Deconstructing Cerdá: historical approaches in his three urban planning theories (1855–1867)

This paper aims to contribute to the current debate on the interest in history shown by the early town planning literature and to extend it to Spain. It focuses on the most important theoretical works of the urban planning pioneer Ildefonso Cerdá (1815–1876): the well-known Teoría General de la Urbanización (1867), Teoría de la Construcción de Ciudades (1859) and Teoría de la viabilidad Urbana (1861). Throughout the analysis of these three major publications and their heterogeneous sources, this paper discusses the role and relevance of different planning history approaches in Cerdá’s theoretical work. It highlights his ways of handling information about historical urbanism in the process of theorizing urban planning, as well as the sense he gave to history in each of his three theories and in his theoretical work as a whole. Finally, the paper outlines some comparative elements resulting from current international research. The paper concludes that though many of Cerdá’s approaches to history in his theoretical work match the general trends in European early town planning literature, some originalities arise, notably its pioneering character and the method conceived for analysing the historical urban evolution of a city throughout its plan.