The Christopher Hotel (also called Hotel Christopher ) was a hotel in Port-au-Prince , Haiti , destroyed in the 2010 Haiti earthquake on 12 January 2010.
120-631: Prior to its destruction, it was a 3-star, 74-key, 5-story hotel built into the hillside, overlooking the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince . The hotel housed the headquarters for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti . The hotel allegedly did not meet the UN's Minimum Operational Safety Standard, and reportedly the stabilization mission's 2009 procurement plan contained a budget allocation of US$ 400,000 to bring it into compliance. In 1993,
240-404: A Virginia Beach, Virginia team after five days trapped in the rubble. 18°32′21″N 72°18′44″W / 18.5391°N 72.3121°W / 18.5391; -72.3121 Port-au-Prince Port-au-Prince ( / ˌ p ɔːr t oʊ ˈ p r ɪ n s / PORT oh PRINSS ; French: [pɔʁ o pʁɛ̃s] ; Haitian Creole : Pòtoprens , [pɔtopɣɛ̃s] )
360-640: A cause for numerous slums in African cities. Poor quality, unpaved streets encourage slums; a 1% increase in paved all-season roads, claims Arimah, reduces slum incidence rate by about 0.35%. Affordable public transport and economic infrastructure empowers poor people to move and consider housing options other than their current slums. A growing economy that creates jobs at rate faster than population growth, offers people opportunities and incentive to relocate from poor slum to more developed neighborhoods. Economic stagnation, in contrast, creates uncertainties and risks for
480-404: A central aspect by residents living in slums when their communities suffer upgrading schemes or when they are resettled to formal housing. For example, it was recently proved that in a small favela in the northeast of Brazil (Favela Sururu de Capote), the migration of dismissed sugar cane factory workers to the city of Maceió (who initiated the self-construction of the favela), has been driven by
600-444: A combination of demographic, social, economic, and political reasons. Common causes include rapid rural-to-urban migration, poor planning, economic stagnation and depression, poverty, high unemployment, informal economy, colonialism and segregation, politics, natural disasters and social conflicts. Rural–urban migration is one of the causes attributed to the formation and expansion of slums. Since 1950, world population has increased at
720-416: A combination of slum removal, slum relocation, slum upgrading, urban planning with citywide infrastructure development, and public housing. The UN defines slums as .... individuals living under the same roof lacking one or more of the following conditions: access to improved water, access to improved sanitation, sufficient living area, housing durability, and security of tenure It is thought that slum
840-426: A conflict of interest, and politics prevented efforts to remove, relocate or upgrade the slums into housing projects that are better than the slums. Similar dynamics are cited in favelas of Brazil, slums of India, and shanty towns of Kenya. Scholars claim politics also drives rural-urban migration and subsequent settlement patterns. Pre-existing patronage networks, sometimes in the form of gangs and other times in
960-651: A far greater rate than the total amount of arable land, even as agriculture contributes a much smaller percentage of the total economy. For example, in India, agriculture accounted for 52% of its GDP in 1954 and only 19% in 2004; in Brazil, the 2050 GDP contribution of agriculture is one-fifth of its contribution in 1951. Agriculture, meanwhile, has also become higher yielding, less disease prone, less physically harsh and more efficient with tractors and other equipment. The proportion of people working in agriculture has declined by 30% over
1080-559: A global relief effort. On Wednesday 20 January 2010, an aftershock rated at a magnitude of 5.9 caused additional damage. The City Hall (Mairie de Port-au-Prince) and most of the city's other government municipal buildings were destroyed in the 2010 earthquake. Ralph Youri Chevry was the mayor of the city at the time of the earthquake. The worst hurricane season experienced by Haiti occurred in 2008 when four storms Fay , Gustav , Hanna , and Ike negatively impacted Haiti. Nearly 800 people were killed; 22,000 homes were destroyed; 70% of
1200-433: A large number of huge cities have started to appear; which means high poverty rates, crime, pollution and congestion. Lack of affordable low-cost housing and poor planning encourages the supply side of slums. The Millennium Development Goals proposes that member nations should make a "significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers" by 2020. If member nations succeed in achieving this goal, 90% of
1320-405: A massive humanitarian crisis shortly after. The metropolitan area is subdivided into various communes (districts). There is a ring of districts that radiates out from the commune of Port-au-Prince. Pétion-Ville is an affluent suburban commune located southeast of the city. Delmas is located directly south of the airport and north of the central city, and the rather poor commune of Carrefour
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#17330848107131440-442: A mussel which divides the community through gender and age. Alleys and houses were planned to facilitate the working activities, that provided subsistence and livelihood to the community. When resettled, the main reason of changes of formal housing units was due to the lack of possibilities to perform their work in the new houses designed according to formal architecture principles, or even by the distances they had to travel to work in
1560-449: A new city was built, Port-au-Prince. In 1770, Port-au-Prince replaced Cap-Français (the modern Cap-Haïtien ) as capital of the colony of Saint-Domingue . In November 1791, it was burned in a battle between attacking black revolutionaries and defending white plantation owners. It was captured by British troops on 4 June 1794, after the Battle of Port-Républicain . In 1804, it became
1680-512: A number of Europeans (both foreign-born and native-born). Citizens of Arab (particularly Syrian , Lebanese , and Israeli Arab ) ancestry have a large presence in the capital. Arab Haitians (a large number of whom live in Port-au-Prince) are, more often than not, concentrated in financial areas where the majority of them establish businesses. Most of the biracial residents of the city are concentrated within wealthier areas. Port-au-Prince
1800-418: A number of hospitals including le Centre Hospitalier du Sacré-Cœur, Hôpital de l'Université d'État d'Haïti (l'HUEH), Centre Obstetrico Gynécologique Isaïe Jeanty-Léon Audain, Hôpital du Canapé-Vert, Hôpital Français (Asile Français), Hôpital Saint-François de Sales, Hôpital-Maternité Sapiens, Hôpital OFATMA, Clinique de la Santé, Maternité de Christ Roi, Centre Hospitalier Rue Berne and Maternité Mathieu. After
