Latin American Urbanism, 1850-1950

Introduction

After the colonial domination that in most of Latin America ended by the 1820s, the nascent republics and the Brazilian Empire adopted political and economic models from countries other than the Iberian metropolises. While international war and conflicts between Unitarianism and Federalism shook the continent, economic and political liberalism prevailed in bigger countries by the 1860s. Liberal reforms changed the profile of the up-to-then untouched postcolonial city, with an Europeanism manifest in the physical transformations and the cultural ethos. The worship of Second-Empire Paris was one of the features of the so-called “bourgeois city,” which bloomed in the second half of the 19th century, while regional networks of settlements were restructured with railways and other infrastructure required by external investments. As foreign immigration and rural-urban migration increased Latin America’s urbanization by the 1900s, especially in the Southern Cone, official and private responses to the demands of the growingly heterogeneous population shaped the urban agenda of the Belle Époque and the first centenary of Latin American republics. The most significant chapters of this pre-urbanism were hygiene and housing reforms of historic centers, where colonial dameros (checkerboards)—inherited from the 1573 Law of Indies—also underwent urban reconstruction for embellishment, alongside functional and communication improvements; these processes were accompanied by suburban expansion led by a bourgeoisie fleeing old-fashioned centers and seeking new styles and landscapes that mirrored their modernizing cosmopolitism. Between 1900 and 1940, Latin America’s population rose from 63 million to 130 million, making it the least rural among the world’s less developed blocks. Population growth evinced the state’s urgency for adopting urban reforms and plans, which were implemented, from the late 1920s, by local governments, foreign maestros, and native professionals. Early plans from local administrations, some of them framed within national legislations, jointly with the first courses and conferences about urbanismo (urban planning or urbanism) promoted by universities and professional associations, institutionalized the new discipline. It combined urban planning techniques arriving from North America with traditions of European urbanism, often involving the visit of famous urbanistas (urbanists) as advisers or coordinators for those first plans, from Jean-Claude Forestier and Le Corbusier to Werner Hegemann and Karl Brunner. As functional modernism prevailed as a trend from the 1940s, Latin America’s transit from local-based urbanism into a regional planificación and planejamento (planning) was to occur amid postwar urbanization, industrialization, and US-backed developmentalism, which represented a shift in the discipline’s scale and approach.

General Overviews

Echoing the misinterpretations of international planning historiography, the history of Latin America’s urbanism in the republican period tended to be regarded, until the 1960s, as an appendix of Spain’s and Portugal’s. Local historiography, though also including the colonial era, began to explore the distinctiveness of republican Latin America, initiated by Hardoy 1975 in relation to urbanization, Romero 2008 from a cultural perspective, and Gutiérrez 2006 through the relationship between architecture and urbanism. The celebration of the 500th anniversary of the A mericas’ discovery in 1992 was an opportunity to produce new multi-author books that set the republican era in perspective with the colonial legacy, as in Alomar 1987 and in Centro de Estudios Históricos de Obras Públicas y Urbanismo 1997, both with morphological emphasis. Later, Almandoz 2010 focused on the period between the postcolonial transformations and the arrival of modern urbanism before World War II, a cycle that has been profusely documented by the Centro de Documentación de Arquitectura Latinoamericana (CEDODAL). A pending task is to give Latin America’s planning history of the republican era its own place in the history of the industrial era worldwide, as Sánchez Ruiz 2008 has tried to do.

