Lea aquí la versión en español de este artículo.

(Published in Catalejo in February 2016).

This article is part of the La Habana de las columnas y los 200 barrios collection [The Havana of the columns and its 200 neighborhoods]

El Vedado—the zone located along the privileged coastal boundary that some urbanists have called the heart of “the great white city”, and well-known for its indisputable merits and tourist centers, is not, however, the epitome of Havana. Although important sites of memorials, architectural values and prominent happenings are located there—in addition to the primary seats of the central government—the city and its problems spread beyond this neighborhood, which is characterized, now and before, and together with others in the boroughs of Plaza and Playa, by its superior status. With its fifteen boroughs, in which reside two million plus “habaneros”, from La Lisa on the southwest to East Havana, from Guanabacoa to Marianao, passing through San Miguel del Padrón, Arroyo Naranjo, 10 de Octubre, the Cerro, Centro Havana—which the Cuban film Suite Habana (2003) portrayed like no one else—the great culture and the unknown history of the city now has its seat, and grows, in the middle of an urban setting characterized by shared difficulties, which differ in their intensity.

Catalejo is retrieving two essays by well-known urbanists (one an architect, and the other a  sociologist), frequent collaborators and members of the Advisory Committee of the journal Temas, both texts still valid although published several years ago, and which thoroughly illuminate the base of this indissoluble—and multi-colored—urban issue.

Dozens of essays have been devoted to the history and realities of today’s Havana, which all define the city as the most notable—and ill-treated—urban reservoir of Cubanness [1]. That is why it is not the intention here to raise the cognizance regarding the values of the Cuban Capital, but rather to call attention to its new challenge: the impacts caused by its likely access to direct foreign investments, to the markets, or the foreign participation and that of private national protagonists in the real estate and services sector—seen from a city already damaged by severe cultural and management deficiencies rooted in the public and private sectors.

The changes being introduced in Cuba to redesign its development model and to adjust it to the global scene will result in a city that is different from the city inhabited by the people in the Capital today. The understandable adaptation of the country to this context represents the timely maturing of national thinking; therefore, the focus of this analysis will not be found in the inevitable transformation already underway, but in the reduction of its impact on the patrimonial buildings, the image, the identity and the Havana citizenry. The Cuban public sector faces the challenge of conserving and enjoying the values exclusive to Havana or deciding what price to put on this unique legacy.

This article addresses this dilemma from the point of view of architecture and urbanism, not from the economic-financial perspective—modalities that could be assumed here by direct foreign investment, or by sociology. It is limited to the Capital of the country but, by extension, it would also apply to other urban areas recognized as important cultural custodians—considering that almost 77% of the Cuban population live in urban areas and it is there where the strongest national cognizance resides and matures.

The outside became the inside, and then it became unique

The waterfront culture and the acceptance of “the other” is also expressed by the diversity of the architecture of Havana, as part of its long urban tradition. Starting in 1519 the city brought together capital, styles and external influences until it became the eclectic environment that today makes it the key piece in the Cuban racial and cultural mixture [mestizaje]. After the Revolution of 1959, foreign investment in Havana became minimal compared to the preceding periods as this was attempted under a vertical and centralized model that did not validate it as a financial alternative, lacked a legal base, was harassed by its northern neighbor, did not model it on the previous urban texture, was always slowed down for economic or bureaucratic reasons—and therefore hardly left an impact on the city.

Even so, discreet foreign traces are visible in post-revolutionary Havana. Taking advantage of  an opportunity during the severity of the Special Period, during the middle of the 1990’s entrepreneurs from various countries began working on buildings they constructed in Miramar—some ten office and residential  buildings of questionable design. These dwellings, sold or rented to foreigners, suffered a premature end, to all appearances provoked by the lack of legal support for such a type of property, eroding its management, as exemplified by the gap created when its heir or legacy was being determined. A unique case is the development that occupies an entire block of the Quinta Avenida in Miramar for the Embassy of the Soviet Union (today the Russian Federation), designed and selected in Moscow, as shown in its elaborate volumetric dimensions. Whether these few proposals have had any significant positive or negative impact on the city’s image cannot be ascertained.

