Postwar & Welfare-Modernist (1945–1975)

Santiago PRIS

1960 · Chile · Latin America · Regional & polycentric planning · Planned by Ministry of Public Works (Honold, Parrochia, Correa, Bedrack)
Aerial view of Santiago, the metropolitan area structured by the 1960 Plan Regulador Intercomunal de Santiago (PRIS).
Aerial view of Santiago, the metropolitan area structured by the 1960 Plan Regulador Intercomunal de Santiago (PRIS). · CC BY-SA

Core idea

Intercommunal plan & containment

Why it matters

Early Chilean metropolitan planning

Description

The Plan Regulador Intercomunal de Santiago (PRIS) of 1960, prepared within Chile's Ministry of Public Works by a team including Juan Honold and Juan Parrochia, was the first statutory plan to treat Greater Santiago as a single intercommunal unit. It defined an urban growth limit to contain sprawl, reserved corridors for arterial roads and future metro lines, zoned industry, and coordinated land use across the municipalities of the capital.

Significance

PRIS marks the beginning of modern metropolitan planning in Chile and was among the earlier Latin American attempts at statutory region-wide regulation. Its growth-containment boundary and infrastructure reservations shaped Santiago's development for decades, including the alignment of the later metro, and its subsequent loosening under liberalised planning regimes has made it a touchstone in debates about containment versus market-led expansion.

What shaped it

Sources

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