Arturo Soria y Mata

Arturo Soria (c. 1914).

Arturo Soria y Mata (born December 15, 1844 in Madrid ; † November 6, 1920 ibid) was a Spanish civil servant and traffic and urban planner as well as the developer of the so-called Bandstadt model . He planned the tramway in Madrid in the 19th century and was the manager of the operation.

Life

Statue in Madrid

Arturo Soria y Mata founded Madrid's first tram in 1875. Soria became known for the development of the ribbon city, the Ciudad lineal , which he praised as the only logical type of urban development. In 1882 he developed the city model, which was to respond to the rapid growth of the city in the previous decade. He saw the causes of the problems in the too high density and in the inadequate transport infrastructure of the city and advocated decentralization and an urban - rural balance. The technically oriented model, which includes decentralized settlement development with an interlinking of building and landscape structures, was published by Arturo Soria y Mata for the first time in 1883. Nine years later, Soria founded the Compañía Madrileña de Urbanización (1892) to undertake a gigantic project realize. He planned a 48 km long and only 200 m deep ring-shaped structure around Madrid with a seven km long cross connection. Due to financial difficulties, only a five-kilometer section of the entire project could be realized, which was oriented towards railway, tram routes and a boulevard. Soria y Mata's concept was later taken up and continued by city planners in other countries.

Honors

• The Madrid Metro has dedicated the "Estación de Arturo Soria" station on Line 4 to him.
• The city council of Madrid named the main street of the planned Madrid district Ciudad Lineal after him. In addition, a statue was erected in his honor on one of the sides of this street in 1992.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Housing research.at, research work: Urban renewal in Madrid, p. 15 (PDF; 7.5 MB), accessed on December 7, 2008
2. ^ University of Dortmund, Franz Fürst, Ursus Himmelbach, Petra Potz: Guiding principles of spatial urban development in the 20th century - ways to sustainability? P. 15 ff., Accessed on December 7, 2008 (PDF; 3.5 MB)