Challenges for urban resilience from a de-colonial perspective: A view from Cuba
Ginley Durán Castellón, Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas (Cuba), will give a seminar about challenges for urban resilience from a de-colonial perspective. Studies on urban resilience usually focus on environmental issues as a result of climate change. In Cuba, they emphasize dealing with natural disasters, tropical storms and hurricanes. However, the urban space, as a human ecosystem, faces other problems that put its balance in crisis and affect its sustainability.
Urban Studies and Social Policy Seminar Series 'Social Sciences Hub'
Date: Wednesday 04 June 2025
Time: 15:30 - 17:00
Venue: 2 University Gardens, Room 209
Category: Conferences, Public lectures, Social events, Academic events, Staff workshops and seminars
Speaker: Ginley Durán Castellón
Ginley Durán Castellón, Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas (Cuba), will give a seminar about challenges for urban resilience from a de-colonial perspective. Studies on urban resilience usually focus on environmental issues as a result of climate change. In Cuba, they emphasize dealing with natural disasters, tropical storms and hurricanes. However, the urban space, as a human ecosystem, faces other problems that put its balance in crisis and affect its sustainability. In Cuba, a small country in the insular Caribbean, the crisis has ceased to be the exceptional to become the everyday. As a consequence, one of the traits of the contemporary identity of Cubans is their resilience: that almost magical capacity of the Latin American daily reality that has generated strong mechanisms of cultural resistance and re-existence for the sustainability of life. In this seminar, we address the crisis and conflict in urban spaces from a logic of complexity, in its systemic and multidimensional condition.
Abstract: Studies on urban resilience usually focus on environmental issues as a result of climate change. In Cuba, they emphasize dealing with natural disasters, tropical storms and hurricanes. However, the urban space, as a human ecosystem, faces other problems that put its balance in crisis and affect its sustainability. In Cuba, a small country in the insular Caribbean, the crisis has ceased to be the exceptional to become the everyday. As a consequence, one of the traits of the contemporary identity of Cubans is their resilience: that almost magical capacity of the Latin American daily reality that has generated strong mechanisms of cultural resistance and re-existence for the sustainability of life. In this seminar, we address the crisis and conflict in urban spaces from a logic of complexity, in its systemic and multidimensional condition, focusing on climatic, environmental, economic, demographic, cultural, health factors, etc.; in order to identify the essential challenges for urban management in a scenario of increasing globalization that reproduces recolonizing patterns that increase equity gaps and social exclusion, describing disparate impacts on social diversity. As an alternative, solutions are provided that address the historical ways in which the different social groups have occupied the space and built their habitat in harmony with nature; knowledge and cultural heritage that mean viable options in the face of global and mimicking hegemony; and that enable the rehabilitation of the community social network, solidarity, cooperation and empathy as a guarantee of survival and development.
Bio: Ginley Durán Castellón, Cuba (1975). Architect - urban planner (Universidad Central “Marta Abreu” de Las Villas “UCLV”, 1997). PhD in Sociological Sciences (UCLV, 2018). Masters in human Settlements Management (Universidad Tecnológica de La Habana José Antonio Echevarría “CUJAE”, 2003). Director of University Heritage, UCLV. President of the Honorary Professorship "Antonio Núñez Jiménez” of Cultural Heritage and Identity Studies. President of the Advisory Council for Environmental and Monumental Sculpture in the province of Villa Clara. Member of the Scientific Council of the Faculty of Social Sciences. Expert in the Provincial Commissions of Historical Memory and Intangible Heritage. Professor of Urban Design, Urban Sociology, and Sociology of Art. He teaches postgraduate courses in Community Development in the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Rural Sociology in the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences. His research interests include urban and cultural heritage management, urban resilience, equity, accessibility, social participation and gender. He maintains working links with universities and institutions in Mexico, Spain, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom.