Trazado urbano y arquitectura en ciudades portuarias en Chile, un modelo de habitar único

Abstract

In order to understand urban and architectural qualities which characterize Chilean port cities, we address their development since the arrival of the first European sailors until the Independence from Spain at the dawn of the nineteenth century. From then on the nation experiences a strong and continuous development due to which, Chile, as many other countries, is included in a global exchange and commercial processes as a raw material provider for the industrialization processes, and purchase of manufactured foreign imports, having port cities as leading actors in the handling of products. This development starts to diminish in the first decades of the twentieth century, due to the opening of the Panama Canal and the invention of synthetic nitrate, time in which our port cities, enter a period of stagnation, which thus allows us to still read architectural traces of this unique form of life and valuable past which we should consider in planning the development of their future.