Urban Agriculture. Photo by Luis F Borrero
Havana, Cuba Dec 2010
Historic Preservation, Urban Agriculture, and Neighborhoods.
Dates: Dec 12-17, 2010
When the relationship between the US and Cuba changes in the next few years, travel and investment opportunities will open for all US Citizens, greatly impacting the country itself. This is one of the last few opportunities to see Cuba as it has been for the past fifty years. Besides this obvious reason to visit Havana, there are several best practices this city has to offer to the rest of the world. This study tour focuses on historic preservation, urban agriculture, and neighborhoods.
*Participants must be in the area of Sustainability, Historic Preservation or Urban Development field. We are traveling under a general license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury Department.
View/Download the Flyer, Itinerary and Registration Form
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Historic preservation. Not only Havana has succeeded in preserving a considerable amount of its built environment, but it has done so in a manner that is paramount to conserving social capital. Historic renovation successfully sparks revitalization without causing gentrification. On the contrary, it plays a huge role as an economic engine to the neighborhoods it serves, reinforcing the community, training it, and employing it, ultimately empowering its members to continue to live next to their friends and family. To learn more about this subject please read the excerpt from "The Far Reaching Role of Historic Preservation in Havana" below.Urban and organic agriculture. More food is grown per capita in Havana than in any other city in the world. After an era where chemicals and pesticides depleted the farmlands from the required nutrients, citizens took the initiative to grow food in their own cities, organically. A reminder that those victory gardens of the US in the fifties have a valid place and time in our own. As the externalities of the fossil-fuel based transportation systems are starting to be accounted for, urban agriculture will continue to gain significance and Cuba can teach us many lessons. Neighborhood Organization. We will spend our time in many different neighborhoods to fully understand the roles they play in Cuban life. We will learn how their health system, child and elderly care, economic development through the arts, and even local democracy happen at a neighborhood scale. For example, we will see how every neighborhood has its own medical clinic, from which family doctors still make house calls. We will visit neighborhood senior centers in which seniors can stay in their own homes while having a communal place to enjoy life during the day, and go back home without the worry of cooking. We will see neighborhoods in which houses, clinics, garden walls and roofs are taken over by art. And we will understand how ironically, Cuba's communist system is built, in part, on block-by-block gatherings, where anyone 16 and over can vote on candidates for local government.
Kevin Daniels. Trustee, National Trust for Historic Preservation
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View/Download the Flyer, Itinerary and Registration Form
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In Havana, urban farming started as a necessity. With the break up of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost 75% of its imports, including oil and its derivatives: fertilizers, agro products. With the Helmut Burns act, Cuba lost 85% of its exports, mainly sugar cane to the US. The lessons learned: Cannot depend on oil for food production, much less if its foreign, and the production must be diverse.
In 1993 people started growing food where they could out of necessity, roofs, terrraces, vacant lots. In 1995 the government realized this was a major force and it was worth channeling it as part of the system. Now, Havana is said to produce up to 60% of its internal production, all within a 5 km radius from the city center.
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Urban Agriculture in Havana
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Art is a good tool to bring a community together. Citizens in Havana get organized around their CDRs (community building blocks) for many aspects of daily lives, from democracy to medical attention, childcare and the arts. The neighborhood of reknown artist Fuster is a great example of what an individual can achieve to bring an identity to his/her community, while reinforcing the bonds between the members and educating the youth. The neighborhood of cooperative Muraleando is an excellent example of the ability of art to empower community and strengthen the social capital within it. |
Community Development through the arts in Havana
Fuster
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Muraleando
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The Far Reaching Role of Historic Preservation in Havana.
Excerpt from an article written by The Univeristy of Vermont, Historic Preservation Program.
Historic preservation has become the leading player for the revitalization of the local economy and urban neighborhoods in Cuba's capital city, Havana. Here, the Office of the City Historian (Oficina del Historiador de la Cuidad de la Habana) has developed a comprehensive strategy to manage safeguarding the old city and adjacent areas.
Rather than accepting just a watchdog role, documenting heritage resources and encouraging the preservation of key threatened historic landmarks through advocacy and regulation (a common mo del for governmental preservation offices and nonprofit groups in the United States), the Office of the City Historian in Havana has moved through additional stages of organizational development and public influence since its founding in 1938.
After documenting important heritage sites and saving several of city's most endangered landmarks, in the early 1980s the Office of the City Historian commenced a fifteen year project to restore the 1778-1835 government house and palace, the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales. This building now serves as a museum, educational center and the organization's headquarters.
