The expansion of Barcelona in the mid-1800s was a necessary step to improve the quality of life of citizens. Services and spaces lived in an inharmonious manner and the city was characterized by density, congestion, poor water supply, poor sanitation, non-existent sewage systems and epidemics. Rising death rates were higher than those of Paris and London at the time, and life expectancy fell to 36 years for the wealthy and 23 years for the working class. Residents of Barcelona were suffocated by the walls surrounding them, posing a risk to their health. With a density of 856 inhabitants per hectare, the government suddenly had to manage and rethink the distribution of the excess population. Houses extended into the street as they rose, and some streets were as narrow as 4 to 10 feet wide. While the city prospered at a faster rate than the rest of Spain, no land remained within the city walls. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay In 1841, Barcelona City Hall held a design competition to expand the city beyond the confinement of walls medieval. After studying many different proposals for the city plan, the central government in 1860 approved the plan of the Catalan engineer and urban planner Ildefons Cerdà, known as the Cerdà Plan. His radical expansion proposal to develop the city into a grid-shaped district would unite the old city with seven outlying villages. This united area, now called L'Eixample (Catalan for expansion), was nearly four times the size of the old town and took almost a century to complete. Ildefons Cerdà, born in 1815 in the rural area north of Barcelona, ​​Spain known as Catalonia, graduated from a school in Madrid with a degree in civil engineering. He specialized in a new type of engineering focused on roads, canals and ports. He wrote and published several theories on the structure and development of cities, and coined the concept and term urbanization. He created a science from the study of cities. This science has emphasized the need to collect data and statistics when planning and designing every function in the economic, social, political and environmental elements that make up cities. Cerdà also immersed himself in the political arena, which subsequently impacted the hand he was dealt regarding Barcelona's expansion. Although Cerdà's ideas were primarily the product of his own mind, many external factors shaped his thoughts and influenced him. One factor in particular that helped influence his planning was the train. In 1844, Cerdà witnessed the capacity of trains as both a technology and a means of transportation, and he linked this idea to the development of a city. He “specifically viewed trains as bridges between old and new colonies.” (1) Although other planners noted the importance of trains, their influence on Cerdà's plans was not found in other plans made at this time. As we will see in more depth later, Cersà based the width of the proposed streets on the incorporation of trains into the transportation systems of cities and towns, as well as other means of transportation that had not even yet been invented. He planned not only the fundamental basics of a city, but also the finer details. These fundamental baseswere political, legal, economic and administrative. Only with the understanding of these basic principles did Cerdà believe it was possible to create realistic and useful plans for the development of the city. The grid system illustrated by Cerdà in his plan has been described as "non-hierarchical access to all parts of the city, thus avoiding differences in urban conditions". (1) Cerdà based its grid on strategic elements such as wide streets, numerous intersections, mobility and large spacious blocks. He made sure to keep in mind the city's capacity for growth and this network's ability to accommodate it. This grid determined changes in property values, property values, availability of services, health, housing and open space. Cerdà calculated the volume of atmospheric air a person needed to breathe properly, collected data on the professions the population could pursue, mapped the necessary services. A-1 (The map above shows the boundaries of the Cerdà plan represented by the light green grid of the streets represented by the blue lines and the schools represented by the green circles.)The Cerdà network provides for a very efficient and efficient resources and services, which coexist together to create a better environment for the residents of Barcelona. “He proposed an equitable distribution of “33 schools, 3 hospitals located on the outskirts of the city for hygienic conditions, 8 parks, 10 markets and 12 administrative buildings”. (2) When designing this grid, Cerdà inquired about the distance and location of services in relation to residents. He carefully designed the plan so that there would be sufficiently large streets. The streets would be built 20 meters wide, with 5 meters on each side reserved for pedestrians. There are also main streets like Gran Via which would be 50 meters wide and Passeig de Gracia which would be 60 meters wide. The districts were defined as 20 manzana blocks together, with access to shops, markets, services and schools. He ensured that every resident, whether rich or working class, had equal access to these services. He studied the maximum desired distance between each service and another, capping the distance at 30 minutes. He truly envisioned creating socio-economic equality with his network. Another significant aspect of the Cerdà project was the development of the Manzana block. La manzana is an island structure created by Cerdà. This idea has evolved from public to private, or from a garden to a courtyard. Cerdà wanted a square block to solidify its equitable distribution of services, maintain traffic flow, and eliminate the association between lot size and socioeconomic status. As we explain later, this was unfortunately not avoided as Cerdà had hoped. Originally, these square structure blocks were to be built only on 2 or 3 sides, 20 meters deep and on the scale of four stories, indicating a human-level structure. Each side would measure 113.3 meters, and between the sides would be a recreational green space that A-2 would allow maximum sunlight and ventilation into each unit on the block. As this project lacked profitability, the majority of the blocks were built on all four sides, thus becoming parking lots and further exceeding the height initially planned. Instead of green, airy, publicly accessible neighborhoods, the blocks began to resemble a more Soviet block brutalism, developed without taking into account the plan to include public amenities in the blocks. The plane tree was chosen as the ideal species for planting in the city, and was planted with a space of 8meters between each tree. The most unique aspect of the manzana was actually the 45 degree chamfer given to each corner of each block. Cerdà did this because he believed that there would be "some sort of small machines powered by steam that each driver could stop in front of his house." The chamfered corner made it easier for the driver to see what was happening on either side. Even though cars had not yet been invented, when Cerdà discovered the railway, he quickly understood the type of technology the future held and adapted to it in every way possible without knowing the specific details. A-3 Today, this design has definitely improved traffic flow in the city. Not only did Cerdà plan to adapt the mobility of pedestrians, cars, steam trams and future cars like machines, but he also worked to optimize infrastructure works such as gas supply lines, storm sewers and waste disposal lines. Its efforts went beyond simple transportation planning to include planning the movement of goods, energy, services and information. As a civil engineer and urban planner, it is not unusual that Cerdà developed empirical formulas to create and justify his project for Barcelona, ​​as well as his entire planning. As part of this formula, he sought to answer questions that concerned town planning. "...how to finance the construction of new roads, health infrastructure and municipal equipment and...how could housing prices be adapted to different salaries?" (2) These questions show his awareness of the social, economic, and political factors that affect a city, and he used these factors to shape his formula. Cerdà “found a way to calculate the length of city blocks, the width of streets, the size of the land occupied by a single resident and even the number of people per household. His formula therefore allowed him to quantify his projects and to design the layout of his cities more precisely. (1)A-4 The Cerdà plan is barely mentioned in books on town planning which are not yet written in Spanish or Catalan. Cerdà did not attract international praise and recognition for his work until the 1980s and 1990s. What was surprising was that with the explosion of modernism that followed the Cerdà plan, an urban competitiveness arose. started among the inhabitants of Barcelona. Even though Cerdà planned its network in such a way that there was equality among all, regardless of socio-economic status, the owners and architects could not completely get rid of this competitiveness and class divisions . They each wanted to build the biggest, tallest and best house in the neighborhood. It's a great example of why there is so much diversity in the city's architecture. Families would commission architects such as Antoni Gaudi to design their homes and create a unique organic structure to stand out from the rest. However, without these wealthy families supporting and providing financial benefits to Cerdà and his project, it could not have been as successful. Many people, as well as architects, turned their backs on his project. Since his approach was different from others, being based on an egalitarian grid, an economic proposal and an overall circulation plan, it was understood that his design intention was not only functional but was a response to the conditions and the needs of society. But because of this radical proposal, his plan was not well received by the central government, and it took decades for the.