Arturo Soria ( Madrid , 1844 – ID, 1920 ). He was a self-taught Spanish architect, urban planner and engineer. He is popularly known for being the designer and main builder of the Ciudad Lineal , located in Madrid at the end of the 19th century . This ambitious proposal was intended to solve the many problems arising from the growth of cities after the industrial revolution.
biographical notes
Arturo Soria was born in Madrid in 1844 , the son of a liberal Aragonese tailor who had participated in the revolutions at the beginning of the 19th century . Arturo Soria tried unsuccessfully to enter the Faculty of Engineering after finishing high school. In 1864 he got a job as a telegraph assistant in Santander, where he only stayed a few months due to the death of his mother in Madrid. In the capital he agreed to an administrative position in the offices of the Ferrocarril del Mediodía de Atocha, an activity that he combined with studies at the Escuela del Catastro and with private mathematics classes that he gave to high school students.
During his youth he took part in anti-monarchist meetings and demonstrations together with friends such as the Melero brothers, Felipe Ducazcal or the journalist Eusebio Blanco , among others. In June 1866 , after his intervention in the uprising at the San Gil sergeants’ barracks , he only managed to escape punishment for being the brother-in-law of the Marquis of Santiago, at that time chief of halberdiers. After completing his studies at the Cadastre School in 1867 , he went on to work at Navalcarnero (Madrid) and La Granja (Segovia).
At that time he began to show some of his inventions, such as the automatic printing theodolite. He participated in the conspiracies prior to the September 1868 Revolution from groups related to republicanism and under the leadership of figures such as Cristino Martos , Ruiz Zorrilla or Manuel Becerra . In the last years of the 1860s he held various secretary positions in the civil governments of Lérida, Orense and La Coruña. In 1870 he entered Freemasonry and participated in the activities of its Pythagorean societies under the pseudonym Solon.
A year later he was assigned to the Civil Government of Puerto Rico , where he officially confirmed the decree for the abolition of slavery promoted by his friend Ruiz Zorrilla . He was a progressive deputy for one of the districts of the island, and later participated in the extraordinary session of the Cortes in which the resignation of Amadeo I of Savoy ( 1870 – 1873 ) was accepted and the First Republic ( 1873 – 1874 ) was proclaimed . ). Arriving a year before this event in Madrid, he associated himself with the engineers José Calatayud and Vicente Gisbert, and requested the concession of the second tramway line in the capital (he had already participated in the inauguration of the first in 1871 ), destined to unite Pacífico and Chamberí.
From 1886 he dedicated himself to his project of the Linear City, influenced by the ideas of Ildefonso Cerdà . This innovative project, which sought to solve the problems of hygiene, overcrowding and transportation that afflicted cities, consisted of a city articulated on both sides of a wide railway line, and allowed the organized expansion of the city, which in this way would pass to become a backbone of the territory.
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