Piles of rubble still clog the streets; at the current rate, it will take 20 years simply to clean up the mess. Nearly a million people still live in about 1,300 makeshift refugee camps that occupy every available parking lot and open space in the capital. With each passing day, the camps take on a more permanent look.

"We are just completely discouraged now," said Fai-na Bernadette, a 24-year-old nurse who has been living in a soccer field in Petionville, a suburb of the capital, alongside 3,000 other refugees.

A symbol of Haiti's lack of progress is the half-collapsed presidential palace, a grand, tropical version of the White House with its own majestic front lawn. During the quake, the palace's great white dome fell to one side, the portico collapsed and the walls cracked.

During a visit two months after the quake, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France would rebuild the palace. One day in April, two cranes arrived and began clawing at the structure. That night, they left and never returned. Both Haiti and France decided the money was more urgently needed on other projects, according to France's ambassador to Haiti, Didier Le Bret.

If the past year has proved anything, economists say, it is that the kindness of strangers -- either through aid from other governments or private charities -- can't on its own help Haiti create a brighter future. The only real hope, economists say, is taking steps to create jobs and build a stronger economy.

There are faint glimmers of optimism on that score. On Tuesday, Haiti, in conjunction with the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. and a big Korean textile firm, announced a new industrial park to be developed in the north of the country they hope will provide 20,000 textile jobs in the next seven years. The park could spur additional investment by other textile firms.

"This is how things should work and seldom do," said Paul Collier, an Oxford University development economist. Mr. Collier said that through building up a robust textile industry, Haiti could provide as many as 200,000 jobs and eventually pull itself out of poverty.

But the country's economy still has a long way to go. Haiti scores below the world average in freedom for business, investment, property rights and freedom from corruption, according to the World Bank. Starting a business takes four times as long as the world average.

In the months that followed the temblor, many Haitians latched on to the hope that in largely destroying the country, the earthquake might have created an opportunity to build something better in its place.

That hope now seems naive. "It's a country falling apart, and it's difficult to see what can be done to change the current situation," said Robert Fatton, a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia.

Even before the quake, Haiti was already the poorest country in the hemisphere. "The combination of the earthquake and poverty took the country back to a level that is unimaginable," Carlene Dei, the Haiti director for USAID, the U.S. government development agency, told reporters last week.

Another key factor in the short term is whether Haiti can create a legitimate government. Urged on by the foreign community, the country held a chaotic presidential election in December, the results of which are still not known. Any political unrest or lack of legitimacy for the eventual winner would undermine reconstruction efforts even further.

The experience of the past year sheds light on why there is such pessimism about Haiti's future.

The international community pledged $12 billion in March to help rebuild Haiti. Just $2 billion of that figure was slated to arrive this past year. Of that, only $1.3 billion actually arrived and much of that in recent weeks.

Due to concerns about Haitian corruption, most of the money is handled by international agencies like the United Nations and charities rather than Haiti's government. Haitian officials say this means they have little control over the money, yet have to face an angry populace that demands progress.

"To continuously reduce us to being corrupt and inefficient means that nothing is going to work," Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said in an interview.

The multitude of actors in Haiti, from charities to multilateral agencies like the U.N., makes coordination difficult. "It's sheer chaos. Nobody knows who is in charge of anything," Mr. Fatton said.

Ms. Bernadette, the nurse, said she and others living on the Petionville soccer field have been told by Haitian authorities to clear out within weeks so the grounds can be used for sports again. "We have nowhere to go," she said.