Cultivating Cubanidad : weaving a cultural nexus into Havana's urban fabric

Abstract

City-frameworks create an underlying system of order through which individuals are able to interact within their communities. Considering the successful historical precedents of city developments like Philadelphia, Savannah, and Bolonga, these cities exemplify the three different styles of city-frameworks (infrastructure, greenway, and architecture). Contemporary city-frameworks have increasingly embodied forms of development vocabulary, like the mega-block and the monument, which oppose the energy of present neighborhoods and oftentimes end up breaking up communities. Usually associated with these strategies is the desire to accommodate for tourism and gentrification at the expense of lower-class relocation. Taking this into consideration, in this thesis I propose an alternative strategy of development, one that is built from the success of past while recognizing the needs of the present. This strategy is developed by analyzing strong and weak city-frameworks. The lessons learned from this set of precedence is then shaped into seven rules of city-framework planning, accompanied by a set of comprehensible urban redevelopment vocabulary. Then to test adaptability, the development strategy is systematically employed in the context of Havana, Cuba, looking at the Central Havana neighborhood of Colon, as a design case study.