Almandoz, Arturo, ed. Planning Latin America’s Capital Cities, 1850–1950. London: Routledge, 2010.
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Originally published in 2002, this was the first book in English to focus on postcolonial transformations until the emergence of professional urbanism. It combines case studies of different sizes mostly written by local-based experts: Buenos Aires, Santiago, Rio–São Paulo, Mexico City, Lima, Havana, Caracas, and San José de Costa Rica.
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Alomar, Gabriel, ed. De Teotihuacán a Brasilia: Estudios de historia urbana iberoamericana y filipina. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios de Administración Local (IEAL), 1987.
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Illustrated with plans, some of them from Seville’s Archive of Indies, the book catalogues Latin America’s new cities from the pre-Columbian era to the mid-20th century. Suitable for undergrads, the last two chapters catalogue the urban transformations since the 19th century and the emergence of modern urbanism.
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Centro de Documentación de Arquitectura Latinoamericana (CEDODAL).
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Documentation center of Latin American architecture. Holding one of Latin America’s biggest archives of plans and primary sources on architecture, urbanism, and art history, CEDODAL organizes exhibitions and publishes books and the journal DANA: Documentos de Arquitectura Nacional y Americana. Urbanism of the republican period occupies much of the catalogues available at the CEDODAL website.
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Centro de Estudios Históricos de Obras Públicas y Urbanismo. La ciudad hispanoamericana: El sueño de un orden. Madrid: Ministerio de Fomento, 1997.
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Published in 1989 as a catalogue of an exhibition, this second edition, with augmented texts, gathers seventeen contributions ranging from Spanish America’s colonial era to the 20th century. It includes maps and illustrations, completed by a chronological list of villages and towns founded by Spain across the Americas.
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Gutiérrez, Ramón. Arquitectura y Urbanismo en Iberoamérica. Madrid: Cátedra, 2006.
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Even though the manual privileges architecture over urbanism for Latin America’s different blocks and countries, the dialogue between the two disciplines makes it didactic for undergraduates of all related fields, including art history. The book has had three editions and several reprints since its original publication in 1984.
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Hardoy, Jorge E. “Two Thousand Years of Latin American Urbanization.” In Urbanization in Latin America: Approaches and Issues. Edited by Jorge E. Hardoy, 3–55. New York: Anchor Books, 1975.
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The chapter summarizes, in seven “stages,” Latin American urbanization from the pre-Columbian era to the mid-20th century, which makes it still valuable as an introduction to the field for all audiences. In the final stages there are geographical and demographic connections with the emerging urbanism since the late 19th century.
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Romero, José L. Latinoamérica: Las ciudades y las ideas. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores Argentina, 2008.
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Since its original publication in 1976, Romero’s essay pioneered Latin America’s cultural urban history. The “bourgeois cities” and “mass metropolises” characterized in the last two chapters have become referential for the historiography of the republican period. This edition includes a prologue by the author’s son, also a historian.
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Sánchez Ruiz, Gerardo. Planeación moderna de ciudades. Mexico City: Trillas, 2008.
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One of the few manuals on urban planning published in Spanish, it intertwines the European and Anglo-American traditions of the industrial era. The last two chapters are devoted to Latin America’s first experiences and the Mexican case, with a balance of primary and secondary sources suitable for undergraduates and graduates.
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Nineteenth-Century Transformations

Perhaps because it embraces the last urban stages of the colonial era and the republican beginnings, Latin America’s 19th century as a whole has been rarely approached after the pioneering overviews by Harris 1971, Morse 1975, and Sica 1981–1982. Only Geisse 1987 and Gutiérrez 1997 tried to connect the main episodes of the colonial and republican city along the 19th century. Among countless case studies that cannot be cited here, Scobie 1974 analyzed the outstanding transformation of Buenos Aires, which became Latin America’ s largest and fastest-growing metropolis since the late colonial era. Scobie’s set the path for a genealogy of studies that was continued by Liernur and Silvestri 1993 and others cited under Belle Époque and Pre-Urbanism Reforms. From a disciplinary perspective, the connection between the 19th century and the 20th has been rarely outlined from a continental perspective; in addition to Gutiérrez 2006, Romero 2008, and Sánchez Ruiz 2008, all cited under General Overviews, Almandoz 2013 has made such an attempt from the perspective of cultural history, relying on Romero’s categories of “bourgeois cities” and “mass metropolises.”

Almandoz, Arturo. Modernización urbana en América Latina: De las grandes aldeas a las metrópolis masificadas. Santiago, Chile: Instituto de Estudios Urbanos y Territoriales, 2013.
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Conceived as a textbook for graduates and undergraduates, its five chapters range from the postcolonial “villages” in the aftermath of independence to the arrival of modernism and development after World War II. The book’s panoramic perspective is completed by more detailed analyses of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela.
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Geisse, Guillermo. “Tres momentos históricos en la ciudad hispanoamericana del siglo XIX.” In De Teotihuacán a Brasilia: Estudios de historia urbana iberoamericana y filipina. Edited by Gabriel Alomar, 397–433. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios de Administración Local (IEAL), 1987.
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Through the distinction of three historical “moments” of the Spanish American city, the chapter connects the late colonial era and the liberal reforms of the late 19th century. Its panoramic perspective makes it suitable for undergraduates in the areas of urban studies, architecture, and geography.
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Gutiérrez, Ramón. “La ciudad iberoamericana en el siglo XIX.” In La ciudad hispanoamericana: El sueño de un orden. By Centro de Estudios Históricos de Obras Públicas y Urbanismo, 252–266. Madrid: Ministerio de Fomento, 1997.
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An overview of territorial and urban transformations throughout the 19th century. Departing from the persistence of Spanish features in the postcolonial city, the chapter outlines later ruptures in the urban landscape and layouts, the first ensanches (expansions), the relationship with railways and ports, and new urban equipment and public spaces.
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Harris, Walter D., Jr. The Growth of Latin American Cities. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1971.
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Relying on rich primary information and graphic material, the book’s detailed analysis of urbanization and urban growth helps to explain the articulation of regional networks of cities and planning in different countries since the 19th century. The appendix includes the ranking of cities based on censuses for several countries.
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Liernur, Francisco, and Graciela Silvestri. El umbral de la metropolis: Transformaciones técnicas y cultura en la modernización de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Sudamericana, 1993.
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A three-chapter study dealing with technical and cultural transformations—rarely visited when it was published—in the early stages of metropolitan Buenos Aires. Chapters about electrification and the port’s infrastructure are especially revealing for understanding the physical expansion and demographic dynamics in the era of massive immigration.
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Morse, Richard. “El desarrollo de los sistemas urbanos en las Américas durante el siglo XIX.” In Las ciudades de América Latina y sus áreas de influencia a través de la historia. Edited by Jorge E. Hardoy and Richard P. Schaedel, 263–290. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Sociedad Interamericana de Planificación (SIAP), 1975.
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One of the few attempts to explain differences in “urban systems” and economic growth between North America and Latin America. The analysis of the types of culture—including the contraposition between farms and plantations—is fundamental for understanding the articulation of urban networks throughout the 19th century.
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Scobie, James R. Buenos Aires: Plaza to Suburb, 1870–1910. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
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Pioneering study that combined the analysis of economic, social, and political conditions of Argentina’s liberal era with changes in the Buenos Aires center and the first sprawl of the emerging metropolis. It was translated into Spanish in 1977 and thereafter remained referential in the field of Latin America’s urban history.
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Sica, Paolo. Historia del Urbanismo. 4 vols. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios de Administración Local (IEAL), 1981–1982.
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Originally published in Italian between 1976 and 1978, Sica’s history of urbanism was especially influential after its translation into Spanish. The first volume devoted to the 19th century includes a long chapter about Latin America altogether, although Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico are treated with more detail.
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Belle Époque and Pre-Urbanism Reforms

