Revolución es [Re]construir: An Analysis of Urban Housing Policy in Revolutionary Cuba

• In Event: Urban Tensions: Bottom up Pressures and Top Down Planning in Latin America

Abstract

Immediately after taking power in 1959, the Cuban revolutionary government embarked on a massive building campaign to construct what Fidel Castro referred to at the time as “scientific cities” throughout the island. These developments incorporated a basic design that revolved around day care centers, schools, shopping districts, sports fields, and theaters; this design pattern remained in use for decades. This paper will examine the ways in which the state utilized construction projects such as the development of these “scientific cities” to promote particular notions of domesticity and social propriety in an attempt to morally recondition Cuban citizens through changes in physical space, and it will explore ordinary Cubans' responses to these efforts. I will argue that the revolutionary state’s urban planning policies served a distinct ideological purpose that was separate from their obvious material implications. I will further claim that the establishment of an idealized revolutionary moral order was one of the driving forces behind the move to increase the available number of housing units on the island and to ensure that all Cuban families had access to quality housing.

Author

• William T Kelly, Rutgers University