
They call it Canaan: How 200K Haitians built a city on their own - hownottowrite
http://www.vqronline.org/reporting-articles/2017/04/they-call-it-canaan
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sbierwagen
Kushner describes it as a "city", but with no power, water grid, sewage system
or stormwater management,[1] it's more of a squatter camp with roads than a
city.

They want to build infrastructure, but since nobody owns the land they're
squatting on, there's no way to raise money via land taxes. The technocrat
answer to that would be individual septic tanks and solar panels, but because
there's no land ownership and no law enforcement, you'd have to be nuts to
invest any serious money in building a house, because a gang would just take
it from you. Classic development trap.

Jonathan Katz talked about Corail/Cannan in The Big Truck That Went By, and he
wasn't positive.
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009OZN6GM/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009OZN6GM/)
Published in 2013, but it doesn't sound like much has changed.

1: Port-au-Prince gets about twice as much rain as Seattle per year, and is
routinely hit by hurricanes. If you don't manage the stormwater, it washes
your house downhill. Sewage systems have also become important, since UN
peacekeepers brought cholera with them after the earthquake.

~~~
anigbrowl
'technocrat' means something other than the way you're using it here, FYI -
it's evidence-based institutional governance, not lifehacking.

~~~
sbierwagen
I was using "technocrat" in the pejorative sense-- suggesting technological
fixes to political problems. The political problem here is weak rule of law,
which results in various physical problems. (No clean water, no electricity,
etc) NGO technocrats frequently suggest ineffective technical solutions (water
filters, solar panels) that don't address the root problem, which is either
intractable or politically sensitive.

~~~
barry-cotter
Given Haiti's history over the last 50 years the chances of fixing Haitian
politics are ~0. What can people do when government does not work and has not
worked in the living memory of a majority of the population?

The best way to improve the lives of Haitians is obviously to help them
emigrate but they're quite, quite motivated to do that already.

~~~
pleeze
The best way to help a nation is not to help the population flee their
otherwise workable location. As others have stated, it's not politically
correct to state the obvious: local rule has utterly failed. British or
American occupation has always been the best option based on factual national
statistics.

~~~
barry-cotter
Fuck the nation, if we want to help the people of Haiti we absolutely should
help them flee their location. It may be a workable nation for the Dominican
Republic but it clearly isn't for Haiti.

America is politically incapable of a long term occupation, look at Iraq or
Afghanistan. Real nation building would require running a country in a
profoundly undemocratic way for at the very least a decade, more likely two or
three. The US isn't even capable of winning a war of occupation given the
political constraints it operates under. If they had the support of 60% of the
population for a thirty year and 0.1% protested against it they wouldn't do
it. Russia or China might, at a push Singapore, but a Western country? Give me
a break.

And don't be a coward with your throwaway. dang may have bowed to pressure
with the shut up or be banned to yummyfajitas Chris Stucchio but nothing will
ever change if we're all cowards.

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scribu
Reading about how people cope after being displaced by a natural disaster felt
so different than reading about people voluntarily abandoning their homes to
form communes. The latter shuns authority, while the former actively seeks it.

Found Canaan on OpenStreetMap [1], as described in the article. It shows up on
satelite images on Google Maps too [2].

[1]
[https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/18.6540/-72.2634](https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/18.6540/-72.2634)

[2] [https://goo.gl/maps/8w257Q5mC4y](https://goo.gl/maps/8w257Q5mC4y)

~~~
anigbrowl
Don't confuse authority with organization.

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permadefroster
Poorly constructed dwellings got lots of people killed during the 2010
earthquake. It might be bad news to see recovery take shape as structures
built without paying attention to safety codes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake)

~~~
mnm1
I'd rather take the risk of dying inside a poorly constructed dwelling in an
earthquake than the countless risks of being homeless, and I'm sure most
Haitians and people in general would too. Brings up the question of whether
safety codes and other such nonsense even have a place when the alternative is
homelessness. Clearly the US seems to think so, but I certainly wouldn't
follow our lead on this issue considering how poorly we've dealt with our own
homeless problem while keeping vast quantities of real estate empty or not
even built.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Safety code nonsense? Surely you jest? You cite homelessness as an argument
against safety codes? Sure, we all want to decimate the scourge of
homelessness but do you have a sense of how small a percentage of the US is
actually homeless? You would have us give up on safety codes for .... what? A
shanty for everyone?

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erentz
This kind of looks like just another continuation of the man made ecological
disaster in Haiti. But in lieu of real solutions, people are going to do what
they need to.

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swampthinker
Would Haiti be a good source of cheap manufacturing labor?

~~~
leroy_masochist
Yes. There are a lot of textile operations there and they are starting to
manufacture electronics as well. Significant investment into this
infrastructure (industrial parks, etc) went in after the earthquake.

~~~
Vaskerville
There was significant investment and most of that has lead to very little.
There are efforts recently trying to do more complicated textile manufacturing
but I have heard that factory owners aren't interested in doing more than
simple things. Probably for a variety of reasons including lack of skilled
workers, training, etc. The only electronics I have heard about (I live in
Haiti) is Surtab ([http://surtab.com/](http://surtab.com/)).

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dmix
'Built a city on their own'

Aren't all cities built by people... on their own? Almost all cities formed
spontaneously via market forces or geographical incentives, then eventually
organize a more local government system - largely by the same families who
founded the village/town.

What exactly are we praising them for?

~~~
pjc50
Most cities are built in some sort of social and governmental framework.

~~~
dmix
That's how towns/cities are eventually organized upon reaching a certain
scale, yes... but that is not how they are initially formed in the vast
majority of cases. There is no central planning which brings a large group of
people to an area. The rare attempts to start cities in that fashion in China
failed spectacularly.

It's quite obvious which part is the egg and which the chicken.

People are drawn to areas for a variety of reasons. A more localized
government is merely a rational reaction to the needs of a large community, a
form of organization after the fact (or merely a result of following
established standards and practices, rather than rational need).

What is distinct in this story seems to be the absence of government following
the initial growth phase. Maybe due to a lack of stable functioning economic
systems which incentivize the organization of municipal governments.

But the cities and infrastructure which we live in are very much the result of
people who were initially just 'doing it on their own' before formalizing
systems of organization. I know it's trendy to dismiss pioneers and
frontiersmen who built western society but this seems like praising a step
backwards.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
You seem to be caught up on the idea that they are being "praised." Did you
read the whole article. I think you went into with this preconceived notion
that is something that it isn't. Also, it is true that cities started perhaps
in a way that you describe but very rarely has something like on this on this
scale occurred in recent history. There's also different reasons that Western
frontiersmen. Anyway, I think it is an interesting update on rather unusual
situation, I mean over 200,000 people, that's tremendous; also potential for
opportunity.

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Ericson2314
So many NGOs, so few multi-story buildings.

