Postwar & Welfare-Modernist (1945–1975)

Buenos Aires Plan Regulador

1958/62 · Argentina · Latin America · Regional & polycentric planning · Planned by Municipality of BA; Italo Luder et al.
'Plano Director' zoning and road-structure map of the Plan Regulador de Buenos Aires (organised 1958, approved 1962), showing density zones, green space and route hierarchy for the federal capital.
'Plano Director' zoning and road-structure map of the Plan Regulador de Buenos Aires (organised 1958, approved 1962), showing density zones, green space and route hierarchy for the federal capital. · Copyrighted archival plan scan, used with credit · Oficina del Plan Regulador de Buenos Aires (OPRBA), via Observatorio Metropolitano AMBA (CPAU)

Core idea

Avenues and subcenters

Why it matters

Guided expansion of a giant metropolis

Description

The Plan Regulador for Buenos Aires, prepared by the municipality's planning office in the late 1950s and early 1960s with contributions from Itala Fulvia Villa, Juan Kurchan and other modernist architects, was a regulatory framework for the Argentine capital as it grew into one of the world's largest metropolises. It proposed a structure of major avenues, a hierarchy of subcentres, renewal of degraded central districts and coordination between the federal city and its expanding suburban ring.

Significance

The plan marked the institutionalisation of modern planning in Buenos Aires, translating CIAM-influenced ideas into municipal regulation for a metropolis of continental scale. Its emphasis on subcentres and structuring avenues shaped later metropolitan schemes for the region, and it stands in planning history as an important Latin American attempt to guide, rather than merely follow, explosive urban growth.

What shaped it

Plans it influenced

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.