Reconstructing the General Plan of Valencia and its belt (1939-1946)

Abstract

The General Urban Plan of Valencia of 1946 has traditionally been considered as the first regional planning in this Mediterranean area. However, despite its celebrity, it is still a largely unknown instrument. Very few of its original documents have reached our days, which has contributed to the discussion about the first metropolitan coordination in Spain has been relegated to oblivion. Contributing to the recovery of that debate is the main objective of this research.
Based on the compilation and comparison of several unpublished and unrelated sources to date (both graphic and written), this article rescues the history of the elaboration of the Plan, establishing also a hermeneutic framework for its documentary reconstruction and its relation with other European referents.
After the analysis, the great leap in quality in the technical and methodological field was verified that was the Plan in its time. Finally, a list-summary is proposed as a hypothetical original index, from which to undertake the reintegration of the documentation, currently scattered in different official files or even disappeared.
Supported by the contextualization of recent documentary findings, the research is made available to public bodies and researchers: its study challenges us to confront territorial planning today with the big picture magnanimity it was first approached almost eighty years ago.