Can Havana be saved? Urbanists hope so.

Preserved (if you can call it that) in Communist amber for the past 45 years, the capital of Cuba remains a striking example of architecture and urbanism almost untouched by the “creative destruction” of the capitalist global economy. But Fidel Castro is 77 years old, Cuba is desperately poor, and it seems only a matter of time before Havana undergoes dramatic change. Consequently, Urbanists International, a two-year-old nonprofit urban planning exchange for developing countries, has been trying to encourage planning for a future in which Havana opens up to intensive foreign investment and a surge of tourists. “Projections indicate that the number of visitors to Cuba will skyrocket from 2 to 12 million a year” once the US embargo ends, Urbanists International says on its web site, www.urbanists.org. “Imagine the interest among hotels and restaurant chains and every company that has an engine to feed,” cautions Jeffrey Horowitz, the Berkeley architect and city planner who heads Urbanists International. A number of urbanists, including Horowitz, have traveled to Havana in recent years to see streets lined with grand old buildings — many gradually falling apart — and to learn what might be done to preserve the character of the 2.2-million-population city once Cuba has friendlier relations with the US. New Mexico state planner Ken Hughes visited Cuba in March 2003. “There are over 3,000 worn-out buildings, at last count,” Hughes says. Not all is depressing, however. What ought to “gladden the heart of any new urbanist,” says Hughes, is that “hundreds of buildings, public plazas, and streets are being restored to their old glory.” Since 1995, Havana’s Office of the City Historian, which Hughes describes as having “duties and powers akin to a business improvement district and real estate investment trust rolled into one,” has established several companies that care for hotels, restaurants, markets, and other tourist facilities in Old Havana. Profits from companies owned by Office of the City Historian are reinvested in social projects and in activities such as restoration of a famous seaside area of the city. In the mid-1990s, Cuba began forming partnerships with investors from countries other than the US. Some of the development that’s since taken place perpetuates “the three key patterns of Cuban architecture — porticos, Persians (louvers), and patios — that make the old buildings so interesting,” Hughes says. Over all, Havana appears frozen in time. “Imagine walking around a place with no signs of commercialization, where there’s nothing but the architecture — which is eroding rapidly,” says Horowitz. Urbanists in the US worry that when Cuba eventually has more normal relations with the US, Havana will be overrun by developers less interested in preserving and extending the traditional Havana building fabric than in imposing the formulas that big corporations typically favor. “It’s going to be totally turned inside out,” Horowitz warns. Urbanists International, which strives to be apolitical, in February 2003 launched “The Havana Project,” which it described as “a comprehensive strategy for promoting culturally sensitive growth in a post-US-embargo Cuba.” A delegation that includes members of Congress went to Havana that month and had a dinner with President Castro that lasted until 5:30 in the morning. The goal of Urbanists International is to have volunteers from the US and other countries, including architects, urban planners, preservationists, and economists, share ideas with people in Cuba. The US government forbids Americans from offering services, such as drawing architectural plans. The Bush Administration has become increasingly restrictive on travel to Cuba, recently going so far as to prevent physicians from making a medical mission to the island. Urbanists International had hoped to host a conference in Havana this April, but could not obtain permission to travel there. For now, Americans who want to help safeguard Havana’s urban character are being held hostage to a bigger issue: how the US government confronts the western hemisphere’s sole Communist state. u