The beginnings of Town Planning legislation during the period of Moderate Liberalism and the Seven Years of Revolution (1846-1876): the extending of the city [ensanche] as a model for urbanism and its related legal sistem

Abstract

The discovery (1991) and publication of the unpublished works of I. Cerda is here felt to give rise to a call for a thorough-going revision of what were felt to be the origins of modern Spanish town planning legislation, an undertaking to which the author has already addressed himself to in his Génesis y Evolución del Derecho Urbaniístico Espanol, (1973). Abounding in the considerations there set forth, the present paper underlines both the evolution of said author's thinking and the way this radically altered both theoretical thinking to and professional practice of Spanish urbanism as against the development of either during the same period in other european countries. While mentioning Cerdá's involvement with city centre renewal, the paper holds that his major contribution was the way he laid out how a city should be extended [Ensanche] as a theory of and model for urbanism, offering furthermore sound juridical and economic support systems for his formulations. It is here felt that the Spanish Legal System only made its own the formal and descriptive aspects of Cerdá's contribution while straying from the thinking that inspired these.