In 1981, the Cuban government provided the Office of the City Historian with start-up funding to invest in the historic center of Havana. Through a series of five-year plans, key historic monuments, fortifications and several city squares have been restored following international preservation standards. Forty buildings were rehabilitated in the first ten years.
Many of these projects now generate revenues that are reinvested in new rehabilitation projects. Through several agreements with Cuba's Council of Ministers, the Office of the City Historian was granted special legal powers to promote sustainable development within a priority zone for preservation in Havana by developing relations with national and foreign entities, entering into economic partnerships, and charging taxes on productive companies to fund rehabilitation.
This, coupled with the declaration of the Historic Center of the City of Havana as a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1982 and the severe economic consequences of the fa ll of the USSR, helped to propel the Office of the City Historian into taking a leading role in the rehabilitation and sustainable development of the city.
Many neighborhoods are extremely crowded and even basic services like running water are lacking due to the severely deteriorated public infrastructure. The rehabilitation work has not been limited to the redevelopment of old buildings, but has also supported the social needs of inhabitants of Old Havana and the surrounding areas of the city.
The Office of the City Historian also supports schooling, social, cultural and recreational services with a staff of trained educators, psychologists and health care workers. Their top priorities include satisfying the needs of the most vulnerable social groups and to improve the quality of housing as well as provide cultural and recreational services for the neighborhood residents. Their preservation projects in Old Havana include the rehabilitation of historic churches into concert halls, the establishment of a public library and a music conservatory, and assisted living residences for seniors. Grandparents clubs have been organized by hospitals in the area to help provide senior citizens with daily attention and activities. A maternal-infant center and a care facility for children with degenerative illnesses such as Down's syndrome have been established in rehabilitated older buildings. The Office of the City Historian also provides cultural programming for children and teens in the arts, dance, theatre, literature and ecology.
To avoid negative impacts of gentrification, neighborhood residents are involved in the process of planning and working on projects. A central goal is to minimize the displacement of residents from the neighborhoods. The City Historian's office runs a workshop school for young people between 18 and 21 years of age, training several hundred of them over the past ten years to become qualified for work as masons, carpenters, painters, plasters, plumbers, electricians, gardeners involved in the preservation and restoration of historic buildings. On graduation from this restoration trades school, students have the opportunity to work for one of the two construction companies established by the Office of the City Historian. Of the five thousand workers engaged in preservation projects of city historian's office in 1998, nearly half (49.2%) resided in Old Havana or Havana Center city.
The evidence of the level of investment in preservation is obvious as one walks through Old Havana and the adjacent neighborhoods. Many of the key landmark buildings surrounding the main squares have been re habilitated to provide housing, offices, tourist facilities and social services. Cu rrent work involves rehabilitating buildings for housing and businesses and installing new water lines and street lighting across Old Havana and in the San Isidro and Malecon neighborhoods.
The Group for the Integral Development of the Capitol (El Grupo) has been developing innovative planning techniques for the entire Havana region since 1988. With offices, workshops and a public display facility located in the Havana suburb of Miramar, the centerpiece of El Grupo's efforts has been the creation of a large 1:1000 scale model of the Havana area that is used for regional planning and public education.
This one hundred forty-four square meter model, constructed in two meter by two meter sections, features scale replicas of all buildings, streets, and natural features in three dimensions. It is made from scrap wood from the cigar box factories. To help illustrate the historical evolution of the region, the buildings are color-coded by age: brown for those constructed between 1500 and 1900; yellow for those built between 1900 and 1959; beige for those made after 1959; and white for monuments and those buildings under construction. Three, two meter by two meter sections constructed by El Grupo technicians are at added to the model each year.
According to Elio Guevara Romero of El Grupo, "The main goal of the model is for Cubans to be educated about urban culture and to understand the place where they live." Groups of school children and members of various clubs visit the model daily. Architecture and planning students also make use of the model. It is also used to assist with urban planning decisions.
Much of El Grupo's work involves the participation of neighborhood residents in the planning process through ecological urbanization workshops. The goals of these workshops for neighborhood transformation are to help residents re-establish a sense of neighborhood identity and to encourage local participation in planning community revitalization projects. Professional planners, architects and sociologists work with local residents to develop projects that improve housing and provide employment opportunities, including the involvement of women in construction and the production of construction materials. In some neighborhoods an important goal has been to help residents rescue some of their African cultural traditions. The group has also helped neighborhoods establish urban gardens in blighted spaces between high rise apartment buildings.
