Abstract
Thirty-five years after its inscription on the World Heritage list, Old Havana is at a crossroads once again. The heritage management process that begun in 1993 reinforced the role of the Office of the City Historian as a leading public institution through a comprehensive plan and financing mechanisms that would ensure overall sustainability. Since then, the Historic Centre has benefitted from a boost in the local economy, and hundreds of buildings have been restored with an eye to retaining the resident population, one of the project’s key premises. During the past 5 years, however, some facts and tendencies both at national and local levels are generating an entirely new dynamic. The current scenario poses a challenge and an opportunity for a city that is recognized for its outstanding heritage values along with accumulated urban problems and also for its longtime practices of heritage preservation. At present, there is a pressing need to define a buffer zone for the WHS that allows a new point of view regarding historic urban landscape of Havana Bay and its environs.
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Notes
- 1.
In Cuba, a house that was originally built as a single-family residence and later sold to be rented by poor people that crowded around the centre of the city. Towards 1980, almost one third of Historic Centre buildings belonged to this category.
- 2.
With its 720 km2 and 2 million inhabitants, Havana was 1 of the 14 provinces of the country, with 15 municipalities, 1 of which was Old Havana.
- 3.
The OCH was founded in 1938 as a City Council agency. Under Eusebio Leal’s leadership, the OCH carried out the restoration of the former Palacio de los Capitanes Generales from 1967 to 1978, converting it into the City Museum.
- 4.
This sort of tax is a value-captured tool that establishes a gross income proportion (up to 5%) as a contribution of the businesses located in the area of the restoration project.
- 5.
For Master Plan Office references: http://www.planmaestro.ohc.cu
- 6.
Comprising only the ancient part of the city within the walls, the survey was accomplished before Old Havana was included in the WHS list (Capablanca et al. 1977).
- 7.
The Convento de Belén is currently the OCH Department for Humanitarian Affairs seat. Hundreds of elderly people receive daily health care here and also take part in social and cultural programs.
- 8.
Since 2001, every summer a program (Rutas y Andares) promotes direct exchange among citizens and experts (architects, archaeologists and cultural promoters), disseminating information about ongoing and future projects.
- 9.
GIS is accessible at http://www.sit.ohc.cu
- 10.
- 11.
These processes were developed after a collaboration project between the OCH and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
- 12.
The network was created in 2008 comprising five cities (Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Camagüey, Trinidad and Cienfuegos, all included on the World Heritage list). Later, another five cities were added: Baracoa, Bayamo, Sancti Spiritus, Remedios and Matanzas. A balance of the work of the first ones appeared in Oficina del Historiador 2012.
- 13.
The OCH housing program was finalist of the 2010 World Habitat Awards (https://www.bshf.org/world-habitat-awards). The experience was taken as a case study for the Cuba Housing Profile promoted by UN-Habitat and identified as Best Practice in the Cuba’s report to the Habitat III summit (IPF 2016). Other recognition has been granted for the OCH and for Eusebio Leal, the historian of the city.
- 14.
The OCH develops a joint project with the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) to study demographic dynamics in the Historic Centre.
- 15.
In 2013, the World Heritage Centre adopted the retrospective statements of outstanding universal values (37COM 8E) and changes to names of properties inscribed on the World Heritage list: Old Havana and its fortification system (37COM 8B.1) and, in 2016, the clarifications of property boundaries and areas (40COM 8D). http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/204. Consulted on Dec. 22, 2016.
- 16.
The protected zone comprises Old Havana, fortifications at the surroundings of the bay and a great buffer zone around. Been more distant, fortifications like Castillo de El Principe and forts of La Chorrera and Cojimar, which are also part of the World Heritage site, are not included.
- 17.
In the early 1990s, a study identified 47 “urban zones with historic and cultural values” in the city of Havana (Chateloin 2008), adding up to 2700 ha and one fifth of the population of the city.
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Fornet, P. (2019). Havana: From the Walled City to a Historic Urban Landscape. In: Pereira Roders, A., Bandarin, F. (eds) Reshaping Urban Conservation. Creativity, Heritage and the City, vol 2. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8887-2_13
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