Urban development practices in Valparaíso 1848 - ca. 1928: Graphic tools and urban landscape approaches.

Abstract

The development of Valparaíso was supported over a flat area from the nascent establishment of modernity, by mid-18th century, followed by the plans outlined and implemented during the 19th century, partly including the completion of post-1906 earthquake reconstruction works. The historical mapping represents the geographical and cultural visual device leading to conclude that the topographic determinants were not part of the city’s design, but conceived as a conquest procedure of a visual model that could have helped to establish it. The changes in the physiognomy that took place in the periods after two earthquakes –1750 and 1822– mark in 1906 the end of a phase based on qualitative conditions of the urban fact that was based on the mapped visual space.