The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment along with world renowned planning experts Duany Plater Zyberk have been invited by the government of Haiti to work with the local community to help create a guiding vision for rebuilding an area of Port-au-Prince equating in size to around 25 city blocks, which was destroyed in the January 2010 earthquake.
Participants in the workshops will be Haitian Ministries, local professionals, property owners, representatives of the Haitian American communities and other stakeholders. The result will be a masterplan for an area of the capital including homes, streets, public spaces and amenities as well as plans to help engender a sustainable financial, social, and ecological future. A scoping workshop will be held 1-3 December and the charrette will be held 17-27 January.
Hank Dittmar, Chief Executive of The Prince's Foundation comments:
“We are honoured to have been given the chance to help create a better future for Haiti after the suffering and devastation of the earthquake. We hope to play a small part in bringing hope and benefit to the city by maintaining its authentic character, reducing its environmental impact and helping train local people in construction skills that equip them for future employment.’
The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment helps to build and improve communities that are beautiful, long lasting and healthy for people and the planet. We believe that it is possible to have the kind of communities and neighbourhoods that contain:
· Lively, interesting streets with a mix of local shops
· Streets that reflect local character and feel safe to walk along
· Parks, schools and shops within walking distance of homes
Homes that look like they belong, that reflect tradition but are also contemporary and comfortable inside
The Prince’s Rebuilding Communities Programme is focused on the regeneration of low income and poor communities. It has a primary focus on locally based, participatory, holistic strategies for upgrading the communities of the urban poor. It seeks to help the residents of such communities to build on their strengths, capabilities and aspirations. The PFBE approach to rebuilding communities is to engage stakeholders to plan and implement regeneration. The goal is to foster sustainable communities that build on the unique aspects of their place, culture and tradition while also participating in the regional, national and global economy.
In Rose Town, in West Kingston, Jamaica, PFBE has been working with Rose Town residents and other local partners to create a sustainable base for regeneration by simultaneously helping to: develop a masterplan; improve local governance; improve local building and crafts skills; incubate businesses and job opportunities to capitalize on local skills and assets; and find sources of low cost business and affordable housing development capital. It is also working to find support for repair of critical infrastructure.
In New Orleans, the Prince of Wales's New Orleans Renewal and Building Crafts Training Program is delivering the skills urgently needed to regenerate and rebuild New Orleans and the Louisiana Gulf Coast, preserve the unique architecture of the region and ultimately help the populations most affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans: the urban poor. It is carried forward by a unique partnership that includes PFBE, Delgado Community College, the Preservation Resource Centre and some of the unions. In its second year of operation, it engages over a dozen local apprentices ranging in age from early 20s to 50 -- carpenters, bricklayers, stonemasons, architecture students etc.-- in an eight months building crafts training with live-build projects in the Lower 9th Ward and other distressed neighbourhoods for the restoration of homes, businesses and communities.
Duany Plater Zyberk
Based in Miami, Washington and Charlotte, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) is a major leader in the practice and direction of urban planning, having designed over 300 new and existing communities in the United States and overseas. DPZ’s projects have received numerous awards, including two National AIA Awards, the Vincent Scully Prize, the Thomas Jefferson Medal and two Governor’s Urban Design Awards for Excellence. The firm’s early project of Seaside, Florida, was the first authentic new town to be built successfully in the United States in over fifty years.
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