Review of Radical Political Economics
Book Description
From the colonial and early republican periods, through the 1959 revolution, and into the post-Soviet era and today, the authors trace Havana's physical evolution and place it in the context of important political, economic, and cultural developments. This new edition--which has been completely revised, redesigned, and updated since the book's original publication in 1997--also highlights recent restoration efforts in Old Havana, commercial development projects throughout the city, and the wide-ranging effects of international tourism.
The publisher, John Wiley & Sons
About the author
Roberto Segre is professor of architecture and urbanism at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
Mario Coyula is an architect and planner in Havana, Cuba.
Excerpted from Havana: Two Faces of the Antillean Metropolis by Joseph L. Scarpaci, Roberto Segre, Mario Coyula, Andres Duany. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
This book is an extraordinary document, not least because its subject is a truly great city, perhaps the most interesting in the New World.
La Habana contains the sediment of several failed destinies. It has been the great colonial capital of an enormously arrogant European empire; republican heir to an epic war of liberation; aesthetic playground of an haute bourgeoisie of remarkable refinement; and currently the stage for a revolutionary process unsurpassed in ideological zeal. The passion of the Cuban people has distilled these sequential ideals, giving their capital its uniquely tragic, heroic visage.
On the other hand . . . perhaps not.
Perhaps the greater influence has been that of the international architectural ideologies, washing wave upon wave upon this crossroads of an island. Perhaps, the cosmopolitan architects of Cuba have been the dominant influence. After all, the urban conditions of La Habana have contemporary siblings elsewhere. Must we conclude from the evidence, that the virulence of architectural ideology overwhelms sociopolitical considerations?
Perhaps there is only one certainty: that the architecture and urbanism of La Habana are superb in an absolute sense. They do not call forth the abeyance that a relativist discourse accords the Caribbean, the provinces, or the Third World.
This is all described by the authors of this book; one a rigorous North American scholar, another himself immersed in the revolutionary process, and the third, a roving, skeptical intellectual. Combined, they manage a fascinating presentation from which our own conclusions may be drawn.
To read it, and to visit La Habana, is to become addicted to urbanism.
Andres M.
