What are the pros and cons of tourism development in Havana?
On the one hand, tourism can attract new investment and income that will help to improve the living standard of the city’s residents. On the other hand, large-scale construction just for tourists can overwhelm the local built environment, and encourage Cubans to see tourists not as fellow human beings but just as an economic resource almost the way the hungry man in the old Charlie Chaplin film saw everyone around him as a roast chicken or a delicious dessert. I would rather attract many small investors than a few large ones and find ways of reusing some of the city’s old mansions as small-scale hotels. That way, we can manage both the benefits and the risks of tourism more effectively, and spread the benefits and costs more thinly across many neighborhoods. This pattern should be more sustainable and less vulnerable in an unfriendly external context, including the American embargo. The Group has built a huge scale model of Havana. How do you use it? We use the model as an educational