1920-461: A rapid growth of slums. Research in the latest years based on ethnographic studies, conducted since 2008 about slums, published initially in 2017, has found out the primary importance of labour as the main cause of emergence, rural-urban migration, consolidation and growth of informal settlements. It also showed that work has also a crucial role in the self-construction of houses, alleys and overall informal planning of slums, as well as constituting
2040-461: A room with "low going-ons". In Life in London (1821) Pierce Egan used the word in the context of the "back slums" of Holy Lane or St Giles . A footnote defined slum to mean "low, unfrequent parts of the town". Charles Dickens used the word slum in a similar way in 1840, writing "I mean to take a great, London, back-slum kind walk tonight". Slum began to be used to describe bad housing soon after and
2160-529: A significant number of UN personnel is present throughout the city as part of the stabilization mission in Haiti . Port-au-Prince various educational institutions, ranging from small vocational schools to universities . Influential international schools in Port-au-Prince include Union School , founded in 1919, and Quisqueya Christian School , founded in 1974. Both schools offer an American-style pre-college education. French-speaking students can attend
2280-399: A slum, but a slum is better than none". Insufficient financial resources and lack of coordination in government bureaucracy are two main causes of poor house planning. Financial deficiency in some governments may explain the lack of affordable public housing for the poor since any improvement of the tenant in slums and expansion of public housing programs involve a great increase in
2400-428: A sustainable formal economy that raise incomes and create opportunities, squalid slums are likely to continue. The World Bank and UN Habitat estimate, assuming no major economic reforms are undertaken, more than 80% of additional jobs in urban areas of developing world may be low-paying jobs in the informal sector. Everything else remaining same, this explosive growth in the informal sector is likely to be accompanied by
2520-571: A tax free savings account for French public. Some slums remain in the early 21st century in France, most of which are dismantled after a few months, the largest being the "Petite Ceinture" slum on the northern Paris decommissioned train tracks. New York City is believed to have created the United States' first slum, named the Five Points in 1825, as it evolved into a large urban settlement. Five Points
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#17330848107132640-440: A threat. He insisted upon control of the hospital, but the flibustiers refused, considering that humiliating. They proceeded to close the hospital rather than cede control of it to the governor, and many of them became habitans (farmers) the first long-term European inhabitants in the region. Although the elimination of the flibustiers as a group from Hôpital reinforced the authority of the colonial administration, it also made
2760-930: Is a British slang word from the East End of London meaning "room", which evolved to "back slum" around 1845 meaning 'back alley, street of poor people.' Numerous other non-English terms are often used interchangeably with slum : shanty town , favela , rookery , gecekondu , skid row , barrio , ghetto , banlieue , bidonville, taudis, bandas de miseria, barrio marginal, morro, paragkoupoli, loteamento, barraca, musseque, iskuwater , Inner city , tugurio, solares, mudun safi, kawasan kumuh, karyan, medina achouaia, brarek, ishash, galoos, tanake, baladi, trushchoby , chalis, katras, zopadpattis, ftohogeitonia, basti, estero, looban, dagatan, umjondolo, watta, udukku, and chereka bete. The word slum has negative connotations, and using this label for an area can be seen as an attempt to delegitimize that land use when hoping to repurpose it. Before
2880-449: Is a key characteristic of urban slums. At their start, slums are typically located in undesirable lands near the town or city, that are state owned or philanthropic trust owned or religious entity owned or have no clear land title. Some immigrants regard unoccupied land as land without owners and therefore occupy it. In some cases the local community or the government allots lands to people, which will later develop into slums and over which
3000-576: Is also located in downtown Port-au-Prince at the Palace of Ministries, adjacent to the National Palace in the Champ de Mars plaza. The Haitian Group of Research and Pedagogical Activities (GHRAP) has set up several community centers for basic education. UNESCO 's office at Port-au-Prince has taken a number of initiates in upgrading the educational facilities in Port-au-Prince. A 2012 independent study found that
3120-825: Is closely linked to urbanization . In 2008, more than 50% of the world's population lived in urban areas. In China, for example, it is estimated that the population living in urban areas will increase by 10% within a decade according to its current rates of urbanization. The UN-Habitat reports that 43% of urban population in developing countries and 78% of those in the least developed countries are slum dwellers. Some scholars suggest that urbanization creates slums because local governments are unable to manage urbanization, and migrant workers without an affordable place to live in, dwell in slums. Rapid urbanization drives economic growth and causes people to seek working and investment opportunities in urban areas. However, as evidenced by poor urban infrastructure and insufficient housing ,
3240-482: Is generally considered the locale where the term originated in the 19th century, where massive and rapid urbanization of the dockside and industrial areas led to intensive overcrowding in a warren of post-medieval streetscape. The suffering of the poor was described in popular fiction by moralist authors such as Charles Dickens – most famously Oliver Twist (1837-9) and echoed the Christian Socialist values of
3360-440: Is located southwest of the city. The commune harbors many low-income slums plagued with poverty and violence in which the most notorious, Cité Soleil , is situated. However, Cité Soleil has been recently split off from Port-au-Prince proper to form a separate commune. The Champ de Mars area has begun some modern infrastructure development as of recently. The downtown area is the site of several projected modernization efforts in
3480-455: Is now eastern Venezuela . By the time Columbus arrived in 1492 AD, the region was under the control of Bohechio, Taíno cacique (chief) Xaragua. He, like his predecessors, feared settling too close to the coast; such settlements would have proven to be tempting targets for the Caribs , who lived on neighboring islands. Instead, the region served as a hunting ground. The population of the region