Havana treasures a notable heritage which forms a fundamental part of what Cuba is: an irreplaceable patrimony, founded in the most relevant metropolis of the Caribbean, preserved and frozen in time. Today this uniqueness is its principal aggregate value, with at least three further characteristics which confirm this recognition before the world: the declaration by UNESCO of its Historical Center and its series of colonial fortresses as part of the World Heritage Sites (1982); its inclusion as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World (2015), so elected by thousands of voters in the whole world, and finally, the ever-increasing number of visitors who insist on the necessity to conserve the essences of Havana, while they fear losing them through the impact of foreign investment that could change its image and character. This is not a question of nostalgia but a conviction on the part of tireless travelers who confirm—based on their accumulated experience—that the city is among the most unique in Latin America because of its masterful architecture and urbanism, its solid symbolic and coherent image, its amalgam of built heritage, its sociocultural fabric and its example of the organization of neighborhoods. And all this with each phase of growth barely touching the previous one, in tenuous transitions based on addition, never on substitution, to the completion of a Capital that now, in the midst of the global urban competitive scenario, could endanger the uniqueness of its aggregate value.

The uniqueness becomes banal, the banal becomes the norm

Serious weaknesses threaten the conservation of Havana as it faces the push of the market. These are the result of a half-century of poor management, reactive supervision, cultural deficiency, poverty, and carelessness, all of which has already been pointed out by Cuban analysts. The majority of these critiques avoided the current changing scene because it was not yet predictable, but speeches and public documents recently issued do not touch on these topics in any precise manner either, or only refer to them indirectly without proposing strategic actions [2]. Fundamental information for the planning of the city is thus held back, apparently because to face its future in the midst of such uncertainty could induce speculations or a scattering of solutions—which is always better than not knowing them.

Either because of the uniqueness of the process or because of the old twists of its urban administration, Havana is not ready to totally accept the scenario created by Law 118∕2014 and which permits foreign investment in real estate, in the administration of services and in construction. The financial and cultural breach opened by the crisis of the 1990’s has not been overcome to the extent of favorably balancing the flows of foreign investment. The antiquated model of centralized and sectorial urban management remains untouched while the private sector assumes part of the power that is not formally granted to it, and responds with actions that go from lack of respect to violations of urban regulations and from there to illegality. To this is added the actions of a public sector which shows weakness before the pressures of foreign investment when decisive projects are introduced or awarded to mediocre foreign designers who hardly know the city. Important contracts are managed without transparency, or decided by inappropriate protagonists; technologies, materials and designs hardly adapted to tropical humidity are implemented without research, or there is bewilderment before the foreign image while classic examples of the Havana architectural scene are demolished or damaged. We cannot underestimate the loss of identity, of symbolic capital and the opportunity to develop when the public sector remains anchored in the threat, and not in the opportunity.

The main weakness in this process is the extreme vulnerability suffered by the Cuban city and architecture. It would seem that their significant cultural nature does not form part of the national heritage when public discourse reduces this to the Fine Arts, and when the Ministry of Culture does not include a department that houses them—not even as sustainable cultural assets facing market rationales. The Union of Architects is among the professional associations of lowest scope in Cuban society; cultural festivals declared to be “inclusive of all arts” ignore it perfidiously; mass media very rarely comment on Cuban cities and architecture, and none has publicly questioned the events that led to the demolition of the iconic Hospital Pedro Borrás, nor the mutilation of the Fin de Siglo store, the Nautical Club [Workers’ Social Circle Félix Elmuza], the Cuban Pavilion or Terminal 3 of the José Martí Airport—among other examples of the tolerated administrative vandalism. No architectural or urban design competitions are ever celebrated even when they are held for other cultural products; the massive lack of respect of the urban by-laws generally goes unpunished; no regularly issued print publication is focused on the challenges and open discussions of the profession, making the academic and intellectual sectors inaudible; there are no qualified guides that direct current local architecture; cultural or artistic reviews do not deal with architecture, which widens the public breach between theory and practice; temporary improvised decision-makers assert themselves as plenipotentiaries, forgetting citizens’ opinions; urbanism is not part of social sciences; architectural creation is very vulnerable because it lacks any legal or regulatory support; popular cognizance, allied to processes of democratic participation, does not prepare people for the appreciation of architecture (its aim), but rather for its construction (a means), even when the latter usually ends up being a threat and the executioner of the first, while the citizen is taught to see them as equal. Absorbed in shortages that are so different, without a civic society that is articulate and influential, an integral understanding of the city and the ways to save it become difficult, which results in serious disadvantages for its protection when faced by the new peddlers.

