Havana

Implications of a "prosperity with equality" approach and participatory planning on urban equality

OVERVIEW

In Havana, the team are examining the implications of a 'prosperity with equality' approach and participatory planning on urban equality, across three policy levels (the national, civic, and local), and within four focus sites.

As the Cuban capital enters a new stage of the urbanisation process, characterised by the potential increase of urban inequalities, the team proposes a critical engagement within the debate of the current urban situation. There is a tremendous on-going effort to catch up with the mismatch between the evolution of the urban situation and the approaches, focuses, and contents of the tools dealing with it. To do so requires innovation and increasing the capabilities of institutions and many other actors influencing the production of the urban. The KNOW Havana team are making a modest contribution to these struggles, co-producing research-based outputs with a range of key actors and specific partnerships.

havana about

HAVANA, CUBA

Havana

CUJAE

focus

focus areas

Working closely with focus groups and partners, the KNOW Havana team are interrogating the delivery, the policy, the organisational, and the citizen spheres of research, across four key focus areas. Alamar, Central Havana, The Bay, and Revolution Plaza. Each of the four cases illustrates specific components of the general urban situation.

Focus Sites

Alamar

This site represents the new towns that emerged fifty years ago as a urban typology to answer the increasing housing demand

Bahia de la Habana

This site deals with a large area undergoing rapid transformation. Because of its location within the urban structure, alongside a loaded symbolism and meaning within the cities collective meaning, its transformation will heavily determine how other parts of Havana develop in the near future. Consequently, the Bay area has the potential capacity to mitigate the current territorial imbalances.

Centro Habana

This site is representational of the old city and traditional historic centre

Plaza de la Revolución

The site engages with the accelerated ageing population within Cuban Society. The research recognises the challenges of this specifically vulnerable group and understanding what prosperity (and the tools to achieve it) will be different to other focus sites.

Fórum Universitario Urbano #FU2N
The university as a forum

Between December 2021 - March 2022

Main event: 28 February - 01 March 2022

The university as a catalyst for urban transformation:

Prosperity with equity.

Fórum Urbano Universitario (FU2N) is a space for exchange between different actors of the Cuban urban scene involved in research and/or action processes that, from different disciplinary fields and substantive processes will develop actions and especially research, around multiple challenges of current urban development in Havana. The suite of forums and workshops will provide space for intensive discussion around the tensions between prosperity and urban equality. Key topics will include housing, infrastructure, and energy. Academics, practitioners, and government stakeholders will sit together to produce recommendations to urban policy.

Programme

Photos from the forum workshops

These seminars for part of the KNOW final conference

Socials-conference_Twitter - conference_Twitter - conference.png

Presentation

Making room to manoeuvre at the municipal level: Planning and quest for urban equality and prosperity in Havana

Prof Jorge Peña Díaz, Dr Joiselen Cazanave Macías, Ángel Junior Santana Caraballo, Dachelis Dobal Fonseca, Dayané Proenza, Adrian González González (Polytechnic José Antonio Echeverría, - CUJAE)

Watch now

City Forum

Havana gallery

GALLERY

KNOW Habana

500 Years exhibition video

havana resources

resources

Mapping participatory planning in Havana: patchwork legacies for a strengthened local governance
Environment & Urbanization Journal

KNOW Working Paper No. 4
(Case 3)

Cuando la ciudad envejece y la ciudadanía responde
Temas, pp. 28-35

Voices from Havana: the Cuban experience
of the COVID crisis (blog & podcast)

Meeting with Habitat Project in Remedios

Tracing the University as a key

urban actor (blog)

500 Years of Urban Diversity in Havana (exhibition video)

Partnerships to Urban Equality
(International Engagement Brief)

Dialogues in Urban Equality #10 Institutional Learning (video)

Addressing Urban Equality in Havana (Havana team present at UrbanARC 2020)

Lessons from Havana: Reflections on KNOW’s Second Annual Meeting (blog)

Dialogues in Urban Equality #7
(Havana, en español)

2nd KNOW Annual Workshop,
Havana Cuba 2019 (conference page)

Nueva Agenda Urbana
(PDF en Español)

havana Team

havana team

Jorge Peña

Díaz

City Partner Havana

Urban Research & Action Group, Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverria (CUJAE)

Joiselén
Cazanave Macías

City Partner Havana

Urban Research & Action Group, Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverria (CUJAE)

Our Investigators

KNOW Havana supports a cohort of young researchers formed under the principles of trans-disciplinary, coproduction-based research. As they take part on the different research tasks they will produce papers, articles and other publications. The team will also engage a cohort of four master students made of experienced planners inscribe in the Master on Planning (MOTU) ran by CUJAE. Around 20 diploma students will make their theses linked to the project.