3600-661: Is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inhabited by impoverished people. Although slums are usually located in urban areas , in some countries they can be located in suburban areas where housing quality is low and living conditions are poor. While slums differ in size and other characteristics, most lack reliable sanitation services, supply of clean water , reliable electricity, law enforcement , and other basic services. Slum residences vary from shanty houses to professionally built dwellings which, because of poor-quality construction or lack of basic maintenance, have deteriorated. Due to increasing urbanization of
3720-444: Is one of the nation's largest centers of economy and finance. The capital exports its most widely consumed produce of coffee and sugar , and has, in the past, exported other goods, such as shoes and baseballs . Port-au-Prince has food-processing plants as well as soap , textile and cement factories. Despite political unrest, the city also relies on the tourism industry and construction companies to move its economy. Port-au-Prince
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3840-568: Is poor. Urban informal sector is between 20 and 60% of most developing economies' GDP; in Kenya, 78 per cent of non-agricultural employment is in the informal sector making up 42 per cent of GDP. In many cities the informal sector accounts for as much as 60 per cent of employment of the urban population. For example, in Benin, slum dwellers comprise 75 per cent of informal sector workers, while in Burkina Faso,
3960-400: Is that part of an economy that is neither registered as a business nor licensed, one that does not pay taxes and is not monitored by local, state, or federal government. Informal economy grows faster than formal economy when government laws and regulations are opaque and excessive, government bureaucracy is corrupt and abusive of entrepreneurs, labour laws are inflexible, or when law enforcement
4080-507: Is the capital and most populous city of Haiti . The city's population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2022 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The metropolitan area is defined by the IHSI as including the communes of Port-au-Prince, Delmas , Cité Soleil , Tabarre , Carrefour , and Pétion-Ville . The city of Port-au-Prince is on the Gulf of Gonâve : the bay on which
4200-505: Is the birthplace of internationally known naïve artist Gesner Abelard , who was associated with the Centre d'Art . The Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien (MUPANAH) is a museum featuring the heroes of the independence of Haiti, the Haitian history and culture. On 5 April 2015, the construction of a new LDS Temple in Port-au-Prince was announced. Port-au-Prince is the only city anywhere in
4320-529: Is typhus, whose ventilation is cholera; in which swarms of huge and almost countless population, nominally at least, Catholic; haunts of filth, which no sewage committee can reach – dark corners, which no lighting board can brighten. This passage was widely quoted in the national press, leading to the popularization of the word slum to describe bad housing. In France as in most industrialised European capitals, slums were widespread in Paris and other urban areas in
4440-508: The Lebanese Civil War from 1975 to 1990. Similarly, in recent years, numerous slums have sprung around Kabul to accommodate rural Afghans escaping Taliban violence. Major natural disasters in poor nations often lead to migration of disaster-affected families from areas crippled by the disaster to unaffected areas, the creation of temporary tent city and slums, or expansion of existing slums. These slums tend to become permanent because
4560-608: The Little Italy and Chinatown neighborhoods of New York City, through that city's campaign of massive urban renewal . Five Points was not the only slum in America. Jacob Riis , Walker Evans , Lewis Hine and others photographed many before World War II. Slums were found in every major urban region of the United States throughout most of the 20th century, long after the Great Depression. Most of these slums had been ignored by
4680-632: The Presidential Palace was thrown into the first floor, and the domes skewed at a severe tilt. The seaport and airport were both damaged, limiting aid shipments. The seaport was severely damaged by the quake and was unable to accept aid shipments for the first week. The airport's control tower was damaged and the US military had to set up a new control center with generators to get the airport prepared for aid flights. Aid has been delivered to Port-au-Prince by numerous nations and voluntary groups as part of
4800-585: The 1940s, when the British government started slum clearance and built new council houses . There are still examples left of slum housing in the UK, but many have been removed by government initiative, redesigned and replaced with better public housing. In Europe, slums were common. By the 1920s it had become a common slang expression in England, meaning either various taverns and eating houses, "loose talk" or gypsy language, or
4920-442: The 19th century, many of which continued through first half of the 20th century. The first cholera epidemic of 1832 triggered a political debate, and Louis René Villermé study of various arrondissements of Paris demonstrated the differences and connection between slums, poverty and poor health. Melun Law first passed in 1849 and revised in 1851, followed by establishment of Paris Commission on Unhealthful Dwellings in 1852 began
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5040-424: The 19th century, rich and poor people lived in the same districts, with the wealthy living on the high streets, and the poor in the service streets behind them. But in the 19th century, wealthy and upper-middle-class people began to move out of the central part of rapidly growing cities, leaving poorer residents behind. Slums were common in the United States and Europe before the early 20th century. London's East End
5160-653: The 2010 earthquake, two hospitals remained that were operational. The University of Miami in partnership with Project Medishare has created a new hospital, L'Hôpital Bernard Mevs Project Medishare, to provide inpatient and outpatient care for those impacted by the January 2010 earthquake. This hospital is volunteer staffed and provides level 1 trauma care to Port-au-Prince and the surrounding regions. CDTI (Centre de Diagnostique et de Traitement Intégré) closed in April 2010 when international aid failed to materialize. It had been considered
5280-480: The Central African Republic, Chad and Ethiopia, they make up 90 per cent of the informal labour force. Slums thus create an informal alternate economic ecosystem, that demands low paid flexible workers, something impoverished residents of slums deliver. In other words, countries where starting, registering and running a formal business is difficult, tend to encourage informal businesses and slums. Without
5400-851: The French language but also a secondary language in English. The State University of Haiti ( Université d'État d'Haïti in French or UEH), is located within the capital along other universities such as the Quisqueya University and the Université des Caraïbes . There are many other institutions that observe the Haitian scholastic program. Many of them are religious academies led by foreign missionaries from France or Canada . These include Institution Saint-Louis de Gonzague , École Sainte-Rose-de-Lima, École Saint-Jean-Marie Vianney, Institution du Sacré-Coeur, and Collège Anne-Marie Javouhey. The Ministry of Education
