Reinvesting in Havana: Housing Commodification and Gentrification in the Central Neighbourhoods of a Socialist City in the Global South

This article addresses the commodification of housing in Havana from 2011 onwards. It argues that the theories of gentrification and rent-gap can illuminate aspects of the transformation of the Cuban capital, even though these theories originated in capitalist urban contexts and that in Cuba the state is responsible for determining the value and ownership of land. The analysis of digital real estate ads on four platforms between 2012 and 2020 allows us to estimate the price and location of properties sold, their relationship to economic reinvestment in the central areas of the city, and how the geographic factors that define centrality are increasingly compromised by touristification and more generally by the commodification of housing. The urban transformations studied in this initial article on the real estate market and gentrification in the Cuban capital allow us to highlight that, on one hand, the transformation of housing into a commodity demonstrates the erosion of socialist values in urban production and, on the other, the creation of a real estate market in Havana has reinforced the connection of the Cuban city with transnational capitalist circulation. The article considers the economic and political context in which the market develops, then explains the methodology of big-small data in a context of limited access to information, followed by an analysis characterising Havana's market that examines the importance of spatial centrality and transnational flows of people and capital.