Cerdà Plan

Common card · No. 407726

The Cerdà Plan (Catalan: Pla Cerdà) was an 1860 plan to reform and expand the city of Barcelona beyond its medieval walls. It was created by Ildefons Cerdà, a civil engineer, and designed to be an egalitarian and hygenic expansion of the city, using a Hippodamian grid layout. The plan's approval caused serious controversy for having been imposed by the government of the Kingdom of Spain against the plan of Antoni Rovira i Trias, who had already won a competition for the city's expansion created by the Barcelona City Council. The widening contemplated in the plan unfolded over an immense area that was free of buildings as it was considered a strategic military zone. It proposed a continuous grid of blocks of 113.3 meters from the Besòs to Montjuïc, with streets of 20, 30, and 60 meters with a maximum building height of 16 meters. The novelty in the application of the Hippodamus plan was that the blocks had 45º chamfers to allow better visibility. The development of the plan lasted almost...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Ildefons Cerdà i Sunyer, Public domain