5520-562: The Lycée Français ( Lycée Alexandre Dumas ), located in Bourdon. Another school is Anís Zunúzí Bahá'í School north west of Port-au-Prince which opened its doors in 1980 which survived the 2010 Haiti earthquake and its staff were cooperating in relief efforts and sharing space and support with neighbors. A clinic was run at the school by a medical team from the United States and Canada. Its classes offered transition from Haitian Creole to
5640-484: The Spanish colonial administration, and in 1606, it decided to abandon the region. For more than 50 years, the area that is today Port-au-Prince saw its population drop off drastically, when some buccaneers began to use it as a base, and Dutch merchants began to frequent it in search of leather, as game was abundant there. Around 1650, French flibustiers , running out of room on the Île de la Tortue , began to arrive on
5760-511: The Spanish crown to dispatch Castilian soldiers to Hôpital to retake it. The mission proved to be a disaster for the Spanish, as they were outnumbered and outgunned, and in 1697, the Spanish government signed the Treaty of Ryswick , renouncing any claims to Hôpital. Around this time, the French also established bases at Ester (part of Petite Rivière ) and Gonaïves . Ester was a rich village, inhabited by merchants, and equipped with straight streets; it
5880-408: The UN was paying a monthly rent of US$ 94,000 to a private individual, Dr. Gerard Desir. In the collapse during the 7.0 magnitude event of 12 January 2010, several people were trapped, hurt or killed. The UN's head-of-mission, Hédi Annabi , the deputy head, Luiz Carlos da Costa , and the UN international police commander ( Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent) Doug Coates were killed. After
6000-601: The UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations , the "decision to select the Hotel Christopher was based on a locally completed analytical process which determined that this facility was one of the few premises in Port au Prince which would meet the Mission's requirements with regards to space, water and power. It is also in a neighbourhood that was judged in 2004 to be among the safest in Port au Prince." The statement also indicated that
6120-487: The airport road (Boulevard Toussaint-Louverture) and its adjoining connectors to the New ("American") Road via Route Nationale 1. This latter area in particular has been the scene of numerous robberies, carjackings, and murders. Slum A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty . The infrastructure in slums
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#17330848107136240-405: The area having been established, Ovando founded a settlement not far from the coast (west of Etang Saumâtre ), ironically named Santa Maria de la Paz Verdadera , which would be abandoned several years later. Not long thereafter, Ovando founded Santa Maria del Puerto . The latter was first burned by French explorers in 1535, then again in 1592 by the English. These assaults proved to be too much for
6360-545: The area such as Bohoma and Guahaba. It is understood that most of the plain area was used as hunting grounds. The Bahoruco mountain range in the north-east of Port-au-Prince was the scene of a Taino rebellion led by Enriquillo resulting in a treaty with the Spanish. Prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus , the island of Hispaniola was inhabited by the Taíno people, who arrived in approximately 2600 BC in large dugout canoes . They are believed to come primarily from what
6480-472: The bay had already been known as les îlets du Prince as early as 1680. Pirates eventually refrained from troubling the area, and various nobles sought land grants from the French crown in Hôpital; the first noble to control Hôpital was Sieur Joseph Randot. Upon his death in 1737, Sieur Pierre Morel gained control over part of the region, with Gatien Bretton des Chapelles acquiring another portion of it. By then,
6600-434: The bottom of flood prone valleys, often hidden from the plain view of downtown but close to some natural water source. In cities located near lagoons, marshlands and rivers, they start on banks or on stilts above water or the dry river bed; in flat terrain, slums begin on lands unsuitable for agriculture, near city trash dumps, next to railway tracks, and other shunned undesirable locations. These strategies shield slums from
6720-504: The capital of newly independent Haïti. When Jean-Jacques Dessalines was assassinated in 1806, Port-au-Prince became the capital of the mulatto -dominated south (Cap-Haïtien was the capital of the black -dominated north). It was re-established as the capital of all of Haiti when the country was unified again in 1820. During the American occupation of Haiti (1915–1934) , Port-au-Prince, garrisoned by American Marines and Haitian gendarmes ,
6840-399: The capital. Port-au-Prince has a tropical wet and dry climate ( Aw ) and relatively constant temperatures throughout the course of the year. Port-au-Prince's wet season runs from March through November with rainfall peaking from April to May and from August to October, with the city experiencing a relative break in rainfall during the months of June and July. The city's dry season covers
6960-454: The celebration, the cemetery becomes packed with people. Those who are celebrating make sacrifices of food for the spirits (mange lwa) and pour liquor on the gravestones among other festivities. The mayor of Port-au-Prince is Lucsonne Janvier, who succeeded Ralph Youri Chevry in July 2020. In 2023, Janvier's City Hall employees protested lack of salaries. The city's separate districts (primarily
7080-546: The center's domed roof. Another popular destination in the capital is the Hotel Oloffson , a 19th-century gingerbread mansion that was once the private home of two former Haitian presidents . It has become a popular hub for tourist activity in the central city. The Cathédrale de Port-au-Prince is a famed site of cultural interest and attracts foreign visitors to its Neo-Romantic architectural style. The Musée d'Art Haïtien du Collège Saint-Pierre contains work from some of
7200-673: The cities and states which encompassed them until the 1960s' War on Poverty was undertaken by the Federal government of the United States. A type of slum housing, sometimes called poorhouses, crowded Boston Common , later at the fringes of the city. Rio de Janeiro documented its first slum in 1920 census. By the 1960s, over 33% of population of Rio lived in slums, 45% of Mexico City and Ankara , 65% of Algiers , 35% of Caracas , 25% of Lima and Santiago , 15% of Singapore . By 1980, in various cities and towns of Latin America alone, there were about 25,000 slums. Slums sprout and continue for
