1 5 th INTERNATIONAL PLANNING HISTORY SOCIETY CONFERENCE TAMING THE RIVER AND BUILDING THE CITY: INFRASTRUCTURE AND PUBLIC SPACE IN SANTIAGO DE CHILE 1750-1810 FERNANDO PÉREZ OYARZUN1 Address: Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Estudios Urbanos. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. El Comendador 1970, Providencia, Santiago, Chile. e-mail:
[email protected] ABSTRACT The paper poses the question about the possible relationships between infrastructure and public space. It examines the case of Santiago de Chile during the second half of the eighteenth century, when borbonic policies promoted a significant infrastructure building process. It underlines the ways in which they were made possible thanks to the availability of new technologies and human resources, including architects and military engineers. Special focus is made on those works connected to watercourses, particularly those attached to Mapocho River, including bridges and protecting walls (Tajamares) against the usual floods suffered by the city .The generation of public spaces connected to the Tajamares seem to have been intentional in a project that anticipates further operations happened during the 19th century, when the canalization of the river actually happened. 18th and 19th century attitudes question some of the current infrastructure constructions, in which specialization seems to dominate without much concern about the consequences of those infrastructures upon the urban fabric. This attitude causes the loose of the opportunity to detonate a more holistic and balanced urban development. INFRASTRUCTURE AND CITY FABRIC The role of infrastructure in urban development has been strongly underlined in contemporary city planning literature (Baxter, 2001). Massive effects of transport infrastructure, such as motorways, underground railways or service networks, upon urban form and life, seem today widely accepted.