The creation of temporary settlements, particularly for displaced persons, is a frequent one – but primarily for both governments and NGO’s seeking to create safe loci, with proper (albeit) minimal infrastructures and amenities, for a short period of time. The agencies that engage in this discourse are civil servants, engineers, and aid organizations.
The newly homeless of Haiti are going to be placed primarily in tents – tents which, come storm season, will do nothing to protect the displaced persons for the hurricanes and floods that plague the region in Spring and Summer. (See NYT). With the current homeless numbering possibly 1 million people – 1 in 9 – the need to establish real, semi-permanent shelter quickly is paramount. Tents are not the only solution however, and where the new shelters and communities are going to be established, as I have commented on previously, will create and enable the future of Haiti. Al Jareeza reports the following:
[Quoting Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive] “In 30 seconds, Haiti lost 60 per cent of its GDP…So we must decentralise.”
[US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton] said agriculture, which could act as a magnet back to the countryside, had not got the attention it deserved. “I was quite heartened to hear the prime minister say that … we should look at how we decentralise economic opportunity and work with the Haitian government and people to support resettlement.”
The decentralization of Haiti from the economic, governmental, and social capital of Port-au-Prince is inevitable. Haitian will settle in new communities across the country – agricultural (as the country reseats itself) – which will provide both a national economy, as well as provide for some level of self-sufficiency. These communities must be established with a (more) permanent and durable shelter than the tent, but rather a system of shelter that enables organic growth in a rooted place.
Landscape’s agency is a management position. Landscape, as a discipline, is capable of traversing civil, local, community, engineering, architectural, and governmental lines. Landscapes essential milieu is terrain – in a disaster situation, both stable and unstable territories with have to be negotiated; contaminated and toxic territories segregated, and eventually remediated. Nascent communities will have to be situated in accordance with the needs and desires of the populations, in the most advantageous locations to grow. An essential client relationship, with a dissolution of a hierarchy of knowledge – each will bring skill sets and rigor. Placement will not occur – it will be resolution. The placelessness of the campsite replaced with the site of home.
Landscape can facilitate the creation of not provincial farm encampments but instead utilizing the technologies outlined above (as an example) interconnected hybrid agricultural micro urbanities. City dwellers were displaced, and it is crucial for a nation to move forward that these city dwellers be placed into a context that facilitates the concentration of knowledge and resources that concentrated urbanities offer. It is not enough to resettle, but instead to push Haiti forward into its future.
