipal alignment with sustainability and climate change adaptation strategies. He incorporated LEED standards in his own design practice, focusing on energy-efficient upgrades for private and public sector clients. Dave also led Urban Habitat Chicago's transition from a volunteer advocacy organization to a consulting nonprofit focused on urban agriculture and integrated sustainability curricula for public schools.

 

In post-earthquake Haiti, Dave managed a complex portfolio of projects when an organizational shift away from emergency management was needed to encourage the voluntary transition of 55,000 people displaced by earthquake to their neighboring communities, he helped to create and managed J/P Haitian Relief Organization’s Redevelopment Program. J/P HRO's interdisciplinary team of architects, engineers, planners, and construction specialists worked with Haitian counterparts to deliver a community multi-hazard (earthquake, hurricane, flooding, etc.) disaster risk management and recovery program through safe and permanent homes, schools, community centers, and health clinics. In 2013, Dave returned to Haiti to consult for UN-Habitat and Internews on production of an earthquake-safe communications strategy for use by the Haitian Ministry of Public Works (MTPTC) for capacity-building of local masons.

 

In 2013 and 2014, Dave worked with multi-disciplinary teams of architects, engineers, risk analysts, and natural hazards mitigation specialists on post-Sandy Rebuild by Design climate adaptation initiatives. Dave completed a Master of Design Studies in Risk and Resilience at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His recent research involved coastal climate adaptation strategies for Miami Beach and shifting economically depressed and climate-risky locations into productive cultural heritage zones in the Caribbean.

 

While at Harvard, Dave contributed to a finalist entry for the Boston Living with Water competition, which proposed urban coastal climate adaptation through innovative scalable (and replicable) disaster risk communication, financing, regulatory intervention, and adaptation strategies.

 

He currently leads re:ground llc, a resiliency strategies consultancy which finds ways to involve everyday people deeply in climate adaptation and community resilience through the integration of natural systems and built environments.

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