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Plan of the surroundings of the city of Barcelona and its reform and expansion project by Ildefons Cerdà

Date
1859
Archive
Municipal Archive of Barcelona
Document type
Mapes i plànols
Reference code
CAT-AHCB-AHCB4-202-10055
Link to the online document
Description

After the demolition of the walls of Barcelona (1854-1856), the city headed towards a rapid growth that took shape in Cerdà’s urban plan of 1859. Imposed by the central government despite the competition called by the Barcelona City Council, with his plan Ildefons Cerdà wanted to design an egalitarian city, where some neighborhoods did not differ from others, with the same services for everyone. The streets were wide, the blocks open, with gardens and low buildings. The final aim of the project was to improve the sanitary conditions in the city, with the creation of decent housing, in addition to giving way to the new mobility that was arriving at that time and facilitating sociability and social equality. All in all, concerns that at that time were shared by all the big European cities. This plan, made in April 1859, just two months after Cerdà received the commission to make the study for the extension, reflects the first project thought up by the urban planner, even before the central government approved it.
The reflections resulting from the drafting of the Barcelona expansion plan served Cerdà as the foundations for his urban planning works (the General Theory of Urbanization), which would build the foundations of this discipline and make Cerdà the first great urban planner.