The Havana Plan Piloto was a 1955–1958 urban proposal by Town Planning Associates, which included Paul Lester Wiener, Paul Schulz, the Catalan architect Josep Lluis Sert, and Seely Stevenson of Value & Knecht, Consulting Engineers, seeking to combine "architecture, planning, and law". The Charter got its name from the location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the "in SS Patris II" bound for Athens from Marseilles. This conference is documented in a film commissioned by Sigfried Giedion and made by his friend László Moholy-Nagy. The Charter had a significant impact on urban planning after World War II and, through Josep Lluis Sert and Paul Lester Wiener, on the proposed modernization of Havana and in an effort to erase all vestiges of the 16th-century city. The plan was abandoned and was not made.

Town Planning Associates was a design firm in New York City, active between 1942 and 1959, which included Paul Lester Wiener, Paul Schulz, Josep Lluis Sert. The firm produced urban design and city planning in various new or existing South American cities including Bogotá, Chimbote in Peru, and Havana. Sert's master plan for Havana, Havana Plan Piloto, was notable for its integration of natural landscape into new urban and existing building schemes. Town Planning Associates made prominent use of patios and other aspects of Mediterranean architecture adapted to South and Central America. They employed modernist principles of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and the Athens Charter. The charter got its name from the location of the fourth CIAM conference in 1933, which, due to the deteriorating political situation in Russia, took place on the SS Patris II bound for Athens from Marseilles. This conference was documented in a film commissioned by Sigfried Giedion and made by his friend László Moholy-Nagy "Architects' Congress." The Charter had a significant impact on urban planning after World War II and, through Josep Lluis Sert and Paul Lester Wiener, especially on the proposed modernization of Havana.