On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the General Theory of Urbanization by Ildefons Cerdà, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Diputació de Barcelona, Generalitat of Catalonia, (Incasòl) and the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) present the first-ever English translation of this work published in 1867 during November 6th and 7th at the CCCB.
The presentation of this publication will be accompanied by debates on urbanism as a transformative mechanism of society and the links between big data and urbanism. In addition, in these sessions there will feature the launch of the platform for the visualization of the statistical data os the city of Barcelona in 1867 and the platform urbanization.org.
Ildefons Cerdà published in 1867 the General Theory of Urbanization. In this text, the “science of making cities” became a new discipline with a broad economic, social and cultural impact on the lives of people in the city. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of its publication, the first translation into English and the publication in the network of statistical tables transformed into interactive graphics and open data is presented, with the aim of expanding knowledge of Ildefons Cerdà’s work and fostering the debate about the process of future urbanization.
Ildefons Cerdà and the concept of “Urbanization”
Ildefons Cerdà, author of the extension plan of Barcelona also wrote a theoretical text in order to describe in a rational way, the new science of making cities. In that text, Cerdà invented the word “urbanization” that is used today to describe the process of expansion and redevelopment of cities. He only issued two volumes from the four he firstly wanted to publish. The first was dedicated to the urbanization as a fact, analyzing how industrialization and new systems of mobility could transform cities. In the second volume, he studied the big data of the XIX century in Barcelona that now, 150 years later, we have translated into visual graphics in order to make more understandable what Ildefons Cerdà wanted to disseminate the need of a new way of urbanization.
