LINEAR CITY MODEL AS URBAN PROJECT: PEDRO DE VALDIVIA AVENUE AND ITS ROLE IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF SANTIAGO, 1895

Abstract

These days Pedro de Valdivia Avenue appears simply as one more street in Santiago's urban layout. Nevertheless, its original layout, designed and implemented in 7895, was set up as a management model to urbanize the agricultural periphery with 747 pieces of land for construction of country houses capable of supporting the avenue's consolidation as an open space by means of their gardens' public opening. Based on the idea of a territorial infrastructure capable of supporting the city's communication and development towards the South, the real estate company "Poblacion Providencia" could assure not only a sustainable funding for the project as a result of the selling of plots of land that configure the space of central avenue, but also the establishing of a target image proposing urban growth from the inclusion of 'nature' in the construction of the city. Thus, a private management model is set from an explicit public benefit: accessing to the possibility of urban life in a formalized natural environment similar to life in the countryside.

This article approaches how a set of private participants could materialize an urban project usually connected to the garden city model, but rebuilt here as a model of a linear city, resulting in the erection of Pedro de Valdivia Avenue as a paradigm of urban transformation for the southeast periphery of Santiago city.