The Other 90%: Infrastructural Components for the Masses, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Abstract

Port-au-Prince, Haiti, along with many dense cities in developing countries, are stifled by their rudimentary, undersized and poorly maintained waste, water and sanitation infrastructural systems. Port-au-Prince is a city already plagued by poverty and overpopulation, and suffered a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010 that devastated the already fragile republic. Flooded with Not-for-Profit and Non-Government Organizations (NFPs and NGOs) and billions of dollars of aid money following the earthquake, a new challenge arose in finding ways to utilize these new, uncoordinated resources efficiently without falling victim to dependency on aid money and other fleeting, external resources.

The thesis proposes a series of infrastructural components for decentralized waste, water and sanitation that can address the cultural and infrastructural challenges of diverse sites within city, as city-wide systems have proved unsuitable and have not been maintained. The proposal deals with resources and wastes on-site, in order to reduce dependence on often expensive methods of waste collection and water provision. It diverts waste and excess water from ravines; reduces waste strewn throughout the city; creates community accountability and engagement, and in doing so, strives to improve quality of life. Waste is furthermore utilized in fueling other complementary processes, generating a micro-scale waste economy. The solution to making Port-au-Prince’s infrastructural systems viable and self-sustaining is to turn them into economic drivers that produce businesses and jobs through the collection, sorting, processing and re-use of wastes and water that in turn result in safer and more sanitary living conditions, as well as helping to re-organize a city destroyed by the earthquake into productive neighbourhoods with local community nodes.