City planning, map and numbers. Urban space in project between 19th and 20th centuries

di Enrico Chapel
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 45 (2014), p. 29

At the time of more and more perfect measure and representation of the territory follows trivialization and proliferation of plans. In Nineteenth century appear Atlases that dissect the image of the city, and statistical mapping that allows to represent structural dimensions of the urban phenomenon: population density, hygiene and functionality of spaces, services allocation, traffic flows, etc. The paper aims to show that urban planning was born during this process of cartographic production and statistical measurement of urban context. This course introduce a new form of urban design which records concepts such «standard» and «prediction» in the iconic order of planning. To what extent accumulation of maps and numbers in the Nineteenth and Twentieth century gave rise to modern urban project? Keywords: Cartography, City planning, Statistics, Measure, City, Plan