7320-472: The city lies, which acts as a natural harbor, has sustained economic activity since the civilizations of the Taíno . It was first incorporated under French colonial rule in 1749. The city's layout is similar to that of an amphitheater ; commercial districts are near the water, while residential neighborhoods are located on the hills above. Its population is difficult to ascertain due to the rapid growth of slums in
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#17330848107137440-470: The coast, and established a colony at Trou-Borded. As the colony grew, they set up a hospital not far from the coast, on the Turgeau heights. This led to the region being known as Hôpital . Although there had been no real Spanish presence in Hôpital for well over 50 years, Spain retained its formal claim to the territory, and the growing presence of the French flibustiers on ostensibly Spanish lands provoked
7560-411: The collapse, over 150 UN personnel were reportedly unaccounted for at the hotel. The moment the earthquake struck, Annabi, da Costa and Coates were meeting with eight Chinese nationals (four peacekeepers and four senior police officers). A Chinese search and rescue team recovered the bodies of these ten individuals on 16 January 2010. Jens Kristensen, senior humanitarian officer for the UN, was rescued by
7680-428: The colonial administration was convinced that a capital needed to be chosen, in order to better control the French portion of Hispaniola ( Saint-Domingue ). For a time, Petit-Goâve and Léogâne vied for this honor, but both were eventually ruled out for various reasons. Neither was centrally located. Petit-Goâve's climate caused it to be too malarial , and Léogane's topography made it difficult to defend. Thus, in 1749,
7800-426: The complicity of police officers and politicians. Port-au-Prince literally means "Prince's Port", but it is unclear which prince was the honoree. A theory is that the place is named after Le Prince , a ship captained by de Saint-André which arrived in the area in 1706. However, the islets in the bay had already been known as les îlets du Prince as early as 1680, predating the ship's arrival. Furthermore,
7920-446: The country's crops were lost, according to reliefweb.org. Then, in 2012, Hurricane Sandy , while not making direct impact, resulted in 75 deaths, $ 250 million in damage and a resurgence of cholera that was estimated to infected 5,000 people. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew caused catastrophic damage across Haiti, and over 500 deaths were associated with the storm in Haiti alone, along with at least $ 3 billion in damages. The storm also caused
8040-661: The country's most talented artists, and the Musée National is a museum featuring historical artifacts such as King Henri Christophe 's actual suicide pistol and a rusty anchor that museum operators claim was salvaged from Christopher Columbus 's ship, the Santa María . Other notable cultural sites include the Archives Nationales, the Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library) and Expressions Art Gallery . The city
8160-419: The country's premiere hospital. The culture of the city lies primarily in the center around the National Palace as well as its surrounding areas. The National Museum is located in the grounds of the palace, established in 1938. The National Palace was one of the early structures of the city but was destroyed and then rebuilt in 1918. It was destroyed again by the earthquake on 12 January 2010 which collapsed
8280-609: The creation of charitable trusts such as the Peabody Trust founded in 1862 and Joseph Rowntree Foundation (1904) which still operate to provide decent housing today. Slums are often associated with Victorian Britain , particularly in industrial English towns, lowland Scottish towns and Dublin City in Ireland. Friedrich Engels described these British neighborhoods as "cattle-sheds for human beings". These were generally still inhabited until
8400-475: The districts of Delmas , Carrefour , and Pétion-Ville ) are all administered by their own municipal councils. The seat of the state, the Presidential Palace , is located in the Champ de Mars, square plaza of the city. The PNdH ( Police Nationale d’Haïti ) is the authority governing the enforcement of city laws. The national police force as of recently, have been increasing in number. However, because of its ailing ineffectiveness and insufficient manpower,
8520-667: The dwellers don't have property rights . Informal land tenure also includes occupation of land belonging to someone else. According to Flood, 51 percent of slums are based on invasion of private land in sub-Saharan Africa , 39 percent in North Africa and West Asia , 10 percent in South Asia, 40 percent in East Asia , and 40 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean . In some cases, once
8640-411: The existence of transport costs implies that the best locations for a firm will be those with easy access to markets, and the best locations for workers, those with easy access to goods. The concentration is the result of a self-reinforcing process of agglomeration. Concentration is a common trend of the distribution of population. Urban growth is dramatically intense in the less developed countries, where
8760-422: The existing urban slums. According to Ali and Toran, social networks might also explain rural–urban migration and people's ultimate settlement in slums. In addition to migration for jobs, a portion of people migrate to cities because of their connection with relatives or families. Once their family support in urban areas is in slums, those rural migrants intend to live with them in slums The formation of slums
8880-437: The firm level, transport costs and the mobility of the industrial labour force. The increase in returns of scale will mean that the production of each good will take place in a single location. And even though an agglomerated economy benefits these cities by bringing in specialization and multiple competing suppliers, the conditions of slums continue to lag behind in terms of quality and adequate housing. Alonso-Villar argues that
9000-423: The foreign owned tanneries and other polluting industries near Dharavi. To live, the poor built shanty towns within easy commute to work. By 1947, the year India became an independent nation of the commonwealth, Dharavi had blossomed into Bombay's largest slum. Similarly, some of the slums of Lagos , Nigeria sprouted because of neglect and policies of the colonial era. During apartheid era of South Africa , under
9120-440: The form of political parties or social activists, inside slums seek to maintain their economic, social and political power. These social and political groups have vested interests to encourage migration by ethnic groups that will help maintain the slums, and reject alternate housing options even if the alternate options are better in every aspect than the slums they seek to replace. Millions of Lebanese people formed slums during