Urban changes between the 19th and 20th centuries have sometimes been catalogued in terms of the architectural and cultural eclecticism that informed Latin America’s Belle Époque, as Needell 1987 does for the emblematic case of Rio de Janeiro. Unfolding the perspective of cultural studies influenced by Rama 1996, Corporación Andina de Fomento 1997 samples the imaginary and representation from several Latin American metropolises of the same period, among countless case studies that cannot be cited here. From a demographic standpoint, Scobie 1986 outlines the urban changes between the centuries for the continent altogether, completed by Pineo and Baer 1998 with the social and political movements staged in Latin America’s biggest metropolises. Framing a so-called “pre-urbanism” that arguably lasted until the early 1920s, the institutional reforms around the republican centenary initiated a decade earlier, especially in terms of hygiene, housing, and suburban expansion, has been mapped by Gorelik 1998 and Campos 2002 for Buenos Aires and São Paulo, respectively, the most dynamic metropolises of Latin American Belle Époque. The connection of these reforms with the foreign influences of the urbanism emerging in Europe was anticipated by Hardoy 1990, encouraging a set of studies about the transfer of urban planning in the decades to come, some of them annotated in Early Professional Urbanism.

Campos, Candido M. Os rumos da cidade: Urbanismo e modernização em São Paulo. São Paulo, Brazil: Senac, 2002.
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Resulting from an awarded doctoral dissertation from the University of São Paulo, the 660-page book compiles detailed information about the city’s modernization from the late 19th century through the 1940s. Special attention is paid to the contributions by mayors and their municipal reforms, alongside foreign advisers such as Joseph Bouvard.
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Corporación Andina de Fomento. Sueños e imágenes de la modernidad: América Latina 1870–1930. Caracas, Venezuela: Corporación Andina de Fomento, 1997.
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Resulting from an interdisciplinary research project sponsored by Fundación Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos Rómulo Gallegos (CELARG) in the 1990s and an exhibition organized in 1997, the book gathers representations and imagery of Latin America’s Belle Époque: photography, literature, travel chronicles, and press. Richly illustrated with photographs, mostly belonging to Venezuela’s National Library.
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Gorelik, Adrián. La grilla y el parquet: Espacio público y cultura urbana en Buenos Aires, 1887–1936. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 1998.
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Based on a doctoral dissertation from the University of Buenos Aires, the book focuses on the grilla (grid) and the park as “artifacts” of physical transformation and cultural change. Its well-selected sources and innovative approach have turned the book into an exponent of Latin America’s urban cultural history.
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Hardoy, Jorge E. “Theory and Practice of Urban Planning in Europe, 1850–1930: Its Transfer to Latin America.” In Rethinking the Latin American City. Edited by Richard M. Morse and Jorge E. Hardoy, 20–49. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 1990.
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A seminal chapter that outlined foreign influences on Latin America’s urban transformations and emerging urbanism, from Georges Eugène Haussmann’s Parisian surgery to Le Corbusier’s modernism. It also includes the hygiene and housing reforms of “pre-urbanism” in Argentina and other countries. The book was originally published in Spanish in 1988.
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Needell, Jeffrey. A Tropical Belle Époque: Elite, Culture and Society in Turn-of-the-Century Rio de Janeiro. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
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A well-documented study of the architectural and Haussmann-like renewal of the Brazilian capital between 1898 and 1914, combined with literary tastes, cultural institutions, and mores of the emerging bourgeoisie. Publications in Portuguese in 1993 and in Spanish in 2013 have secured the book’s influence on Latin America’s urban cultural history.
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Pineo, Ronn, and James A. Baer, eds. Cities of Hope: People, Protests and Progress in Urbanizing Latin America, 1870–1930. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998.
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The book explores the relationship between the impact of urbanization on the working class in Latin American cities and the demands by that group in relation to hygiene, housing, and transport. Case studies include Bogotá, Montevideo, Veracruz, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Valparaíso, Buenos Aires, Panama City, and Lima.
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Rama, Angel. The Lettered City. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.
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An essay about the power of written discourses in the historical formation of Latin American societies, from the “ordered city” of the Colonial era to the “revolutionized” one of the 20th century. Originally published in Spanish in 1984, it is referential in cultural and literary studies and urban and planning history.
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Scobie, James R. “The Growth of Latin American Cities, 1870–1930.” In The Cambridge History of Latin America. Vol. 4, C. 1870 to 1930. Edited by Leslie Betchell, 233–265. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
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An overview of demographic changes based on primary information about Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. It also includes “economic functions” such as commerce, bureaucracy, and industry; physical transformations in terms of the railway networks and the urban sprawl; followed by the political consequences of urbanization.
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Early Professional Urbanism

Samples of Latin America’s nascent urbanism, institutionalized from the 1920s through academic and professional reforms, were reported early for the English readership, by Violich 1944, which is a travel and a historical book at the same time. Echoing Violich’s impressions, the national and local case studies commented on by Sánchez Ruiz 2008 and compiled by Almandoz 2010, both cited under General Overviews, map out planning institutions and champions for most of Latin America. Among other pioneers of urbanismo (urbanism), the works of Argentina’s Carlos Della Paolera (Della Paolera 1977), Mexico’s Carlos Contreras, edited by Sánchez Ruiz (Sánchez Ruiz 2003), and Brazil’s Adalberto Szilard and José de Oliveira Reis (Szilard and Reis 2012), revisited by Faría 2013, stand out as primary sources for the inter-war period. Linked to 19th-century reformers, the emergence of urbanism has been studied, among others, by Leme 2005 for Brazil and Valenzuela 2014 for Mexico, two countries were that were local pioneers for the professional consolidation of the new discipline. Covering countless case studies, Latin America’s early urbanism and its relationship with architecture is continuously discussed and enriched in the electronic portal Vitruvius.

Della Paolera, Carlos M. Buenos Aires y sus problemas urbanos. Buenos Aires, Argentina: OIKOS, 1977.
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A compilation of several works by the so-called “father” of Argentina’s urbanism dealing with Buenos Aires and its population, the importance of open spaces, traffic and circulation, and the organization of Great Buenos Aires, including its successive master plans. The latter are especially important as primary sources.
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Faría, Rodrigo de. O urbanista e o Rio de Janeiro: José de Oliveira Reis, uma biografia profissional. São Paulo, Brazil: Alameda, 2013.
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Based on part of a doctoral dissertation at Brazil’s University of Campinhas, the book is a professional biography of a pioneer of Rio de Janeiro’s urbanism from the 1930s to the mid-1960s. The archives consulted and partly reproduced as appendix mirror the evolution of the discipline in Brazil’s former capital.
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Leme, María C. da Silva, ed. Urbanismo no Brasil, 1895–1965. 2d ed. Salvador: EDUFBA, 2005.
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Appeared in 1999; this 600-page reference work includes articles about eight Brazilian cities, followed by a “guide of sources” about landmark projects, sanitation reforms, renewal of centers, suburbs, and avenues. The last two parts are devoted to the three generations of Brazilian urbanists and journals published during the book’s time span.
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Sánchez Ruiz, Gerardo, ed. Planificación y Urbanismo visionarios de Carlos Contreras: Escritos de 1925 a 1935. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2003.
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With three introductory chapters by different experts, this compilation gathers Contreras’s early works about planning of the Mexican republic, urban and regional planning, zoning, the master plan for the Federal District, and several proposals for the capital. Good photographic material about Contreras’s professional life and proposals.
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Szilard, Adalberto, and José de Oliveira Reis. Urbanismo no Rio de Janeiro. Brasília, Brazil: Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, 2012.
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A digital and facsimile edition of the book published in 1950 by the Hungarian architect and the Brazilian engineer, dealing with Rio de Janeiro’s urban history and problems, amid the institutionalization of planning. The introduction makes connections with other pioneering works revisited by the research network Urbanism in Brazil.
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Valenzuela, Alfonso. Urbanistas y Visionarios: La planeación urbana de la Ciudad de México en la primera mitad del siglo XX. Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, 2014.
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Reviewing the pioneers’ proposals for Mexico City—from José Limantour’s during the regime of Porfirio Díaz to Mario Pani’s Corbusier-like modernism—the book articulates the emergence and orientations of urbanism in the country and its foreign references. Excellent photography from the numerous archives consulted in Mexico and the United States.
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Violich, Francis. Cities of Latin America: Housing and Planning to the South. New York: Reinhold, 1944.
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The result of a research journey across Latin America in the early 1940s, Violich’s book maps many institutions and pioneers of early urbanism in the region. The author’s synthetic, informative, and insightful report of professional exchanges turns the book into both a unique testimony and a planning history textbook.
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Vitruvius.
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A much-visited electronic portal launched in Brazil in 2000, it offers a journal and a newspaper in Latin America and Spain, where it also has an editorship. Specialized in architecture, urban planning, art, and culture, pioneers and early works of Latin American urbanism inform a significant chapter of the agenda.
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Academic Tradition

