Cities and social equity in Cuba

NEWARK – Cities, as urban spaces, are contradictory and complex — inclusive and exclusive at the same time. Their typical demographic concentration in relatively reduced areas places a great variety of individuals and social groups whose interests and behaviors tend to be very different. Today, 55 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas. By 2050, that figure is projected to be 68 percent.

In recent years we have witnessed social upheavals in urban areas around the world. In 2019 and so far in 2020, we have witnessed protests in cities as distant from each other as Santiago de Chile, Quito, Hong Kong, and we see the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States protesting in multiple cities in the U.S. and across the world. All of them share a common element despite the geographical, cultural and objective differences of each movement. All of them constitute social movements of vulnerable groups that claim their legitimate “right to the city,” a concept of the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre, recovered in 2008 by the British economist and geographer David Harvey.

In 1982, American academics James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling published the article “Broken Windows”. The metaphor of the broken windows served to show that a destroyed neighborhood is more vulnerable, and not only in the literal sense of the danger it represents to people’s lives. This explains not only the negative consequences of marginalization, but also its psychological and social, even cultural, effects on its inhabitants. Laziness takes hold of inhabitants of buildings in poor condition, the culture of non-responsibility is enthroned and the city suffers. The collapse of architecture is a mirror of social and economic decline.

Cuban cities: Challenges for development

Cuban cities share a group of serious problems that need to be addressed in the country’s development project. Since 1997, most of these issues were cited by architect Mario Coyula. To the list of difficulties on the Island we can add:

• Poor environmental quality, reflected in pollution of rivers, the sea and noise and air pollution
• Dangers of flooding and erosion
• Inhabitability of dwellings, where the dangers of collapse due to poor construction conditions, which include poor maintenance, alterations made to the original design, insufficient natural lighting and poor ventilation
• A poor urban transportation system
• Poor plumbing system, shortage of drinking water and frequent power outages
• Poor public service system, including garbage collection and hygiene maintenance
• Lack of recycling services and an environmental culture in general.
• Urban deformities, the result of projects of poor visual quality
• Limited access to markets for goods and services, to public and recreational places, to industrial and commercial centers, where jobs are concentrated
• Urban vulnerability and insecurity

According to estimates from the CEDEM (Center for Demographic Studies of the University of Havana), in 2018, 77 percent of the people in Cuba already lived in urban areas. This data shows the importance of planning cities and urban spaces if we want to improve our living conditions. A 2005 paper by Mario Coyula and Jill Hamberg on Havana explains that during the 1990s barracks represented between 40 and 50 percent of all the units in the historic district of Old Havana, Cayo Hueso and Atarés; 80 percent of all units in depressed urban areas were over 80 years old and the rest were between 40 and 80 years from their construction. The authors emphasize that in the Cayo Hueso neighborhood, in Centro Habana, 70 percent of its buildings are over 60 years old.

The data collected by the 2012 Census in Cuba, although not disaggregated by municipalities, allow us to corroborate these data. According to the census, in 2012, 37 percent of Havana homes predate 1959, and we know that these old buildings, particularly those prior to 1950, are concentrated in vulnerable urban areas such as those mentioned by Coyula and Hamberg. 

The concentration of the recreational, cultural and work life in the city center, together with the deficiencies of urban transport, especially in the Cuban capital, marginalize a part of its population from healthy and effective use and enjoyment in both cases. As for culture, a solution is found in community initiatives to integrate young people into sports and cultural movements that reduce their leisure time and channel their creative potentials. The Houses of Culture occupy a part of these initiatives, but they do not have to be the only ones.

Secondly, the long distances traveled in Cuban urban areas with urban transportation in critical condition prolong working hours by more than one hour, when the travel time from one’s residence to the work centers is added. The delay, under tiring environmental conditions, added to the difficulties of daily life, generate and multiply discomfort and stress, which affect the quality of life of the inhabitants of the city.

The danger posed by poorly lit and busy streets and sidewalks in cities has been a recurring theme in urban planning research. The further we move away from the centers of economic and cultural activity in the cities, the lonelier and darker the streets and public spaces — such as parks — are and, therefore, less safe. This serious urban security problem affects, above all, but not exclusively, women and young people.

The limited supply of basic goods and services, such as food, is aggravated in municipalities and neighborhoods far from those same centers of activity. To the territorial inequality between provinces, inequalities between urban and rural areas must be added, and within the urban areas themselves. Prices change from one municipality to another, and from one neighborhood to another. The offerings are more varied and better in some areas, which forces city dwellers to travel considerable distances to purchase essential consumer goods. Another factor is the shortage of supply and the unequal distribution of products.

The right to the city belongs to all who inhabit it equally. The urban landscape is a manifestation of social inequities. Urban planning functions as a mechanism for correcting or the deepening of social differences, depending on the way in which urban public policies are designed, projected and implemented. The absence of those policies or a poor interpretation of them, or the underestimation of the importance of urban space to correct these inequities, results in visible imbalances, with neighborhoods apparently forgotten while some are saved.

Vulnerable areas become more fragile and their rescue, as time passes, becomes more costly in economic and social terms. Saving our cities is as important to saving the country as developing the economy. Much depends on it, including human lives, literally and metaphorically.

Tamarys L. Bahamonde is studying for her PhD in Public Policy and Urbanism at the University of Delaware.