Alarming deterioration of Havana City´s built scenery and its repercussion in the human and social expression

• In Event: Neoliberalismo y desregulación: retos en vivienda, servicios y abasto

Abstract

When people outside the island visit Cuba, there is a real sense that they have traveled back in time to the Cold War and it comes difficult to understand the reality of contemporary Cuban society within the global context. Currently, Cuban cities especially Havana is facing an alarming deterioration of the built scenery due to the deplorable state of buildings in a progressive and constant march toward an uninhabitable space to live. Therefore, it has been causing negative effects in the human and social expression.

With a critic standpoint, this paper hopes to expose how the urban and architectonic deterioration has negative effects on life quality of people. It shows a deep analysis supported in graphics and images of this reality. Conflicts and inappropriate social behaviors are revealed such as overcrowding, loss of comfort in housing, environmental and acoustic pollution, unwise constructive interventions due to social indiscipline, aesthetic affectations to the city, high risk of partial and total collapses that causes loss of human lives and absence of green spaces that constitute the lungs of the city and places of relaxation.

Cuban people as social factor, load on their shoulders the agony of living in a country that degrades day by day but with a deep desire to help to improve the society, like an optimistic idea.

Author

• Lemay Hernandez Miranda