La ocasión de imaginar un nuevo paisaje cultural para la modernización de una ciudad capital

Acting on the existing city -with a goal of structural transformation- requires clear ideas, a consistent strategy of operation and a strong-willed author, plus the consensus of other participants and institutions. The experience of a Chilean politician over Santiago de Chile in the second half of the 19th Century is a result of such an extraordinary confluence, and it has marked the city’s fate to our days. With the order of the colonial city as a starting point, Vicuña Mackenna visualized a new urban matrix that resulted in a watershed moment for the urban form. A system of annular and radial promenade avenues is laid over the territory and the layers of history, thus shaping a new cultural landscape in the Mapocho valley. Over a period of three years the mayor was able to change the scale and appearance of the capital city and its residential outskirts with a pragmatic set of works (although some of them were not executed) and equally effective management skills. This urban structure was consolidated around the date of the centennial of the independence in 1910. Many other actions were to accompany this effort with contributions added and materialized over this new order, all of them in debt to the original operation.