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John Gilderbloom
Come to Cuba with me! by John "the Viking" Gilderbloom
As a planner some of our most celebrated work has been here in East Russell which has been recently hailed in the Journal of Community Development as a model for urban regeneration. We specialize in renewal without removal of residents or even better can take an abandoned boarded up “Village West” and with $30 million dollars repurpose it an attractive, affordable and sustainable mixed income development. This anchor green development in East Russell has seen crime cut in half while home prices have the second highest increase in the city from 1990 to 2010.
As our reputation grew on the art of rebuilding abandoned urban neighborhoods, I got invitations to work in other Kentucky cities like Newport and Covington, speak at top Universities, featured in the Sunday New York Times, and wrote op-ed pieces in Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. East Russell was cited by President Clinton as a model when he spoke to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. At the same time, Clinton’s top South African advisor (Donald Terner who worked with us as a consultant) told President Nelson Mandela that East Russell partnership was much better designed and humane than faceless Le Corbusier / Khrushchev projects that were being pushed by Russia. Later Planitzen ranked me as one of the top urban thinkers in the world.
Our reputation for regenerating neighborhoods continue to grow with an unprecedented invitation from the Cuban National Architecture Union to give a series of lectures behind the bamboo curtain. I was one of the first non-Marxist American planners invited there. I got a hero’s welcome by Cubans, speaking in outdoor venues covered by Cuban TV and newspapers. The Cubans honored me with a special Diploma /Certificate in Architecture. The lectures went so well I was asked by both Cuban and American authorities to organize cultural exchanges that involved 31 programs totaling 480 days from 1997 to 2007.
Even the most jaded traveler would find Cuba, one of the most beautiful and fascinating places in the world. With 500 years of history and heritage, it is the site of one of the largest intact collections of Spanish Colonial architecture as well as the largest collections of Soviet era prefabricated buildings. UNESCO has declared Havana a world heritage site. In this beautiful and intriguing setting, travelers experienced a radically different economic, social, and cultural life; like Soviet Union and China, the painful truth is that Socialism was unworkable within a competitive global economy.
Several travel magazines and books, including Holiday Travel, Travel Smart, and Budget Travel, have praised our Cuba travel programs. “Time Out: Havana and the Best of Cuba” ranked it as the best “educational optioned and “the least bureaucratic way” for a U.S. passport holder to travel to Cuba.”
I saw things up close that few people new or understood. I also could credibly argue that the U.S. travel and economic blockade was not only un-American but gave Cuba an excuse to blame its impoverishment on the U.S. instead of authoritarian undemocratic socialism. I appeared on both U.S. and Cuban media outlets (popular and scholarly), CNN, and gave testimony before U.S. Senate, addressed former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, key Republican and Democratic Senators, and spoke candidly in the ultra-secure “situation room” of the U.S. State Department for ending the U.S. blockade.
With travel restrictions still in place, University of Louisville Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods has a U.S. Treasury license to take Kentucky citizens, on a people-to-people exchange program March 12 to 20. For detailed information about how urbanists, planners, designers and architects can participate, please visit our website at http://sun.louisville.edu, with $200 deposits due by January 6, 2016. This program is an exceptional value, with non-stop air from Miami to Havana, 4 star accommodations, transfers, daily breakfast, several dinners, travel Visa, entertainment, English-speaking guides, and U.S. Treasury license. As Cuba slowly opens up to trade, this is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to get a leg up on new business opportunities in health, agriculture, preservation, transportation and housing.
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UofL Planning Professor, Dr. Gilderbloom visiting Hemingway’s “Old Man and the Sea” the late Gregorio “El Capitan” Fuentes.
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