Buenos Aires

The power of anticipation, 1900 1920

Abstract

This article is a synthesis of the research about the imagination of the urban future in Buenos Aires. In order to build the horizon of urban expectations the article analyzes and interprets the circulation in Buenos Aires, between 1900 and 1920, of an large selection of visual images and ideas containing anticipations, aspirations  and expectations for the future of the city, including both the ones produced locally and in other countries. The core of this research is the comparative analysis of two groups of anticipations of the future: those produced by the professional field as they were disseminated in specialized journals, and the extra disciplinary ones, this is to say the visual images and ideas produced by illustrators, journalists and writers as published in the new illustrated magazines. The research includes also five different groups of anticipations: the technological; those produced in New York; the proposals of futurism; the local utopias; and the ideas about the urban future included in a selection of proposals by intellectuals and social and political reformers. This comparative analysis allows to integrate the horizon of expectations of the urban future, identifying a selection of relevant qualities exposed in their similarities and differences. Finally, the article explores some of the correlations it is possible to establish between both models of the urban future -the vertical city of the world to come, and the lettered plans- and the transformation of the city in that time and in decades after.