On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Teoria general de la urbanització by Ildefons Cerdà, the Institut d’Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia), in collaboration with the Diputació de Barcelona, the Generalitat de Catalunya through Incasòl, and the CCCB, presented this week its first translation into English and the mapping of the Big Data from this essential work on urban development. Bloomberg Philanthropies contributed as a collaborator for the international diffusion of the project.
The presentation of this translation, co-published by the IAAC and Actar, was accompanied by debates on urbanism as a transforming mechanism of society, moderated by the IAAC founder, Vicente Guallart, who promoted the project of translating Cerdà’s work into English and was in charge of making an introductory speech framing Cerdà’s work in an international era and environment. In addition, this event hosted the presentation of the platform’s launch of statistical data visualization of the General Theory of Urbanization of Barcelona 1867, urbanization.org, which will be launched in the framework of the Smart City Expo World Congress between 14 and 16 November in Fira Barcelona.
In 1867 Ildefons Cerdà published his Teoria general de la urbanització. In this text, the “science of building cities”, understood as a phenomenon became a new discipline with a broad economic, social and cultural impact on the life of the people of the city. Coinciding with 150 years since its publication, its first translation into English is being presented along with the publishing online of the statistics transformed into interactive graphics and open data, with the aim of expanding the knowledge of Cerdà’s work and encouraging debate on the process of “urbanization” in the future.
