Pensar y construir la ciudad moderna

Overview & Synopsis

How can we account for the complex and non-linear processes behind the modernization of Buenos Aires? This book shows that, through the relationship between plans and projects, it is possible to revisit some of the changes in the ways of thinking about and acting upon the city during the cycle of metropolization. Plans, rather than utopian or imaginary, are considered political-technical proposals that condense representations, as they refer to forms of management and to desired images of cities and societies. Projects, for their part—fragments of those broad and comprehensive visions—are reconstructed time and again across long urban temporalities; they sometimes materialize as the result of a controversial web of circulating and translated models, competing actors, and enabling conditions. In this context, the book analyzes the alternatives proposed by official plans—the Centennial Master Plan, the 1925 Plan of the Commission of Building Aesthetics, and the proposals of the Municipal Urban Planning Office from the 1930s—in relation to the implementation of three major projects that structured Buenos Aires. From these histories of the city and of urbanism, Alicia Novick sheds light on the ways in which remnants of utopias, fragments of models, and traces of political decisions shaped the territory of the modern city.