The Plan for Port-au-Prince

Detail of the Urban village concept

Tonight at the Hotel Montana, Andres Duany presented his firm’s plans for the redevelopment of downtown Port-au-Prince. The event was in English, and ably translated into French by Ricky of the Prince’s Foundation. The audience was almost exclusively elite Haitians, so French is not a problem for them. Duany emphasized that his job was to present possibilities for redevelopment and that all decision-making must done by others, he implied by those in the audience. He presented various scenarios for infrastructure construction, urban village, public buildings including civic, schools, and churches, green space, hotels, ecological features, and transportation network. I left after 3 hours before the end of the presentation.

Iron Market

Downtown Port-au-Prince

Yesterday, I went with a posse of Architecture for Humanity volunteers to tour the Iron Market prior to it's public opening. We thought it would have been open by now, since it was commemorated on the anniversary of the earthquake by Bill Clinton himself, but there was still painting equipment here and there. It took us a few false starts before we were able to find the well-disguised entrance in between two booths. We had to wait until the Prince's Foundation and the Duany Plater-Zyberk planning firm joined us to begin the tour.