Urban culture is scarce when it is not planted into the national consciousness, public policies and the citizenry—including the sensibility and training of planners, administrators, politicians and decision-makers, who do not support or defend it because they have not been trained to. Thus, the banalization of design ravages residences, and public and private services. The Extramuros [outside the Walls] of Havana imitates the worst models, being colored with vulgarity and populism while the management of the Office of the City Historian aims to continue its important work after internal structural changes that seem to have weakened its decision-making and financial capabilities.

To the patronage that converts the transcendent into the frivolous must now be added another dangerous variable: the transfer of programs and designs imposed by foreign investors. Characteristics of this cultural threat are visible in certain tourist facilities that have been constructed as carbon copies, bad replicas of Andalusian country houses and tropical estates in public and private areas, that already threatened Havana. The worst may yet be to come in the form of possible condominium buildings, fast food outlets, urban speculation and traumatic demolitions, discordant hotels and malls, invasive cruise ships, contaminating technologies or spa and resort centers—feasible in an urban context that up to now has not given any sign of cultural resistance to these changes. Every type of discordance seems possible in this new scenario, which would not be so fearsome if the Cuban public sector would exercise its authority, power and patrimonial defense democratically and wisely. Cuba has now been open to foreign investment for twenty years, but the possible countless investors, including North-Americans, have now become a new threat, given the pressure with which they usually handle their negotiations. Analysts calculate that people from the North could invest 1.5 billion dollars per year in Cuba after the end of the blockade. Added to this—and as just one example among many—is the renewed foreign interest expressed by the 500% growth of visits by Japanese businessmen to this “mature fruit” during the last ten months [3]. If poverty has been bad for Havana, worse would be the abundance of badly managed foreign investment, because of the dangerous transformational impact it would have, and the unsustainability of such a dependent model.

It should be noted that foreign investments are only disrespectful where public authority allows it. The foreign promoter, seen as an ally under Law 118∕2014, can and should be convinced that what makes this city profitable is its aggregate value, not its lit-up billboards and symbolic buildings that “modernize” it. In 2015, 3.5 million visitors came to Cuba, and up to another two million more per year are expected when the government of the United States allows its citizens to visit us freely. These developers—even the local ones—know that such an increase means more potential demand, but no one will come to Havana to eat hamburgers, but rather to enjoy this varied Capital and its people, attracted by a city and an authentic cultural environment that already function as effective publicity and difference, which obliges them (us) to respect them. However, many of these tourists will be certain to come to the city before what they consider to be its “inevitable change for the worse”, caused by the structural adjustments now in progress and the transformations that the market will produce [4].

Seen from the urban perspective, the risk of foreign investment in Havana comes from the managing and supervisory strategies that may be adopted by the public sector, which must renovate its outdated model and place the city’s productive culture ahead of the desperate search for new funding. It must take care of the hen of the golden eggs or dedicate itself to sell the few she lays before being sterilized. We can praise the Office of the City Historian for its intelligent, learned handling of this risk, as demonstrated in the Plaza Vieja [Old Square]. Among other services, in this area reside various successful businesses owned by Cuban proprietors, at least five cultural facilities, one café with a local Cuban atmosphere next to a beer shop with Austrian equipment, and boutiques of three international firms (Paul & Shark, Benetton and Lacoste). None of this damages the essential history of one of the main and most visited colonial squares of Havana, because the public face of every site is subordinated to the preservation of the space, demonstrating that market, culture, tradition and modernity are compatible and, in passing, that banalization of the architecture and urban craziness are not inevitably needed to attract clients to a city that has no need of make-up.