9240-851: The general populace, slums became common in the 19th to late 20th centuries in the United States and Europe. Slums are still predominantly found in urban regions of developing countries , but are also still found in developed economies. The world's largest slum city is found in Orangi in Karachi , Pakistan. Slums form and grow in different parts of the world for many different reasons. Causes include rapid rural-to-urban migration , economic stagnation and depression, high unemployment, poverty, informal economy, forced or manipulated ghettoization, poor planning, politics, natural disasters, and social conflicts. Strategies tried to reduce and transform slums in different countries, with varying degrees of success, include
9360-492: The government expenditure. The problem can also lie on the failure in coordination among different departments in charge of economic development, urban planning , and land allocation. In some cities, governments assume that the housing market will adjust the supply of housing with a change in demand. However, with little economic incentive, the housing market is more likely to develop middle-income housing rather than low-cost housing. The urban poor gradually become marginalized in
9480-400: The high land price forces some people to look for and construct cheap informal settlements , which are known as slums in urban areas. The transformation of agricultural land also provides surplus labour , as peasants have to seek jobs in urban areas as rural-urban migrant workers . Many slums are part of economies of agglomeration in which there is an emergence of economies of scale at
9600-478: The hillsides above the city; however, recent estimates place the metropolitan area's population at around 3.7 million, nearly a third of the country's national population. The city was catastrophically affected by a massive earthquake in 2010, with large numbers of structures damaged or destroyed. Haiti's government estimated the death toll to be 230,000. Gang violence is extensive, and kidnappings , massacres and gang rapes are common occurrences, often with
9720-619: The housing market where few houses are built to sell to them. Some of the slums in today's world are a product of urbanization brought by colonialism . For instance, the Europeans arrived in Kenya in the nineteenth century and created urban centers such as Nairobi mainly to serve their financial interests. They regarded the Africans as temporary migrants and needed them only for supply of labour . The housing policy aiming to accommodate these workers
9840-433: The increasingly competitive job markets, which leads to their financial shortage. Many cities, on the other hand, do not provide enough low-cost housing for a large number of rural-urban migrant workers. Some rural–urban migrant workers cannot afford housing in cities and eventually settle down in only affordable slums. Further, rural migrants, mainly lured by higher incomes, continue to flood into cities. They thus expand
9960-725: The land where slums occupied as undeveloped land. Another type of urbanization does not involve economic growth but economic stagnation or low growth, mainly contributing to slum growth in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia . This type of urbanization involves a high rate of unemployment , insufficient financial resources and inconsistent urban planning policy. In these areas, an increase of 1% in urban population will result in an increase of 1.84% in slum prevalence. Urbanization might also force some people to live in slums when it influences land use by transforming agricultural land into urban areas and increases land value. During
10080-660: The largest slums in India , used to be a village referred to as Koliwadas, and Mumbai used to be referred as Bombay. In 1887, the British colonial government expelled all tanneries, other noxious industry and poor natives who worked in the peninsular part of the city and colonial housing area, to what was back then the northern fringe of the city – a settlement now called Dharavi. This settlement attracted no colonial supervision or investment in terms of road infrastructure, sanitation , public services or housing. The poor moved into Dharavi, found work as servants in colonial offices and homes and in
10200-493: The last 50 years, while global population has increased by 250%. Many people move to urban areas primarily because cities promise more jobs, better schools for poor's children, and diverse income opportunities than subsistence farming in rural areas . For example, in 1995, 95.8% of migrants to Surabaya , Indonesia reported that jobs were their primary motivation for moving to the city. However, some rural migrants may not find jobs immediately because of their lack of skills and
10320-639: The local governments sometimes are unable to manage this transition. This incapacity can be attributed to insufficient funds and inexperience to handle and organize problems brought by migration and urbanization. In some cases, local governments ignore the flux of immigrants during the process of urbanization. Such examples can be found in many African countries. In the early 1950s, many African governments believed that slums would finally disappear with economic growth in urban areas. They neglected rapidly spreading slums due to increased rural-urban migration caused by urbanization. Some governments, moreover, mapped
10440-471: The mayor of Port-au-Prince, Evans Paul , escaped an assassination attempt at the hotel. In 1999, the Haitian Civic Political Front was formed and held its first congress at the hotel. In 2005, a Filipino UN peacekeeper was shot by a sniper at the hotel. The hotel housed the headquarters for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti since 2004. According to a 2008 statement from
10560-560: The murder rate in Port-au-Prince was 60.9 murders per 100,000 residents in February 2012. In the 22 months after the end of the President Aristide era in 2004, the murder rate for Port-au-Prince reached a high of 219 murders per 100,000 residents per year. High-crime zones in the Port-au-Prince area include Croix-des-Bouquets , Cité Soleil , Carrefour , Bel Air , Martissant, the port road (Boulevard La Saline), urban route Nationale 1,
10680-405: The necessity to find a job in the city. The same observation was noticed on the new migrants who contribute to the consolidation and growth of the slum. Also, the choice of the terrain for the construction of the favela (the margins of a lagoon) followed the rationale that it could offer conditions to provide them means of work. Circa 80% of residents living in that community live from the fishery of
10800-424: The only option for the urban poor. Many local and national governments have, for political interests, subverted efforts to remove, reduce or upgrade slums into better housing options for the poor. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, for example, French political parties relied on votes from slum population and had vested interests in maintaining that voting block. Removal and replacement of slum created
