On the Städtebau Manuals and Latin America´s Urbanism: From Camillo Sitte to Karl Brunner

Abstract

Relying on cultural meanings, as well as historiography and epistemology values
attributed to Camillo Sitte and his manual Der Städtebau (1889), this article aims at reviewing,
firstly, its influence in some proposals for Latin American cities during the urban art of the Belle
Époque. In the midst of academic reforms that led to the introduction of urbanism in university
teaching and institutional practice, the article continues with exploring the relationship between
Sitte’s book and that by the also-Austrian Karl H. Brunner; the latter was the first textbook published
in Latin America by the late 1930s, representative of the town planning in consolidation by then
across the region. Throughout the theoretical and disciplinary comparison between both moments
of the Städtebau, the article tries to illustrate the change in Latin America’s town planning practices
between the centuries, from an urban art into a professional and contextualized discipline. Such a
comparison relies on premises of epistemology and historiography about the “founding texts” —as
defined by the French historian Françoise Choay— which are at the bases of the research projects
that this article is derived from.