(1) A Master Plan for XXI Century Havana is a comprehensive urban project conceived and developed by Professor Architect Julio César Pérez Hernández and his team. It is not an official plan but an individual reflection on the city, its history and its urban evolution and at the same time a proposal for preserving its urban and architectural legacy while creating new economic and urban values for the future.
(2) Julio César Pérez started to think about it and work on it during his year as a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and continued to develop it upon his return to Cuba in 2002 with the subsequent collaboration of several former students of his at the University of Havana who asked to join the project and participate in its development.
(3) For the first time in history the Master Plan for Havana provides a vision for a comprehensive plan and spans from urban planning to urban design. This is demonstrated along the introduction of the present document- as the city’s growth was always based on partial projects- and with the proposal.
(4) This project also takes into account former projects along history and learns from its virtues and failures thus it summarizes not only our own ideas but other professionals’ ideas as well.
(5) This project was not commissioned by anyone, it is a work of love, a professional and human endeavor for the salvation of the city and it has been done for free.
(6) The urban plan expresses the team’s vision for the future - neither the state’s nor the official planning agencies’ - and is not compromised by any foreign institution.
Author: Julio César Pérez Hernández
Ave. 37 No. 6611 San Antonio de los Baños 32500, La Habana, Cuba
e-mail: jcaesar_2002@yahoo.co.uk
website: www.cigarclub.lu/perez
Ownership status:
This document is copyright of the author Julio César Pérez Hernández and may be used only with permission of the author for the following purposes:
By the Council for European Urbanism – Cuba Chapter (CEU – Cuba), under the supervision of Julio César Pérez Hernández (founding Chairman), and by the Council for European Urbanism (CEU), under the supervision of Audun Engh, for specific purposes that should be discussed and agreed between the author and the CEU.