As outlined in the Introduction and some works cited under General Overviews, different traditions of European urbanism—combined sometimes with urban planning techniques arriving from North America—were incorporated into the planning agendas of the new institutions, usually through the invitation of foreign luminaries. French landscape designers and architects were the most conspicuous representatives in Latin America of the so-called academic or eclectic tradition, as Berjman 1998 catalogues for the referential case of Buenos Aires and the Southern Cone. As samples of the studies about transfers flourishing in Latin America in the 1990s—inspired by the seminal text Hardoy 1990 cited under Belle Époque and Pre-Urbanism Reforms—Segawa 1995 analyzes Joseph Bouvard’s experiences in São Paulo and Duverger 1995 examines Jean Claude Nicholas Forestier’s in Havana. Forestier’s academicism in Buenos Aires and Havana was later contrasted with Le Corbusier’s modernism by Segre 2009. The emblematic plan of Donat-Alfred Agache (Agache 1932) for Rio de Janeiro remains a primary source representative of this tradition, which has been revisited by Stuckenbruck 1996, among others. The 1939 urban plan of Maurice Rotival for Caracas, a belated yet significant example of this academicism, was reprinted in the Revista del Concejo Municipal del Distrito Federal and thoroughly studied by several authors in Vallmitjana 1991.

Agache, Donat-Alfred. La remodelation d’une capitale. 2 vols. Paris: Société Coopérative d’Architectes, 1932.
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The French version of the Brazilian original edition of Rio de Janeiro’s plan published in 1930 is more general and less focused on the case study. The author introduced theoretical considerations about the city as organism and the epistemological nature and methodology of urbanism.
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Berjman, Sonia. Plazas y parques de Buenos Aires: La obra de los paisajistas franceses: André, Courtois, Thays, Bouvard, Forestier, 1860–1930. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1998.
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A comprehensive study of the proposals and works of French landscape designers in Buenos Aires, with additional references to their interventions in Montevideo, Santiago de Chile, São Paulo, and Havana. The analysis is illustrated with plans, images, and newspaper reportages about the impact of the urbanists’ proposals.
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Duverger, Heriberto. “La insoportable solidez de lo que el viento se llevó: J. C. N. Forestier y la ciudad de La Habana.” DANA: Documentos de Arquitectura Nacional y Americana 37.38 (1995): 71–82.
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The article combines a contextualization of Cuba’s emerging urbanism with a detailed report and analysis of the mid-1920s visit of French urbanist Jean-Claude Nicholas Forestier. Interesting reproductions of Havana’s 1926 plan, including Forestier’s proposals for roads, plazas, parks, and a university campus.
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Revista del Concejo Municipal del Distrito Federal 1 (1985): 17–40.
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A facsimile edition of the journal issue that appeared in November 1939, containing the urban plan for Caracas coordinated by Maurice Rotival. It also contains administrative documents issued by the Federal District government justifying the implementation of urbanism amid the urban sprawl of the Venezuelan capital in the late 1930s.
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Segawa, Hugo. “1911: Bouvard em São Paulo.” DANA: Documentos de Arquitectura Nacional y Americana 37.38 (1995): 31–35.
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A pioneering review of the visit and proposals of French landscape designer Joseph Antoine Bouvard, hired by the São Paulo municipality in 1911. In addition to a contextualization of the 1900s “metropolis of the coffee,” the article includes good reproductions and explanations of Bouvard’s sketches for parks, avenues, and roads.
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Segre, Roberto. “Mestres e discípulos no urbanismo latino-americano (1920–1960): Buenos Aires e Havana, duas cidades paradigmáticas.” In Urbanismo na América do Sul. Circulação de idéias e constituição do campo. Edited by Marco A. de F. Gomes, 93–118. Salvador, Brazil: EDUFBA, 2009.
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The chapter differentiates the academic and modernist strands of urbanism in Buenos Aires and Havana by reviewing Jean-Claude Forestier’s proposals for both cities, contrasted with Le Corbusier’s for Buenos Aires and José Luis Sert’s for Havana. Abundant references to other urbanists map out a wider canvas of Latin American planning.
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Stuckenbruck, Denise Cabral. O Rio de Janeiro em questão: O plano Agache e o ideario reformista dos anos 20. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Observatório de Políticas Urbanas e Gestão Municipal, 1996.
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A well-documented monograph about Donat-Alfred Agache’s plan for Rio de Janeiro and the reformist climate that made possible his visit, at the end of Brazil’s so-called Old Republic. Following a history-based yet interdisciplinary research approach, primary sources range from official publications and technical journals to newspaper reports and oral histories.
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Vallmitjana, Marta, et al. El Plan Rotival: La Caracas que no fue. Caracas, Venezuela: Ediciones Instituto de Urbanismo, 1991.
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A collective volume that put together for the first time primary information about the 1939 plan for Caracas—coordinated by French engineer Maurice Rotival—with studies about it. Its context, proposals, effects, and modifications are completed with models, sketches, and photographs of the Venezuelan capital before and after the plan.
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Functional Modernism