10920-415: The original slums valuable property, densely populated with many conveniences attractive to the poor. At their start, slums are typically located in the least desirable lands near the town or city, that are state owned, are part of a philanthropic trust, possessed by a religious entity, or have no clear land title. In cities located in mountainous terrain, slums begin on difficult to reach slopes or start at
11040-497: The poor rely on. Established old slums, surrounded by the formal city infrastructure, cannot expand horizontally; therefore, they grow vertically by stacking additional rooms, sometimes for a growing family and sometimes as a source of rent from new arrivals in slums. Some slums name themselves after founders of political parties, locally respected historical figures, current politicians or a politician's spouse to garner political backing against eviction. Informality of land tenure
11160-495: The poor, encouraging people to stay in the slums. Economic stagnation in a nation with a growing population reduces per capita disposal income in urban and rural areas, increasing urban and rural poverty. Rising rural poverty also encourages migration to urban areas. A poorly performing economy, in other words, increases poverty and rural-to-urban migration, thereby increasing slums. Many slums grow because of growing informal economy which creates demand for workers. Informal economy
11280-448: The poor, rural people leaving farms for opportunity, and the persecuted people from Europe pouring into New York City. Bars, bordellos, squalid and lightless tenements lined its streets. Violence and crime were commonplace. Politicians and social elite discussed it with derision. Slums like Five Points triggered discussions of affordable housing and slum removal. As of the start of the 21st century, Five Points slum had been transformed into
11400-631: The population could not survive. Port-au-Prince has several upscale districts in which crime rates are significantly lower than in the city center. Port-au-Prince has a tourism industry. The Toussaint Louverture International Airport (referred to often as the Port-au-Prince International Airport) is the country's main international gateway for tourists. Tourists often visit the Pétion-Ville area of Port-au-Prince, with other sites of interest including gingerbread houses . There are
11520-498: The port and the surrounding region continued to be known as Hôpital , named after the filibusters ' hospital. French colonial commissioner Étienne Polverel named the city Port-Républicain on 23 September 1793 "in order that the inhabitants be kept continually in mind of the obligations which the French Revolution imposed on them." It was later renamed back to Port-au-Prince by Jacques I , Emperor of Haiti. When Haiti
11640-439: The pretext of sanitation and plague epidemic prevention, racial and ethnic group segregation was pursued, people of colour were moved to the fringes of the city, policies that created Soweto and other slums – officially called townships. Large slums started at the fringes of segregation-conscious colonial city centers of Latin America. Marcuse suggests ghettoes in the United States, and elsewhere, have been created and maintained by
11760-431: The process of urbanization, some agricultural land is used for additional urban activities. More investment will come into these areas, which increases the land value. Before some land is completely urbanized, there is a period when the land can be used for neither urban activities nor agriculture. The income from the land will decline, which decreases the people's incomes in that area. The gap between people's low income and
11880-448: The region a more attractive target for marauding buccaneers . In order to protect the area, in 1706, a captain named de Saint-André sailed into the bay just below the hospital, in a ship named Le Prince . It is said that M. de Saint-André named the area Port-au-Prince (meaning "Port of the Prince"), but the port and the surrounding region continued to be known as Hôpital , but the islets in
12000-412: The region became a real French colony, the colonial administration began to worry about the continual presence of these pirates. While useful in repelling foreign pirates , they were relatively independent, unresponsive to orders from the colonial administration, and a potential threat to it. Therefore, in the winter of 1707, Choiseul-Beaupré , the governor of the region sought to get rid of what he saw as
12120-404: The remaining three months. Port-au-Prince generally experiences warm and humid conditions during the dry season and hot and humid conditions during the wet season. The population of the area was 1,234,742. The majority of the population is of African descent, but a prominent biracial minority controls many of the city's businesses. There are sizable numbers of residents, Asians , as well as
12240-536: The residents do not want to leave, as in the case of slums near Port-au-Prince after the 2010 Haiti earthquake , and slums near Dhaka after 2007 Bangladesh Cyclone Sidr . Slums typically begin at the outskirts of a city. Over time, the city may expand past the original slums, enclosing the slums inside the urban perimeter. New slums sprout at the new boundaries of the expanding city, usually on publicly owned lands, thereby creating an urban sprawl mix of formal settlements, industry, retail zones and slums. This makes
12360-585: The risk of being noticed and removed when they are small and most vulnerable to local government officials. Initial homes tend to be tents and shacks that are quick to install, but as a slum grows, becomes established and newcomers pay the informal association or gang for the right to live in the slum, the construction materials for the slums switches to more durable materials such as bricks and concrete, suitable for slum's topography. The original slums, over time, get established next to centers of economic activity, schools, hospitals, and sources of employment, which
12480-528: The régime headed by Anacaona. He invited her and other tribal leaders to a feast, and when the Amerindians had drunk a good deal of wine (the Spaniards did not drink on that occasion), he ordered most of the guests killed. Anacaona was spared, only to be hanged publicly some time later. Through violence, introduced diseases and murders, the Spanish settlers decimated the native population. Direct Spanish rule over
12600-503: The segregationist policies of the state and regionally dominant group. Social exclusion and poor infrastructure forces the poor to adapt to conditions beyond his or her control. Poor families that cannot afford transportation, or those who simply lack any form of affordable public transportation, generally end up in squat settlements within walking distance or close enough to the place of their formal or informal employment. Ben Arimah cites this social exclusion and poor infrastructure as
