Alamar is one of the largest microbrigade housing developments in Cuba — a vast modernist suburb built largely by its own future residents during the 1970s under the Soviet-influenced microbrigade construction programme. Rows of identical prefabricated concrete apartment blocks stretch along the coast east of central Havana, housing over 100,000 people.
The neighbourhood's reputation for grimness belies its extraordinary social experiment: residents with no construction experience built their own homes, and communities formed around that shared labour. Today Alamar has a lively cultural scene, a celebrated annual hip-hop festival, and urban vegetable gardens (organoponicos) that make it one of the more food-secure districts in the city. The contrast with the neoclassical centre is stark and instructive about the different Cubas that coexist within the same city.