The city has historically been conceived as a project, with a sense of duty to be: it is the prefiguration of a reality that emerges from the negation of the pre-existing city. The city anticipates a desired future from an ideal perspective that tends to overcome the existing structural or particular challenges of the present. It can be argued that this proposition represents the historical trajectory of urban thought on a planetary scale. Therefore, the prospective dimension of the city constituted a central dynamic in urban theory throughout history, leading to the emergence of planning as a key approach.
The history of the city as a project is the core of the first volume in this two-part contribution. It presents an overview of diverse city projects that have been pursued throughout history, providing a framework for exploring new perspectives of urban development. The cities profiled and analyzed here reflect a living catalog of initiatives that can inform promising directions. More than a compilation, this volume compares and critically assesses these historical projects to provide a grounding for the contemporary advances presented in the second volume.
Part 1: Introduction.- The City as a Project: A historial overview.- Par
2: Central ideas of the city as a Project.- The city from the duty to be.-
Decolonial perspectives in the idea of city as a Project.- City as Utopia.-
Urban history and the urban.- The evolution of urban over rural įreas.- Part
3: Cities in history.- Asian cities.- Beijing: Ruptures and endurances in an
Asian intersocietal system.- Postcolonial Mumbai: The paradoxical city.-
Istabul: Constantinople.- African cities.- Africas cities as projects?-
Antananarivo, capital status and readings of the urban landscape. Concepts of
competing powers since the 18th century.- Nador: From military barracks to
intermediate city.- Latin American cities.- Colonial cities: Vulnerability
and contingency.- Historical context of the Q'ente and Santa Rita de Q'ente
properties (Historic sanctuary of Machupicchu) and its implications for the
Machupicchu property.- Tenochtitlan: Agriculture, urbanism, and Aztec houses
in the 16th Century.- The plan of Tenochtitlan and the symbolic dominance of
the Holy Roman Empire during the Diet of Nuremberg (1524).- The classic
city.- The political community in classical urban thought (Utopia).- The
industrial city.- The dialectics of industrial-immigratory city.- Haussmann
and the disruption of the apparatus of capture in mid-19th century Paris.-
The modern city.- Modern city. A breaking point in the history of cities.-
From IAPI to Ceilāndia: Occupation and dislodgement in the construction of
Brasķlia.- The Socialist City.- The Soviet and East European City during
state socialism: An overview.- Moscow, the Soviet city: The impact of the
Soviet urban plan in the city of Moscow today.- From the Fordist to the
Post-Fordist city. The reunification of Berlin: Searching for the Center
the new city Project.- Havana: Past, present and future.- Part 4: Epilogue.-
Epilogue. The importance of the city as anticipation.
Fernando Carrión Mena is a Research Professor at the Interuniversity Alliance URBS.TIC. His focus of study are the topics of: housing, urbanization process, city, historical centers, cultural heritage, violence, security and drug trafficking, borders, decentralization and sociology of soccer, among others. He created 8 thematic magazines (political science, security, city, historical centers, borders), wrote more than 1000 journalistic articles and 306 academic articles, published 74 books (editor of 52 and author of 22) and edited 12 book collections (97 volumes). He produced 4 film documentaries. He has worked as a consultant for multilateral organizations and as a university professor. For his career he received 9 awards, 6 decorations and 5 distinctions of honored citizen.
Sebastiįn Rodrķguez Alvarez is a Researcher at the Interuniversity Alliance URBS.TIC. Master in Urban Studies with specialization in Geography and Territorial Processes from FLACSO Ecuador and Geographer from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. Consultant in diverse projects of land use planning, environmental management and urban mobility at local and national levels. His academic experience is related to the development of research projects on urban ecology and modeling of territorial processes. His research interests include geographic information science, data science, quality of urban life, socio-spatial segregation and urban violence.
