Christ Roi: History and Stakes of an Urban Planning Project in the Port-au-Prince Metropolis

Solidarités International (SI) returned to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, first with emergency water and sanitation work in displacement sites and then with a return-to-neighborhood program financed by ECHO (EUR 3.5 million over ten months). In 2012 it moved its activity to the Christ Roi neighborhood and used the remaining ECHO funds for a participatory urban study. The integrated project of reconstruction, urban planning and economic development began in January 2013 under EuropeAid's PARAQ, planned for three years and extended by five amendments to 56 months, and it ended with a closing ceremony on August 30, 2017. The PARAQ supported 8 NGOs in 10 neighborhoods of the capital.

The review is organized by component. For planning, 30 participatory workshops with 111 reference residents produced a planning scheme and a sanitation scheme, which the technical committee led by the CIAT validated on September 20, 2013, the first scheme of its kind to be validated that way; four years later no municipal order had made it official. For housing, SI and its partners Entrepreneurs du Monde, GRET and Build Change reinforced 52 homes, built 6 timber-frame extensions, rebuilt 8 homes and certified 54 masons, while the number of homes covered by the ravine works fell from 175 to 65. For the ravine, the first contract was stopped in June 2015 after 169 of 514 planned meters because of slow clearing of rights of way, and a second contractor finished the works on August 31, 2017. For sanitation, 11 systems connected 218 households. For economic development, 150 merchants were trained and 25 businesses received loans.

The lessons stress formal protocols that assign roles to the public works ministry, the municipality and the NGO, early study of land tenure, a first phase of planning that does not raise expectations before works begin, long staff assignments, and a grant contract format that the review says does not suit projects with large infrastructure components.