It would be a risky trend to deal “flexibly” with the other 360 sq kms [±140 sq miles] of the urban space that is Havana. Such a viewpoint could divide the city into stagnant neighborhoods, cut its momentous packaging and structural continuity, and prevent the smooth stylistic transition between its identitary characteristics—which, as its essential values are the crucial ones, does not mean an untouchable and historicist city. It does not refer to cancelling modern interventions or innovating investments, attuned to their time, but rather carrying them out with wisdom while the renewal and evolution demanded by every time period is happening—within tolerable limits toward the changes and by its citizens’ work. However, this would entail other challenges:

• A severe crisis in the state of the construction and the conservation of Havana’s built environment.
• A very high internal demand for new capital and investments aimed at the rehabilitative process;
• High pressure for foreign investments, to capture new markets filled with undeveloped opportunities;
• Decapitalization of institutions linked to the design, direction and local urban control;
• The loss of updating and training to interact or negotiate with the market;
• Low economic-financial optimization of the investments and of their budgetary handling;
• Potential risk of corruption or irregular control of investment funds;
• Legal, regulatory and statistical gaps for optimal management of the investment process;
• Dispense with land value as a regulating variable of the urban investment process;
• The risk of demolitions and improper recycling of the central urban land areas with high use value;
• Insufficient transparency, participation and democratic debate during the investment process;
• Lack of knowledge of the city as a holistic cultural, social, ethical and productive entity;
• Confusion as to the meanings and differences between ”image of modernity” and development;
• Lack of experience regarding updated trends of urban sustainability and dedicated management;
• Lack of knowledge about the opportunities and strategies articulated by Patrimony and Development;
• Persistence of obsolete models of governance and urban management, which do not transform the structures that created the problem, nor update the strategies needed to resolve this issue.

The city is assessed its value, and value is reinvested in it

The urban plans, designed from a centralized management scenario, will have to be readjusted to the demands of the burgeoning mixed economy, in whose non-state sector 27% of the labor force already works and which has promoted some 85,000 buying and selling operations of private properties, without taking into consideration the impact of the 200 varied businesses with foreign capital that are already active in Cuba—plus the foreseeable ones—which will have an influence on the image and territorial distribution of the investments.

To integrally rehabilitate the central Havana districts would involve the creation of a stok of housing, already forecasted in the urban plans, in internal or non-internal zones, in order to achieve the rotation of buildings and to relocate central densities. In the short and medium term the current General Plan of Territorial and Urban Organization defines general areas to be devoted to the development of housing, without defining precise locations for high standard real estate investment and for popular dwellings, so that the mutual impacts and interaction between these two so very different programs are not clear nor demarcated. Would this mean that both uses would coexist in one and the same area, including the central one, competing with each other for the best locations? Or would it be that the general plan will facilitate the creation of special communities when the opportunity arises, without doing the necessary analysis for each proposal? In this context, two options can be visualized: the unusual coexistence of refined condominiums for foreigners juxtaposed with the central population, lodged under the models of the social living spaces, or the building of gated complexes with a very high urban standard and far from the curious nationals. Either one of these would widen the gap of inequality and the separation would threaten the zones of intervention, which obliges us to think and to minimize the social impact of such interaction.

A contract has already been signed between the little known company Cuba Golf S.A. and the Chinese Beijing Enterprises Holdings Ltd., in a joint venture to construct a luxury complex with two golf courses, shops, a spa, a hotel, and 1,184 residences, at a cost of $462 million [5]. It will be the first golf resort in Havana, situated in Bellomonte, Guanabo, in an area that the Master Plan had at some point seen as a potential zone of development, and will now be built by foreign investment, on land ceded in easement for 99 years. A short distance away from the vilified Alamar area, a dream enclave will be born, only for foreigners. An arguable point is whether its socio-urban impact was properly considered in a contract that has taken place outside the collective association debate—including its ecological footprint and its high water consumption—and neither the associations, the mass media or the technical committees that monitor investments of this type and scale are conscious of it. Such a disorganized beginning confirms that verticalism continues to be an urban management method that is potentially applicable to any kind of foreign investment, including some new hotels in Havana for which an agreement has already been signed.

