Waves break over Havana’s seaside promenade. An end to the trade embargo may trigger a deluge of 10 million US tourists a year.
Waves break over Havana’s seaside promenade. An end to the trade embargo may trigger a deluge of 10 million US tourists a year. © Ernesto Mastrascusa/EPA

Walk along La Rampa by night, the long people-watching road that slopes up from the seafront into the neighbourhood of Vedado, and you’ll see huddles of ghostly faces, illuminated only by the glow of screens. These sprawling open-air internet lounges have also spawned a new informal economy. Wi-Fi touts wander the streets like drug-pushers, re-selling the state telecom company’s prepaid $2 scratch-off cards for $3 apiece, muttering “cards, cards?” instead of the usual “hashish? girls?”. Snack stalls and drinks stands – private enterprises that would have been forbidden five years ago – have sprung up to fuel the spontaneous street-corner parties, where people gather around to watch the latest Hollywood trailers on YouTube.

“We are seeing a whole new quality of public space,” says Miguel Antonio Padrón Lotti, a Cuban professor of urban planning, who worked at the country’s National Physical Planning Institute for 45 years. “Cubans have always socialised on the streets, but now we can interact with the wider the world at the same time.”

The wider world is arriving here in ever bigger droves, and not just through the internet. On the cobbled streets of Habana Vieja, the beautifully restored old town, it can now be hard to move for the throngs of package tour groups. They follow their flag-toting guides between cafe-lined squares, shuffling from the Museo del Chocolate, past living statues and outposts of Victorinox and Diesel, to boutique shops housed in majestic old mansions where handmade watches are on sale for $12,000.

Not long ago, all this was crumbling. The improbable transformation is the work of the Office of the City Historian, a vast state department of architects and planners headed up by Eusebio Leal Spengler since 1981. Wielding unheard-of power for an architectural historian, equivalent to that of a mayor, he has won plaudits from Unesco and heritage bodies around the world for what he’s achieved here over the last 30 years, against all the odds.

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Frank Gehry sailed into Havana in December, aboard a streamlined yacht he designed for himself, here to “offer his expertise to Cuba” according to a government statement.

“You know that Cuba is at the centre of attention of many people,” Gehry told the gathered crowd. “And in the immediate future it will attract many investors – particularly the tourism sector. But I am sure that you know to be careful with those projects.”

Jorge Pérez, a Cuban-American condo tycoon based in Miami, paid a visit to Havana for its art biennale last year. “I wish they would let me be the developer for all of this,” he told Miami newspaper el Nuevo Herald on his return. “I think I could change Havana in 10 or 20 years. If they opened things up and I could build a luxury condominium in Vedado, I would sell them in two hours here in Miami.”

It is the kind of prospect that worries Miguel Padrón, who is not sure that Havana is ready to cope with what developers are preparing to throw at it. “We will have many divas and divos arriving with their very nice drawings,” he says. “But as a society, we desperately need to improve our capacity to debate and discuss these plans. The challenge is how to capture the potential of the market in the right way, to learn how to negotiate with foreign investors. Havana is now the big cake – and everyone is trying to get a slice.”

All eyes are focused on bay of Havana itself, once the source of the city’s immense wealth and now the place from which investors are hoping to extract an even bigger bounty. With the opening of a new $900m port 30 miles west of Havana at Mariel – built with Brazilian help – the old harbour now represents the next major development opportunity: a derelict jumble of warehouses and struggling fragments of industry.

“The harbour is the embryo of the city,” says José Antonio Choy Lopez, a Cuban architect who sits on the board of UNIAC, the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists: a body charged with assessing plans for the bay. As one of the best natural harbours in the Americas, enhanced by impressive fortifications in the 16th century, it was where the Spanish galleons assembled, laden with riches plundered from the New World, before sailing in protected convoys back to Europe. Huge quantities of gold and silver, along with Alpaca from the Andes, emeralds from Colombia and mahogany from Guatemala, were all traded here, bringing profits that are wrought in Havana’s palatial buildings. “It was a cultural crossroads, the very reason for the cosmopolitan character of the city,” says Choy. “And its redevelopment is now the most important project facing Cuba this century.”

For such an important project, precious little is actually known about the plans. Not that the sense of mystery is unusual. In Cuba, things are rarely announced until they actually happen. “They never publish targets here,” says one foreign diplomat, “because they usually don’t meet them.”