Homes for Havana's Workers in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Since the early republican period, Havana's working-class inhabitants have faced frequently acute housing problems. This panel proposes an investigation of systems of production, consumption and exchange of worker housing in Havana, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, through critical inquiries into private-investor and state initiatives for construction and distribution of worker dwellings. Contemporary working-class households' opportunities for access to housing are also studied through ethnographic research.

Individual papers examine the material, social, economic, institutional and legal processes that have shaped and continue to shape the domestic environments of Havana's workers, with special attention to structures of socioeconomic and sociospatial hierarchies and inequalities in terms of opportunities in access to housing and social inclusion embedded in these processes.

This panel's papers also explore the ways architecture, urban planning and housing policies have endeavoured to arbitrate the frequently conflicting goals of housing Havana's working-class population, while forging and maintaining the image of a 'modern', 'civilized' and culturally homogeneous city.

Sub Track

• Cities and Urban Studies

Session Organizer

• Styliane Philippou, Independent Scholar

Chair

• Jill Hamberg, Pratt Institute

Discussant

• Jesse Horst, Sarah Lawrence College

Individual Presentations

• Living Backstage: Housing and Hiding Havana's Early-Twentieth-Century Workers - Styliane Philippou, Independent Scholar

• Por la dignidad del hábitat obrero. El debate sobre la vivienda social en Cuba (1902-1959) - María Victoria Zardoya Loureda, Universidad Tecnológica de La Habana "José Antonio Echeverría"

• Inclusión social y equidad en el hábitat de la Revolución cubana en los años sesenta - Ruslan Muñoz Hernández, Universidad Tecnológica de La Habana. "José Antonio Echeverría"

• A Home in Havana: Housing Cuba’s Workers Today - Hope E Bastián Martínez, Consorcio CASA La Habana