Constitutional Modernism: Architecture and Civil Society in Cuba, 1933-1959

2 Better Cities, Better Citizens: The Political Function of Planning

I n 1942 the polished propaganda of a new civic organization, the Patronato Pro-Urbanismo (Pro-Urbanism Association), initiated an appeal for a synthetic program of planning to be instituted under the authority of a national planning law, with the group’s manifesto pointing out that nine of the articles of the new constitution either required or presupposed regulatory activities commensurate with the concept of planning.1 The Patronato was founded by five individuals with overlapping concerns in civic and professional activities: architect Pedro Martínez Inclán, who served as the association’s first president; Eduardo Montoulieu, an architect who had recently studied city planning at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Ana Arroyo de Hernández, already involved in campaigns for the preservation of monuments and soon to join the faculty of the University of Havana; Alfredo T. Quilez, the publisher of the journal Carteles ; and Luis de Soto, a prominent critic and historian of art at the University of Havana. Its organization resembled the various reformist groups founded during the Machado regime, and indeed some of its founders had played a role in those earlier organizations—Martínez Inclán had signed the manifesto of the Junta Cubana de Renovación Nacional, and Quilez the declaration of the Grupo Minorista. Several former members of the Grupo Minorista soon joined the Patronato Pro-Urbanismo: Armando Maribona, Luis A. Baralt, Juan José Sicre, and Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, each of whom participated simultaneously in other cultural institutions, as did other members such as Lilliam Mederos, the founder of the Lyceum y Lawn Tennis Club, Joaquín Weiss, the leading architectural historian at the University of Havana, and Agustín Sorhegui, the president of the Colegio de Arquitectos.2 39 2 Better Cities, Better Citizens The Political Function of Planning Through this professionally diverse and influential membership, the Patronato began to conduct a systematic publicity campaign in support of national planning , a campaign that explicitly linked planning to civic reform. The Patronato’s prospectus, which itself imitated the form of a constitution, stipulated seven objectives, pledging to promote the knowledge and application of “the science of Urbanism”; to support “the promulgation of Laws, Regulations, Ordinances and all measures that are favorable for the urban improvement of the nation”; and “To encourage patriotism and civic pride by means of the enlargement of our cities”3 (Figure 2.1). These aims presumed the possible and necessary coordination of urbanism, law, and civic consciousness, a presumption merited, according to the group, by the objective benefits of modern planning but also legitimated more authoritatively by the 1940 Constitution. Extending the claim broached in the manifesto, Montoulieu argued in an article for the Havana Post that article 277 of the new constitution obliged the state “to foresee, guide and design scienti fically the safe, beautiful, economical and utilitarian growth of its towns, cities and regions.”4 A few months later, Montoulieu published in the magazine Carteles an even more concise claim: “Articles 211, 213, 215, 273, and 277 of our new Constitution imply the creation of a National Commission of Urbanism, which is the fundamental objective of the law that this Patronato Pro-Urbanismo of Cuba proposes.”5 The membership of the Patronato and the audience that it addressed represented numerically and demographically a relatively narrow constituency and so did not depict the social circumstance or political standing of all Cuban citizens, but it did closely correspond to, and indeed depended on, the aspirations projected in the 1940 constitution. Members’ natural regard for constitutionalism as the currency of civic discourse prompted the Patronato’s ambition to raise citizens’ awareness of the advantageous promise of planning. Its campaign of articles in daily newspapers and popular magazines, and lectures and exhibitions for the general public, aimed to persuade bodies of citizens—the Club de Leones, for example , or groups of property owners—of the urgent need for a national planning law and thus to encourage those bodies to lobby independently for the legislation as a benefit to their own activities.6 But as the further ambition of the Patronato “to encourage patriotism and civic pride” revealed, the group also sought to produce , as a correlate to planning, a civic consciousness. For its motto, the Patronato adopted a succinct slogan: “Mejores ciudades, ciudadanos mejores”—better 40 Better Cities, Better Citizens figure 2.1 Statutes of the Patronato Pro-Urbanismo. Courtesy of the...