Architectural construction is the most complex and most expensive of all cultural expressions, so to the threat to our patrimony must be added the financial conflict. The country is showing small signs of a macro-economic recovery but it is still insufficient to reach the level of the 1980’s. Analysts claim that for this to be possible the GDP needs to grow in a stable manner for ten years at a rate of 3.5 to 4% annually, but the average increase over the last five years was 2.6%. The year 2015 reported a growth of 4% but experts insist that an additional two billion dollars in external funding must be found per year, to stabilize this indicator for a decade [6].

The state of the foundational buildings in Havana is so deplorable that it is enough to remember just a few facts to demonstrate this: the cost of its total rehabilitation, including the technical and engineering networks, has been calculated at 17 billion pesos; the Capital city averages a collapse of 3.2 houses per day, with citizens dying. The divergence between a slow economic recovery and this serious metropolitan reality would counsel the promotion of foreign urban investment, without delay, to complement the current means of financing and support its rapid recovery.

At the same time, the potential of the city to attract investment and generate its own funds from the local private sector is not being maximized. This sector, in spite of the fact that public regulations are not very helpful, has shown more than one success in this type of endeavor, frequently based on capital transferred from abroad to resident families, a form of underground foreign investment which is considerable. In some neighborhoods entire blocks have been revived during the last three years as a result of the real estate market operations between nationals, while entrepreneurs’ businesses improve the city’s functionality. Together with the cooperatives, this is a process that merits being extended into more complex programs, set up at a medium scale, with foreign investment, but which compels them to seek assistance to update their lack of technical skills and of cultured references.

The productive city embodies the enhancement of its heritage and its potential as seen from the sustainable use of local and global opportunities. Havana has sufficient qualities to successfully navigate the sea of commodities [sic]. The new permissible scenario of positive international relations for this country, opened thanks to renovated national policies, should not be forgotten when U.S. harassment loses vigor and reluctantly” acknowledges” the Cuban presence in its back yard. It would be unforgiveable to fail in these circumstances and allow, because of a vertical and inefficient public management, errors by cities that were at some point iconic and then homogenized by globalization, that may be repeated. Even more so when it is evident that certain international companies, which could be transformed into winners by the existing ineptitude, are hoping for this [7].

Together with these challenges are stabilizing strengths: the presence of a sound and structured central power that will be able to lead this process from the modernization of the public sector, minimizing the negative impact for vulnerable groups; the possibility to stimulate and recover part of that human capital which is more experienced in the restoration, design and planning of the city; the rebirth of institutional voices—UNEAC [the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists], the Fábrica de Arte Cubano [Factory of Cuban Art], the magazine Temas—that contribute to the growth of awareness about architecture, urban design and sustainability; the certainty that Cuba is a secure place and Havana a good location for business, which stimulates foreign and local investments under new legal frameworks that support them; the existence of Cuban architects and designers with talent and creative vocations; the technical-normative base already mentioned to intervene in an orderly manner in certain areas of Havana; the high level of education of the Cuban population and—the biggest advantage—the city itself, with its investment opportunities in almost all areas and a unique sociocultural web and identity in a region in which it occupies a privileged geo-strategic location.

As was demonstrated financially in its Historical Center, the Capital could reconvert itself from a dependent city to a metropolis capable of paying for a large part of its recovery by the reinvestments of its aggregate urban values. It is disconcerting to realize that the sector that generates about 50% of Cuba’s GDP is not yet recognized nor managed as a systemic productive entity, but rather as sectorial fiefs which do not create value chains. The city’s industry is viable if understood as generators of investment and development, not as consumers of resources that do not exist, which today results in the perfect excuse to do nothing. But what is not detailed in this topic is what should be the real and practical strategy for urban sustainability once foreign investment is admitted on a scale that covers the entire city and not only one municipality. This could happen using different approaches, depending on the socio-economic scenario and the desired market, topics which are not covered by this text as they relate to the policies of the nation and of the public sector. In addition to those already known, some possible actions can be suggested:

