Barcelona is one of the few cities that had an urban master plan in its territorial expansion.Kaspars Upmanis / Unspash.
What studies urbanism?
Urbanism studies the city as a unit; In order to develop general, development and territorial planning plans, urban centers should first be understood as their conception. This analysis helps to understand thoroughly the social, commercial, political, military, and even architectural dynamics, and what has been its evolution to the contemporary city. For example, cities are born by the need of man to establish themselves in a place and form social ties as a community.
In this sense, the ancient cities prioritized their defense against the threat of foreign conquests and, consequently, centralized their vital buildings. This trend extended by the Middle Ages, and in this case, the intra-urban phenomenon was lived, as real and physical limits were erected, through the walls, to protect itself. For the city of the Renaissance, the concern of the territorial conquest decreased and, instead, The work of beautification and expansion of urban centers begancreating the famous roads, building sanitation infrastructure, sewerage, public spaces, expansion of banquets, creation of squares and parks, and so on. However, for the modern city, the density of the population was such that the concept of metropolitan zone emerged, which are those neighborhoods away from the economic, political and social centers of the city, due to the high housing demand.
These studies allowed the writing and execution of large urban development plansfor example, the Cerdá Plan, in Barcelona, and the letter of Athens, by Le Corbusier. The first one was an expansion planning of the Spanish city, in 1860. It consisted of reticular the urban trace so that all apples possessed the same number of square meters and the same conditions, that is, the buildings would be built with a central nucleus destined for social life, the sidewalks would be 20 meters wide, at each certain equitable distance the services would be the services, the green areas, the green areas, the green areas would be prioritized. The second, by the hand of the modernist architect par excellence, prioritized housing in the expansion of cities, in addition, He was a pioneer in multifamily architecture in several level complexesincreasing the density of each construction.