Gutiérrez 2006, cited under General Overviews, explores the presence in Latin America until the 1980s of the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM, by its initials in French) in architectural terms. Pérez and his contributors (Pérez Oyarzun 1991) were among the first to show that, in contrast to the French academicism, CIAM’s functionalist principles for densifying and segregating cities were boosted in Latin America through invitations to Le Corbusier since 1929. The report of his first journey to the Southern Cone occupies much of Corbusier 1991, which therefore remains a testimony for understanding the advances of modernism and CIAM in contemporary Latin America. Pérez’s panoramic edition was followed by in-depth studies about Le Corbusier’s journeys and projects in different countries: Tsiomis 1998 for Rio de Janeiro; Liernur and Pschepiurca 2008 for Argentina, and Arias 2008 for Bogotá. Beyond national cases and Le Corbusier’s stardom, the consolidation of CIAM and functional modernism in Latin America, including the emblematic experience of Brasilia and the projects by Town Planning Associates (TPA)—the firm of Josep Lluís Sert and Paul Lester Wiener—have been set in perspective in the comparative studies Fraser 2000, Gorelik 2005, and Gomes 2009.

Arias, Fernando. Le Corbusier en Bogotá: El proyecto del “grand immeuble,” 1950–1951. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNC), 2008.
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Based on a doctoral dissertation from Barcelona’s Polytechnic University of Catalonia, the book focuses on Corbusier’s project of grand immeuble (large building) for Bogotá’s center. Includes a detailed “post-scriptum” of all of Corbusier’s activities and proposals in Colombia, followed by those of Josep Lluís Sert and Paul Lester Wiener.
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Corbusier, Le (Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris). Precisions on the Current State of Architecture and City Planning. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1991.
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The first translation of the 1930 French report of the journey to the Southern Cone, with lectures given at Buenos Aires and the famous sketches of housing and viaducts for Rio de Janeiro. It incorporates an introduction written by the Swiss-French architect in 1960, besides texts about Paris and Moscow.
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Fraser, Valerie. Building the New World: Studies in Modern Architecture of Latin America 1930–1960. London: Verso, 2000.
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Highlighting the case studies of Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, the book articulates the major state-funded projects of modern architecture and city planning. It features not only the high-profile buildings of Brasilia, Rio, Mexico City, and Caracas, but also less-known social housing and educational architecture. Well-chosen photographs and plans.
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Gomes, Marco A. de F., ed. Urbanismo na América do Sul: Circulação de ideias e constituição do campo. Salvador, Brazil: EDUFBA, 2009.
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Emphasizing the circulation of ideas and models and the emergence of urbanism in South America, the book’s chapters map the academic and modernist strands, amid the continent’s political, economic, institutional, and cultural changes. Strong relationship between the introduction and the case studies, including works by the Town Planning Associates (TPA).
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Gorelik, Adrián. Das vanguardas a Brasília: Cultura urbana e arquitetura na América Latina. Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Editora Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), 2005.
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A compilation of previous articles written in Spanish about the urban role of architectural vanguards sponsored by the state in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Brasilia, between 1920s and 1960s. Besides opposing the traditional interpretation of “European influence,” the book innovates in combining urban historiography and intellectual critique.
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Liernur, Francisco, and Pablo Pschepiurca. La red austral: Obras y proyectos de Le Corbusier y sus discípulos en la Argentina (1924–1965). Buenos Aires, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2008.
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A thorough study of the works and projects by Le Corbusier and his disciples in Argentina. The elaborate contextualization of the intellectual climate that surrounded Corbusier’s visits and CIAM’s presence, including plenty of images, turns the narrative into a cultural history of Argentina’s modern movement for the book’s time span.
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Pérez Oyarzun, Fernando, ed. Le Corbusier y Sudamérica, viajes y proyectos. Santiago, Chile: Escuela de Arquitectura, 1991.
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A pioneering multi-author volume about Corbusier’s journeys in 1929, 1936, and 1962; the plans for Buenos Aires and Bogotá; followed by the Curutchet and Errazuriz houses in Buenos Aires; and Rio de Janeiro’s Ministry of Health, among other architectural landmarks. Includes a final chronology about Corbusier’s relationship with South America.
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Tsiomis, Yanis, ed. Le Corbusier: Rio de Janeiro: 1929, 1936. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Centro de Arquitetura e Urbanismo do Rio de Janeiro, 1998.
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Resulting from an exhibition held in 1998, the book gathers contributions about Le Corbusier’s journeys to Rio de Janeiro, his works, proposals, and lectures. Excellent images of the projects, many of them updated and enhanced with computational methods. Texts in Portuguese are translated in French at the end.
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German Tradition

