Isabel Maria Leon Candelario, a graduate from the School of Architecture at the University of Havana in 1974, works in the Plan Maestro department at the Historian's Office of the City of Havana as a specialist in Physical Planning and Urbanism. Old Havana has been described as an architectural treasure and in a country of scarce resources saving the crumbling buildings of Old Havana might easily have been overlooked. Instead Isabel outlined the sequence of progress made over several decades, speeding up since 1994 despite a major setback from the collapse of the Soviet Union – a major trading partner of Cuba providing billions in subsidies to the small Caribbean nation – in the early 1990s.
Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, the city’s first official historian, led the 1st stage of the city’s restoration from 1938-1964 with the 2nd stage from 1964-1980 led by its second historian, Eusebio Leal Spengler, who continues to be a key figure from its 3rd and 4th stages – 1981-1993- onwards. UNESCO declared Old Havana a World Heritage Site in 1982.
This latter stage instituted five-year development plans and a more substantial budget, including a $1million jumpstart investment from President Fidel Castro, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and Vice President Carlos Lage, and includes a government decree in 1993 giving Old Havana’s restoration a legal instrument to employ.
But first some facts: Havana holds 20 percent of Cuba’s population in its 727 square kilometres, with Old Havana at its centre constituting 214 hectares. By the time the Prioritised Conservation Zone was devised in 1993, 98 percent of its area was in an advanced state of dilapidation. When the legendary Malecon, the sea wall protecting the city, consisting of 14 city blocks and covering almost 1.5 linear kilometres was included, as well as Chinatown, the population within the conservation zone became 74,070 in 24,849 dwellings, with 750 buildings having high protection due to their cultural value.
The sheer enormity of the project – a Herculean task – is further compounded by a level of building dilapidation in which, on average, there are two building collapses of varying magnitude every three days, says Isabel. A situation exacerbated in the hurricane season, three hurricanes arrived in just 10 days last year, and a truly frightening seasonal event judging from the images she showed of waves towering above and crashing upon the Malecon.
But no matter what, restoration of the city has continued unabated, achieving a level of craftsmanship and sustainability that seems truly remarkable. Not surprising, then to hear Isabel list the premises revitalisation has been based upon: Integral, sustainable and self-financed; supported by political will at the highest level; only one management authority and enjoying special legal privilege.
Finance has come from four key sources: cash flow from commercial outlets and tourism in the area, Cuban Bank Credits, taxes and international cooperation and donations. These funds are spent thus: 45 percent on physical transformation, 35 percent on social transformation and 20 percent back into State coffers to be reinvested in the overall recovery of the city’s heritage.
The Master Plan for the Integral Revitalisation of Old Havana centres on its five main plazas, following a main axis from north to south, as well as the east – west axis. It’s a finely balanced programme that focuses on keeping the area’s residential character, while making it a lively place attractive to its growing tourist trade 24 hours a day. Selected residents, chosen by their length of residence in the old city, can choose to move into temporary housing - American suburban-style miniature villages that sit cheek-by-jowl with the renovation work – until their buildings are restored with remaining residents moved to distant neighbourhoods. Whilst many may have chosen this option before the area’s revitalisation became the thriving force it is today, latterly most want to stay in homes lived in for generations, and now restored to their former glory.
At the same time government policy – new residents can only arrive to replace departing ones – has kept the city’s population from following the path of exponential growth seen in so many cities elsewhere. In fact, Havana’s population has only grown from one to two million in the last 50 years – compare this to Lagos, Nigeria where the city grows by 600,000 each year! This protects the city from the inevitable social and physical changes ensuing from such rapid growth; while keeping Old Havana the home of its residents, where restoration isn’t followed by gentrification, so common to many older city areas worldwide.
Instead the Master Plan gives priority to places for young and old, including the more vulnerable, so there are several primary schools, a home for pregnant women experiencing health risks, a Paediatric Rehabilitation Centre, a Mental Health Community Centre, several specialised geriatric social and medical centres as well as well as protected housing for the elderly. This community development is integrated into a bustling urban fabric attractive to both locals and tourists. There are now 26 diverse museums and galleries (14 built since 1994) – even a Playing Cards Museum and House – celebrating the waves of immigration – Spanish, African, Chinese, Arabic and so on – forming Havana since its earliest inception as a New World outpost of wooden huts and fortune hunters almost 500 years ago. Old Havana is today a cornerstone of Cuba's financial future holding 18 hotels and hostels, 53 restaurants and bars, and 43 commercial centres, with the number of tourists visiting Cuba increasing by 12 percent a year. It’s an approach that inserts a museum into the ground floor of a meticulously restored apartment building with iron-filigree balconies and high ceilings, while residents enjoy these splendours from the second floor up.
Isabel recounts a statement from Eusebio Leal, the city historian with virtually unchecked authority to carry out the urban renewal, which epitomises this approach: “urban landscape is totally linked to the human landscape.” More than 35,000 people live within a half-mile radius of Plaza Vieja.
Leal, who reportedly breaks building codes with impunity and reports only to Perez Roque and Castro, now lectures around the world, frequently accompanying Castro on foreign trips to deliver seminars to historic preservationists. He has more than 150 projects, most in partnership with foreign investors, under his bustling domain, one which Isabel describes as a “state inside the state”, constituting 14,000 workers, three building brigades and seven real estate organisations. The latter seem an unexpected development in Cuba where the state owns all land while giving dwelling ownership – but not sale rights – to its citizens. Isabel says that 85 percent of the Cuban population own the homes the live in, while the other 15 percent live without any home ownership costs as their dwellings are in such poor condition, and yet to be restored. However, rents are set at no more than 10% of the wage of the head of the household, a housing policy that provides further protection against gentrification.
The revitalisation programme has created training in specialised trades – archaeology, furniture and building restoration, hospitality and so on – for thousands of young people, and now attracts hundreds of overseas visitors yearly to workshops and seminars. Unique here is the cultural diffusion and variety that’s been created as its offshoot: wonderfully resonant titled organisations as the ‘Sisterhood of Embroiderers and Knitters of Bethlehem, or the ‘Classroom at the Museum’, encompassing more than 1000 school children in 20 classrooms, or Walking City Routes where in eight years around 57,000 cubans strolled through Old Havana to view what has been achieved so far.
The urban renewal programme has made Plan Maestro adept at city block restoration, inserting new buildings under design guidelines, often into streets too small for most trucks, and keeping its Latin texture where buildings open onto wide plazas, carved up by triangles of gardens or marked by a central fountain. Old sits alongside new, tourists and locals mingle while laundry still hangs from balconies above and old men gather daily to play dominoes under the exposed wooden eaves.
It is a self-funding, self-sustaining model, an integrated vision of restoration providing services to both tourists and the people who live there. Its integral approach to social, environmental, cultural and community aspects makes it a model for other cities to learn from.
