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- Title
AL MARGEN DEL CENTRO.
- Authors
Coyula, Mario
- Abstract
During the first half of the 20th Century Centro Habana became the major commercial center of the whole city, with big American-style department stores that substituted the small European fashioned stores in the old walled precinct. The calzadas, with their double-height pedestrian corridors, were the main expansion axes of the city beyond the walls. They shaped a system of linear centers that both separated and brought together sectors where housing was predominant, with a rich functional and social mixture that went from rental dwellings for the ubiquitous lowermiddle class to tenements for workers and marginals --ciudadelas and cuarterías--masked behind Classical façades. Corners in sectors defined by calzadas had a double role as convenience stores for daily shopping and a meeting places for residents in the city blocks. Malecón was the front porch of Centro Habana, as an alternative for the lack of green trees that made Centro Habana a heat island. Being Centro Habana the centre of commerce, it has been severely hit by the poor offer of goods and services, by the physical and moral deterioration, by the loss of functions, makeshift conversions of stores into caricatures of dwellings, and distortions that have impoverished the urban image. Nevertheless, Centro Habana has a potential that makes it similar to the model supported by the Historian Office located in Old Havana. The great investment carried out in Monte Barreto to create a fake center following the discredited American suburban pattern might have been addressed to the revitalization of this territory which would have been much better placed and used by the population and with a valuable but endangered built heritage.
- Subjects
CUBA; HAVANA (Cuba); CENTRO Habana (Cuba); CENTRAL business districts; HOUSING rehabilitation; HOUSING -- Conservation &; restoration; ECONOMICS; ECONOMIC history
- Publication
Arquitectura y Urbanismo, 2010, Vol 31, Issue 2, p16
- ISSN
1815-5898
- Publication type
Article