As Collins 1995 and Collins 2005 demonstrate in relation to Werner Hegemann’s 1929 stay in Argentina, less modernist yet more professional representatives of the German tradition of the Städtebau (urbanism) also fostered Latin America’s emerging urbanismo. The Austrian Karl Brunner has been more studied than Hegemann because of his wider and longer presence across the region. Brunner 1939–1940 was the first technical manual published in Spanish and remains a primary source, very much consulted by interpreters. Brunner’s European background and experiences across Latin America altogether have been set in international perspective by Hofer 2003. His professional and academic legacy in Chile has been revisited in Pavez Reyes 2009–2010, whereas his interventions in Santiago de Chile, Bogotá, and Panama City have been studied by Pavez 2009–2010, Montoya 2013, and Uribe 1996, respectively, as cornerstones of professional urbanism in those countries.

Brunner, Karl. Manual de Urbanismo. 2 vols. Bogotá, Colombia: Imprenta Municipal, 1939–1940.
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Conceived as a three-volume work, only two were published. The first includes a synthesis, urban housing and sanitation; the second deals with urban buildings, skyscrapers, developments, roads and traffic, and underground urbanism. It was the first manual on city planning published in Spanish with photographs and information about Latin America.
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Collins, Christiane C. “Urban Interchange in the Southern Cone: Le Corbusier (1929) and Werner Hegemann (1931) in Argentina.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 54.2 (June 1995): 208–227.
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A pioneering and influential article that compared, on the basis of abundant primary sources, Corbusier’s modernism and Hegemann’s Städtebau (urbanism) in Latin America’s most dynamic and cosmopolitan city at the time. Erudite narrative and unpublished graphic material about the proposals and the periphery of Buenos Aires.
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Collins, Christiane C. Werner Hegemann and the Search for Universal Urbanism. New York: Norton, 2005.
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A referential and thorough professional biography of the most international exponent of German Städtebau (urbanism). Chapters two, four, and five, above all, enlighten the arrival of Hegemann and his colleagues to Latin America, characterizing the professional and contextualized tradition they represented. An impeccable edition relying on an appealing discourse.
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Hofer, Andreas. Karl Brunner y el urbanismo europeo en América Latina. Bogotá, Colombia: El Áncora Editores, 2003.
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Based on a doctoral dissertation at Vienna’s Technical University, this translation is the most comprehensive work in Spanish about Karl Brunner’s professional background in Austria and planning experiences in Chile, Colombia, and Panama. Appendixes include Brunner’s works, projects, courses, bibliography, exhibitions, reports, and archives.
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Montoya, Jhon W. “Planificación, urbanismo y la construcción de la Bogotá moderna: De Brunner a Le Corbusier.” In Historiografía y planificación urbana en América Latina. Edited by Isabel Duque, 73–168. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, 2013.
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A well-documented chapter on Bogotá’s urban change from Brunner’s interventions in the 1930s to Le Corbusier’s Pilot Plan in the 1940s. Beyond the contrast between the two urbanists, it is illustrative of the transition in city planning approaches and the predominance that functional modernism reached in postwar Latin America.
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Pavez, María I. “Temprana modernidad del Urbanismo en Santiago de Chile: Interacciones entre Jacques Lambert, Karl Brunner, Luis Muñoz y Roberto Humeres.” In Karl Brunner desde el Bicentenario. By María Isabel Pavez Reyes, et al., 12–25. Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Universidad de Chile, 2009–2010.
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The chapter reconstructs Santiago’s modernity and emerging urbanism through the interactions among city planners that represented the German tradition. This is done by contrast with the meanings attributed to Le Corbusier, who never visited Chile and thus facilitated the predominance of less-modernist and more-contextualized approaches of Brunner and his disciples.
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Pavez Reyes, María Isabel, et al. Karl Brunner desde el Bicentenario. Santiago: Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Universidad de Chile, 2009–2010.
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Produced for the commemoration of Chile’s 200th anniversary as republic, the multi-author volume pays tribute to Brunner’s interventions nationwide, from his urban renewal of central Santiago and residential developments in other districts, to Concepción’s university campus. With a thorough bibliography and a “historical gallery” of photographs of projects in Santiago.
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Uribe, Álvaro. “El Plan Brunner para la ciudad de Panamá.” Revista de Arquitectura 8 (1996): 20–21.
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One of the few publications about Karl Brunner’s unrealized plan for Panama City in 1941, with significant quotations from his report as adviser of the Panamanian government. Completed with illustrative images of the proposals and abstracts in Spanish, English, and German.
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Planning, Urbanization, and Development

