A woman walks in a dilapidated neighbourhood in central Havana on March 22. - Reuters

HAVANA (Reuters):

ALMOST HALF a century of communist rule has saved Havana's eclectic architecture from the urban developer's bulldozer, but a lack of repair has taken a ruinous toll on its neo-Baroque and Art Deco gems.

Dozens of colonial buildings and beautiful squares in Old Havana have been restored since the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) designated it a world heritage site in 1982. But the rest of the city of 2.2 million people is falling into decay.

"The situation has become critical. There are areas of the city where buildings collapse every few days. The overcrowding is tremendous," said leading Cuban architect Mario Coyula, who fears Havana's architectural beauty is damaged beyond repair.

In teeming, pot-holed Central Havana, poverty coexists with some of the world's finest examples of neo-Baroque and Art Deco architecture built before Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.

A great lack

It is Cuba's most densely-populated district, with 160,000 people living in 1.3 square miles of crumbling buildings dating from the 1920s and 1930s, many now lacking basic sanitation.

This is the setting for the ribald fiction of Cuban writer Pedro Juan Gutierrez, whose best-selling Dirty Havana Trilogy, which has been translated into English, recreates an underworld peopled by pimps, prostitutes and black-market hustlers.

Foreign visitors stroll through spectacularly dilapidated streets snapping photographs of the city's rotting grandeur and vintage American cars caught in a bizarre time warp.

Amid the squalor and rubble, tourists brave darkly-lit streets to climb to the city's best-known private restaurant, La Guarida, perched on the top floor of a palatial town house built by a sugar baron in 1913.

Experts say renovating Central Havana would be so costly that demolition is inevitable in many parts. Residents involved in urban planning believe their district can be saved.

Renewal is possible

"We have an advanced state of deterioration, but renewal is possible," said one official who asked not to be named.

She said 15 per cent of the buildings were in very bad shape. "Nobody knows how they are still standing. It's a miracle they have not fallen down," she said.

The Government is trying to tackle the problem. In 2006 it injected funds into an accelerated construction programme that saw 110,000 units built, almost treble the previous year, but still 40,000 below target.

Architect Coyula said Castro's government, born of a guerrilla revolution that ousted a right-wing dictatorship in 1959, put housing on the back-burner as it gave priority to health and education programmes, and industrial development.

Havana blames the blockade - as it refers to U.S. sanctions - for the country's economic shortcomings.

But some Cubans say the Government has only itself to blame for the urban decay of Havana.

"It's late to try to save the rich diversity of this architecture," said Cuban writer Antonio Jos? Ponte. "It's not far-fetched to think that Central Havana will disappear."