La "Ciudad Moderna" en La Habana

Abstract

The city of Havana lived through the mid-20th century with no real urban planning project, despite signifi cant demographic growth that saw the population rise from 446,848 in 1919 to 1,528,800 in 1960. Although efforts were made to control the situation, the dynamics of the land and property development markets were regarded as normal and accepted unconditionally in a city that continued its relentless growth on the basis of individual impulses allied with speculative town planning and unlimited suburban expansion. The city wished to build a cosmopolitan, contemporary image and chose Modern Movement proposals to defifi ne its new urban morphology and thus express its emerging social and economic structure. Infl uenced by the CIAM movement, the Carta de La Habana (The Havana Treaty) was drafted in 1954. In 1955, the Junta Nacional de Planifi cación (National Planning Commission) commissioned Wiener and Sert to draw up various town planning schemes to boost tourism in Varadero, Trinidad, Isla de Pinos and Eastern Havana, as well as drafting the new Plan Director de La Habana (Havana Master Plan). The Revolution slowed efforts for internal reform but implemented the Eastern Havana ideas