• Investment in engineering networks, collection of waste water and its treatment, and piping systems for potable water, based on the lessons learned in Aguas del Oeste, a now closed joint venture enterprise that worked this angle.
• The handling and sustainable management of solid waste and raw materials by means of joint venture companies working with experienced enterprises and linking to the local private sector in their implementation.
• Investing in the recycling of non-operative or underused installations of all kinds and magnitudes, reincorporating them into the productive and service sectors. The coastal area could bring scenic value and comprises an important collection of buildings ready for recycling.
• Medium range joint ventures, with local agents who could work with their own funds, including the private sector, local governments, churches, international entities, NGO’s or cooperative agencies constituting joint investment, training through joint management or promoting services and investments of social orientation and shared assets.
• The importation, distribution, consulting, wholesale and retail sale of supplies for local construction or rehabilitation of buildings and urban engineering systems. If Coca-Cola could be sold in Cuba, why not Home Depot?
• The sanitation and restoration of bay and riverfronts, exchanging coastal decontamination or rehabilitation for tax exemptions or possibilities of foreign investment for theme parks, marinas, small boat moorings, dredging and the like. These transactions would constitute an international practice in which its constituents negotiate the benefits based on mutual concessions, in a “win-win” strategy.
• To also validate the win-win by authorizing real estate investments in central areas, with the regulatory obligation to rehabilitate the urban environment immediately around where they are located.
• Maritime transportation services: ferries, cruise ships and international coastal traffic, which would include the use of the long coastal strip for the mass transportation of citizens between the city’s eastern and western points, with intermediate docks linked to local surface transport, and to international transport going to and coming from the United States, Mexico and the Bahamas.
• The promotion of joint venture companies of urban transport, with local co-management, sale or property of the modes of mobility—whatever these may be.
• Tax reforms and incentives for a new policy of attracting tax revenues based on urban businesses reinvestment of profits.
• Fiscal modernization with emphasis on the private foreign and local sectors.
• The promotion of incentives that charge less to those who contribute more to a positive image and to urban development.
• External support and extra benefits for SMEs [Small and medium-sized enterprises], cooperatives and small businesses that generate impacts and synergy at city scale, as is the case for the Callejón de los Barberos [alley] or the Plazuela del Angel [square].  Promote higher earnings for those who contribute more to the city.
• Facilitate the intentions of governments, NGO’s, cooperative agencies and of the UN to co-manage or finance local governments and entrepreneurs from Havana, prioritizing the autonomous productive sector linked to urban rehabilitation and preservation.
• Promote a national bank, with international alliances, focused on urban rehabilitation, in support of the public and private sectors: Mortgages, loans, buying-selling and auctions of properties, soft loans for local investment and other financial services.
• Promote alliances and interactions between the small and medium private sector and public or private national investment to support rehabilitation. Small workshops, medium-sized factories and official municipal industries could create networks or joint associations of small producers, promoting synergies and local chains of production.
• Operational facilities for innovative foreign companies of telecommunications, pharmaceutics, software of advanced technology, which could make use of the notable technical abilities of the human capital of Havana. Telephony, access to the internet, cable networks, sales of residential or business communication packages, etc.
• Exploratory eco-friendly drilling of oil in the eastern part of the Capital, guaranteeing the proper handling and control of its serious environmental and urban threats.

The city becomes service-oriented, and then stratifies

The greatest challenge that direct foreign investment exposes us to is that of converting the Capital’s image in a globalized caricature of itself—also dysfunctional in law and equity—while we try to maintain the social benefits which have constituted its essential political banner. The cities of the so-called “economies in transition” are models for this issue, while reducing them to cultural stereotypes, affecting their environment, changing their identity and sheltering great social segregation. Possibly this might be the excuse for the most orthodox sector of the Cuban school of thought to slow down or even prevent Havana climbing the mountain towards foreign investment and grasping additional capital in the enormous quantity that is necessary. It is curious that recent technical reports and opinions of Cuban functionaries have not yet noticed this financial reality, when there is possibly no other option for the public sector after the failure of urban Havana attempts for half a century.

