City Historian Makes Huge Difference in Havana

I had the opportunity to visit Havana, Cuba on a humanitarian mission early in January and was inspired by what a single individual can do to protect Place, while providing employment and improving the local economy.

Once considered the "Paris of the Caribbean," Havana has fallen into terrible decay over the last 50 years as little has been done to maintain the rich architectural heritage. While art, community, music, and dance have flourished in Cuba, the wild eclecticism of architecture that helps make Havana a unique Place is in a state of decrepitude and collapse. But recognizing how vital Havana's built environment is to Cuba's lure as an international tourist destination (as well as its importance in culturally rooting Cubans), one visionary man seeks to preserve much of what remains.

Eusabio Leal Spengler, Havana's City Historian, has worked tirelessly despite inadequate funds and innumerable hardships, to ensure that Havana's significant architectural treasures are preserved. While we were there, we saw the results of his work. Blocks and blocks of Spanish colonial, French belle epoche, Italian renaissance, and Gaudi-esque art nouveau buildings have been brought back to their original glory, and some of the squares are as grand as Prague, Paris, and Rome. So much more remains to be done as every year more treasures collapse from rot and neglect. But Eusabio Leal's office continues to make major strides in preserving Old Havana, while employing thousands of skilled workers and attracting hundreds of thousands of cultural tourists.

Many of our American cities could benefit from persons with similar vision and perseverence, especially in today's troubled economy. Perhaps one of the best things we can do to protect our future, is to preserve those things that make our cities real Places.

Solastalgia: Feeling Homesick While Still At Home

There's a fascinating new word that seeks to capture the feeling of homesickness that I've come to associate with No-Place. Glenn Albrecht, a professor at the School of Environmental and Life Sciences at the University of Newcastle recently coined the term "solastalgia" and defines it as the distress within an individual or a community about the loss of endemic sense of place.

While studying the distress of farmers in drought-striken lands, Albrecht learned that there was no word in the English language that completely expressed this feeling, so he crafted his own. “Solastalgia” combines solacium (solace)with nostos (to return home) and algos (pain). Basically, Albrecht explains, it's the feeling of "homesickness while still being at home."

Though specifically used to capture the human pain wreaked by environmental damage (e.g. Hurricane Katrina's impact on the people of New Orleans, the earthquake's impact on the people of Haiti, etc.), the term is also a perfect one to capture the pain and homesickness many people feel as our small towns turn into suburbs, our farmland disappears, and the things we've known forever no longer apply.

It's a term that may become common as our consciousness increases about what we're doing to the human ecology.

Christmas: Ultimate Place-Making Experience

Last weekend, we had a huge 2' snowstorm in Washington, DC, one week before Christmas. I couldn't have been more delighted. It reminded me of my childhood in Western New York where Christmases were always white and where the holiday season meant putting on nativity plays, singing carols, and making gifts for friends and family.

As I sit here listening to the carols I've heard ever since I was born, I realize that this time of year is the ultimate place-making experience. If I get beyond the commercialism that can make Christmas superficial and stressful, I re-immerse myself in all those things that make America America and home Home. As I continue our own family traditions, I remember how we always hung Christmas cards around our doorways . . . how we decorated the tree together . . . how the neighbors gave us hot chocolate and gingerbread when we sang Jingle Bells for them . . . how we'd go up to Grandpa and Grandma's to open gifts and eat macadamia nuts and chocolate candies.

Many today say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" and while I understand and appreciate the intension of inclusiveness behind the phrase, I can understand why some are uncomfortable with the new expression. Whether you're religious or not, Christmas holds traditions and memories for most of us that go to the meaning of Home and Place. And in a rapidly globalizing, increasingly commercialized world, we consciously or unconsciously cling to traditions that root us again and remind us of where we come from.

Lincoln Knew the Importance of Place

“I like to see a man
proud of the place in which he lives.
I like to see a man
live so that his place will be proud of him.”
Abraham Lincoln

What Would Jefferson Say About Sprawl?

"But how is a taste in this beautiful art to be formed in our countrymen, unless we avail ourselves of every occasion when public buildings are to be erected, of presenting to them models for their study and imitation? . . . . the comfort of laying out the public money for something honourable, the satisfaction of seeing an object and proof of national good taste, and the regret and mortification of erecting a monument of our barbarism which will be loaded with execrations as long as it shall endure. . . . You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile them to the rest of the world, and procure them its praise."

Thomas Jefferson, 1785

Photo courtesy of wallyg

What If We Created Places to Stay?

I know few people, other than a handful of locals, family members, and high school friends, who have stayed in one Place all of their lives. It used to be common to do so, until automobiles gave us unlimited freedom to live anywhere, and most of us, with an American's passion for freedom, fled our hometowns to move off to distant places to "progress in the world."

Many of us have moved so much, in fact, that we approach all the places we live as a stop in the road. Even as we settle in, we think . . . when my child gets old enough for school, we'll move to the suburbs . . . when I get a better job, we'll move to that big house . . . when it starts getting too overrun with crime or traffic, we'll just move farther out . . . and when I retire, we'll head south. These thoughts of transience are manifested in the No Places we leave behind and, often, the emptiness we feel. But what if we approached the places we pass through with the thought: How do I help make this a Place I could live in for the rest of my life? (whether we eventually do so or not).

If we replaced thoughts of transience with those of permanence, I suspect we'd push for more town centers and fewer McDonald's, more sidewalks and parks and fewer four lanes, more walking paths, bike lanes, dog parks, and gathering places. I suspect we'd push for houses that were built to last, and that were close to schools, work, entertainment, and friends. I suspect that we'd take better care of our air, our water, and our land because we'd want them to be there for the rest of our lives and for the lives of those who follow us.
Photo courtesy of rebel shooter

Artists Required

Only an artist
could look at a scrap yard
and see a future cultural district.
Marcel Diallo, Community Activist, Oakland