The transformation of Latin America’s local-based urbanism into a region-focused and nationwide planning after World War II, amid Americanization and developmentalism, is outlined in most of the studies cited under General Overviews. Violich and Daughters (Violich and Daughters 1987) were among the first to shed light on this transition, as they focused on the metropolitan planning from the 1960s, whereas Hardoy 1997 outlines Latin America’s urbanization, city growth, and planning issues throughout the entire 20th century. The series of articles Mattos 2010 provides a more epistemological connection between functionalist urbanism and planning’s Fordism in the heyday of developmentalism and urbanization, a transition also dealt with by Mejía 2013 and Almandoz 2014 in relation to Latin America’s modernization and globalization. Some of the case studies compiled by Irazábal 2008 and Duque Franco 2013 help to understand historically the effects of that transit from urbanism into planning regarding the public space and urban fabric of the late-20th-century city, some of which refer back to patterns configured since the 19th-century transformations and the emergence of urbanism. Much of this agenda of spatial, demographic, and professional changes and challenges of Latin American urbanism after World War II can be mapped out through case studies that EURE has discussed in the last decades.

Almandoz, Arturo. Modernization, Urbanization and Development in Latin America, 1900s-2000s. London: Routledge, 2014.
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An eight-chapter overview of the relationship and imbalances between industrialization, urbanization, modernization, and development in 20th-century Latin America, with emphasis on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. Appendixes include Dramatis Personae; tables on urban population per country; urbanization, growth, and level of transition; Human Development Index per country.
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Duque Franco, Isabel, ed. Historiografía y planificación urbana en América Latina. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, 2013.
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A multi-author volume that combines chapters on Latin America’s historiography, industrialization, urbanization, modernization, and development; the transition from local-based urbanism into regional planning in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia; alongside globalization, mobility, tourism, and strategic planning. A selection of case studies well balanced in geographical and temporal terms.
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EURE: Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Urbano Regionales.
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Founded in 1970 at the Institute of Urban and Territorial Studies of Chile’s Catholic University, EURE has become Iberian America’s most-established journal on urban, regional, and environmental studies. Abstracts in Spanish, English, and Portuguese are available online. It holds the best indexation and impact among urban journals in Spanish.
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Hardoy, Jorge E. “Las ciudades de América Latina a partir de 1900.” In La ciudad hispanoamericana: El sueño de un orden. By Centro de Estudios Históricos de Obras Públicas y Urbanismo, 267–274. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Históricos de Obras Públicas y Urbanismo (Cehopu), 1997.
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Originally published in 1989, this panoramic chapter about 20th-century Latin America outlined the patterns of urbanization, urban growth, metropolitan sprawl, and rural-urban migration. It also featured major planning proposals, housing schemes, highways, and university campuses, and the challenges of regional planning and development for the rest of the century.
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Irazábal, Clara, ed. Ordinary Places, Extraordinary Events: Citizenship, Democracy and Public Space in Latin America. London: Routledge, 2008.
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Exploring the historic and current uses and meanings of public spaces in Latin American cities, the book sheds light on contemporary conceptions of citizenship, democracy, and planning. Well-discussed case studies include Mexico City, São Paulo, Santiago de Chile, Lima, Bogotá, Caracas, Buenos Aires, Havana, and Santo Domingo.
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Mattos, Carlos de. Globalización y metamorfosis urbana en América Latina. Quito, Ecuador: Organización Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Centros Históricos (OLACCHI), 2010.
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A compilation of interdisciplinary works published between 1990 and 2010 dealing with development, globalization, and urban and territorial gestión (management) in Latin America from the 1960s. The first part is focused on “territorial dynamics” and urban management; the second on the effects of globalization on “territorial and urban transformations.”
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Mejía, Germán. La aventura urbana de América Latina. Bogotá, Colombia: Fundación Mapfre, 2013.
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In consonance with a book series intended to reach out to a non-specialist audience with accessible narratives, the author’s historical background unfolds Latin America’s urban dynamics since colonial times to the present. The last four chapters re-create modernization, planning, and globalization in the second half of the 20th century.
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Violich, Francis, and Robert Daughters. Urban Planning for Latin America: The Challenge of Metropolitan Growth. Boston: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, 1987.
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An overview of Latin America’s colonial and early republican legacy in terms of city layouts and models of urban design alongside planning challenges of the second half of the 20th century, including land use, informal settlements and regional development. Appendix including excerpts from Violich 1944 cited under Early Professional Urbanism.
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