The world today is not one we want it to be, but one that has emerged as an irrefutable fact. Neither is Havana today the one we desire, but the one we have. However it would be imprudent to leave it as it is, the country’s image falling apart, burying its citizens in its ruins, turning them into dissatisfied vandals in their neighborhoods while opportunities for development which the new scenario could bring are being ignored. Accepting the true context and doing the best possible things to overcome what we don’t like looks like the only alternative available.

The effective management model implemented in Old Havana since 1993 shows, without a doubt, and with proven success, that authenticity, foreign investment, market and equity can be articulated. This does not seem to have been understood by a bureaucracy that refuses to replicate the model and extend it to many Cuban cities of equal potential, including other sectors of Havana with which they have diverged on possible solutions for three decades. The technocracy takes note of the denial of every democratic diagnosis, accustomed to having reality conform to what they want, and not what the citizens ask for, so that the real socioeconomic powers end up imposing themselves against the current, and dodging the rules. Therefore, from the mid 1980’s on, the city marches unstoppably in a western direction, in spite of the fact that since the 1960’s—or even since the 50’s—urban plans basically meant for it to go eastward.

Structural deficits in broaching foreign investments in the city can also be seen in important strategic documents in the country, leaving it to face the process unprotected. The “Guidelines for the economic and social policies of the Party and the Revolution”, approved in the VI Congress of the Communist Party in 2011—to be revised in the next VII Congress—do not include concepts such as “city”, “urbanism”, “constructed living spaces” or similar, and only very few touch them indirectly (No. 120, 163, 292, 302), while none of the seven guidelines of the chapter titled “Housing” focus strategically nor holistically on the scale of the city, and even less as a recipient of foreign investment. The chapter on “Tourism” does not propose concrete actions towards its main urban purpose, although it brings in almost 45% of the profits. The chapters that analyze capital investments, fiscal policies, economy, planning or similar topics, do not deal with the potential of the city seen as an investment, market and industrial sector generating capital. The opportunities offered by the current global urban scenario are not being used in spite of the outstanding identity and legitimacy of our cities, they are not visualized in the “Cuba product” and, therefore, not assumed as the country’s image. For its part, the new Portfolio of Business Opportunities 2015, opened after the 118∕2014 Law on foreign investments was passed, proposes 326 projects to attract investment to prioritized economic areas, but only three of these (0.9%) are aimed directly towards satisfying the urban demands of the Cuban city that contributes most to the GDP.

To assume N “honorable tertiarization” in harmony with Cuban social policies, minimizing isolation, maintaining its heritage and identity, open to foreign and local investment, with justice and equity—participative and democratic diagnoses must be made, recognizing these complex variables and also adding them to the design of the implementations, with culture as the core concept. It is undeniable that the market and the foreign investments, articulated to local real estate agents, could give rise to social stratification, but the fact is that that has already existed for a long time in never-named zones of Havana, which made it possible that this undesirable process has expanded without opposition. To deny this would be more than naïve, disastrous for the city, but even worse would be not to handle this properly so as to lessen its social impact and leading it to goals of interest.

The mapping of the results of the National Population Census of 2002 confirmed that at that time in the northern part of the Capital (the municipalities of Playa, Plaza, etc.) there existed an adult population, mainly white, educated, and economically stable, while in the south (the municipalities of San Miguel del Padrón, Diez de Octubre, etc.) there was another type, with a lower level of education and basically mixed race, which forms an essential part of the informal economic sector of the Capital [8]. To this old duality and spatial separation must now be added differences in opportunities opened by the real estate market. In 2014 it was provable that the most expensive housing is located in the northern coastal fringe, while the cheapest is found in this degraded southern sector which borders on the agricultural zone, further lowering the value of land there [9]. The notable thing is that it is not necessarily a question of properties located towards the south being always inferior in the functional-physical-spatial-landscape sense, but that it is their unfortunate localization which depreciates their value, and a clear exclusionary sign where the “others” live. This breach is attributable to old tensions related to the social debt of Havana, and not to the publicized opening to foreign investment, which could also contribute the financing necessary to mitigate such disparity. This urban strategy would pass through citizens, administrators, politicians, thoughtful planners and decision-makers, who are educated and trained; these are not available and now weigh down the Cuban public sector.

The debate concludes; and the city, does it restart?