12720-487: The slum has many residents, the early residents form a social group, an informal association or a gang that controls newcomers, charges a fee for the right to live in the slums, and dictates where and how new homes get built within the slum. The newcomers, having paid for the right, feel they have commercial right to the home in that slum. The slum dwellings, built as the slum grows, are constructed without checking land ownership rights or building codes, are not registered with
12840-425: The slum where they originally lived, which was in turn faced by residents by self-constructing spaces to shelter the work originally performed in the slum, in the formal housing units. Similar observations were made in other slums. Residents also reported that their work constitutes their dignity, citizenship, and self-esteem in the underprivileged settings in which they live. The reflection of this recent research
12960-653: The social process of identifying the worst housing inside slums, but did not remove or replace slums. After World War II , French people started mass migration from rural to urban areas of France. This demographic and economic trend rapidly raised rents of existing housing as well as expanded slums. French government passed laws to block increase in the rent of housing, which inadvertently made many housing projects unprofitable and increased slums. In 1950, France launched its Habitation à Loyer Modéré initiative to finance and build public housing and remove slums, managed by techniciens – urban technocrats., and financed by Livret A –
13080-562: The time, which soon found legal expression in the Public Health Act of 1848 . As the slum clearance movement gathered pace, deprived areas such as Old Nichol were fictionalised to raise awareness in the middle classes in the form of moralist novels such as A Child of the Jago (1896) resulting in slum clearance and reconstruction programmes such as the Boundary Estate (1893-1900) and
13200-570: The world to have a main avenue named for American abolitionist hero John Brown . Another is named for another abolitionist hero, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner . There is a celebration of Bawon Samdi and Gran Brigi called Fet Gede, which takes place from the Day of the Dead on 1 November through the third day of the month. This occurs in the national cemetery of Haiti. While celebrating, people wear Vodou white cotton clothing and purple headscarves. During
13320-422: The world total slum dwellers may remain in the poorly housed settlements by 2020. Choguill claims that the large number of slum dwellers indicates a deficiency of practical housing policy. Whenever there is a significant gap in growing demand for housing and insufficient supply of affordable housing, this gap is typically met in part by slums. The Economist has observed that "good housing is obviously better than
13440-550: Was approximately 400,000 at the time, but the Taínos were gone within 30 years of the arrival of the Spaniards. With the arrival of the Spaniards, the Amerindians were forced to accept a protectorate , and Bohechio, childless at death, was succeeded by his sister, Anacaona , wife of the cacique Caonabo . The Spanish insisted on larger tributes. Eventually, the Spanish colonial administration decided to rule directly, and in 1503, Nicolas Ovando , then governor, set about to put an end to
13560-631: Was attacked twice by caco rebels . The first battle , which took place in 1919, was a victory of the American and Haitian government forces, as was the second attack in 1920. On 12 January 2010, a 7.0 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, devastating the city. Most of the central historic area of the city was destroyed, including Haiti's prized Cathédrale de Port-au-Prince , the capital building, Legislative Palace (the parliament building), Palace of Justice (Supreme Court building), several ministerial buildings, and at least one hospital. The second floor of
13680-582: Was divided between a kingdom in the north and a republic in the south, Port-au-Prince was the capital of the republic, under the leadership of Alexandre Pétion . Henri Christophe renamed the city Port-aux-Crimes after the assassination of Jacques I at Pont Larnage (now known as Pont-Rouge, and located north of the city). The Port-au-Prince area was part of the Xaragua chiefdom with the capital city, Yaguana being in Léoganes. There were multiple Taino settlements in
13800-409: Was here that the governor lived. On the other hand, the surrounding region, Petite-Rivière, was quite poor. Following a great fire in 1711, Ester was abandoned. Yet the French presence in the region continued to grow, and soon afterward, a new city was founded to the south, Léogâne . While the first French presence in Hôpital, the region later to contain Port-au-Prince was that of the flibustiers ; as
13920-435: Was named for a lake named Collect . which, by the late 1700s, was surrounded by slaughterhouses and tanneries which emptied their waste directly into its waters. Trash piled up as well and by the early 1800s the lake was filled up and dry. On this foundation was built Five Points, the United States' first slum. Five Points was occupied by successive waves of freed slaves, Irish, then Italian, then Chinese, immigrants. It housed
14040-446: Was not well enforced and the government built settlements in the form of single-occupancy bedspaces. Due to the cost of time and money in their movement back and forth between rural and urban areas, their families gradually migrated to the urban centre. As they could not afford to buy houses, slums were thus formed. Others were created because of segregation imposed by the colonialists. For example, Dharavi slum of Mumbai – now one of
14160-433: Was once a popular place for cruises, but has lost nearly all of its tourism, and no longer has cruise ships coming into port. Unemployment in Port-au-Prince is high, and compounded further by underemployment. Levels of economic activity remain prominent throughout the city, especially among people selling goods and services on the streets. Informal employment is believed to be widespread in Port-au-Prince's slums, as otherwise
14280-519: Was possible due to participatory observations and the fact that the author of the research has lived in a slum to verify the socioeconomic practices which were prone to shape, plan and govern space in slums. Urban poverty encourages the formation and demand for slums. With rapid shift from rural to urban life, poverty migrates to urban areas. The urban poor arrives with hope, and very little of anything else. They typically have no access to shelter, basic urban services and social amenities. Slums are often
14400-568: Was used as alternative expression for rookeries . In 1850 the Catholic Cardinal Wiseman described the area known as Devil's Acre in Westminster , London as follows: Close under the Abbey of Westminster there lie concealed labyrinths of lanes and potty and alleys and slums, nests of ignorance, vice, depravity, and crime, as well as of squalor, wretchedness, and disease; whose atmosphere
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