Port-au-Prince, 24 September 2012 - One city was built just last year. A project costing over US$2 million. Dozens of brightly painted new homes, scattered across a two-hectare site. Today they are empty. Some have been vandalized… and worse. The scene is desolate and can be disgusting. But the project’s backers say it was a “success.”

The other city is the “heart of Haitil,” Port-au-Prince’s downtown. Despite hundreds of thousands dollars spent on plans and conferences, it remains dirty, disorganized, and un-reconstructed. The government is starting to build its own buildings, but what is everyone else supposed to do?