Havana means a great opportunity for foreign investment, which it urgently needs to support its development. But to take this up immediately, without tensions for the citizens and maintaining social justice, there are serious deficiencies. The risk of not utilizing its culture and unique patrimony is also very high, which could be minimized if policies and public actions are introduced that target the marketing of the cities, including training, transparent planning, participative diagnoses, democratic management and awareness. Not doing this, if Havana loses what makes it different, would damage its unique image and identity, removing it from the competitive global urban scenario.

The last thirty years of urban trends in almost the whole municipality of Playa prove that socioeconomic powers that nuance and modify cities in the globalized world of today cannot be ignored, nor denied with arrogance. They have left their mark and undoubtedly will do so also in Tarará, the Malecón or the coveted waterfront of the Bay of Havana. It would be better to understand and direct them through national interests, and not external ones, those with whom we will have to learn to express ourselves on an equal footing, open to the world. The administration of the country—and of the city—will have to take charge of that, making sure that the marketing laws are subordinated to the public, cultural, and social policies.

Havana will change; that is unavoidable.

The best thing would be to act now so as not to lose the city afterwards, only to be reinvented tomorrow, anchored by its memory, urban significance and citizenship, although here and there welcoming sings of new times appear.

After all—it was always like this.

After all—it will have to be like this again…. or we will need to prepare ourselves to lose it.

Translator: Catharina Vallejo

[1] Mario Coyula, “El trinquenio amargo y la ciudad distópica: autopsia de una utopía” (Conferencia en el ISA), Centro Teórico-Cultural Criterios, marzo de 2007, disponible en www.criterios.es; Mario Coyula, “¿Cómo será La Habana?”, Revista Bimestre, no. 48, 2014, pp. 22-33, Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País; Carlos García, “La Habana, ¿una ecuación imposible?”. Catalejo, el blog de Temas, disponible en http://bit.ly/1nfBHOt; Pedro Vázquez, “Imagen construida y ciudad deconstruida: apogeo de una antítesis”, Temas, no. 77, 2014, pp 66-73, disponible en http://bit.ly/1PUzuS4.

[2] Estrategia Habitacional de La Habana, versión inicial DPPFA, mayo de 2014, puesta a la consideración del Comité de Expertos de la Construcción; Informe de Relatoría del Taller Nacional de Hábitat Sostenible. UNAICC, La Habana, 9 de octubre de 2015; Perfil de la vivienda de Cuba, versión ejecutiva, ONU-Hábitat (Cuba) e INV, 2015.

[3] “Se multiplica por cinco el número de empresarios japoneses que llegan a la Isla”, Cubaeconómica, 21 de agosto, 2015, disponible en http://bit.ly/1ZYK4fi.

[4] Joshua Howat Berger, “La visita del Papa consolida a Cuba como gran destino turístico”, El Nuevo Herald, 19 de septiembre, 2015, disponible en http://hrld.us/1TT0SAN.

[5] Ibet García, “Fuerte apuesta de Cuba a la inversión extranjera”, Radio Reloj, 22 de mayo, 2015, disponible en http://bit.ly/1OZxYkr.

[6] José L. Rodríguez, “Cuba: desempeño económico en 2014 y proyecciones para 2015 (II)”, Cubadebate, 17 de enero, 2015, disponible en http://bit.ly/1SgBY0m;  “Cuba y su economía en 2015: primeros resultados (I)”, Cubadebate, 14 de julio, 2015, disponible en http://bit.ly/1mTc5q4.

[7] Leticia García, “Por qué Channel eligió Cuba y no cualquier otro lugar del mundo”, El País, 27 de octubre, 2015, disponible en http://bit.ly/1Q31gxx.

[8] Luisa Íñiguez, Edgar Figueroa y Norma Montes, Novedades en Población, CEDEM, 2004, disponible en www.novpob.uh.cu/index.php/rnp/article/view/96.

[9] Elizabeth Pérez y Yudivián Almeida, “Mercado inmobiliario en Cuba: algunos indicios y consideraciones”, OnCuba, 3 de marzo, 2014, disponible en http://bit.ly/1TSMXL4.