Arturo Soria y Mata

Who was Arturo Soria y Mata?

Arturo Soria y Mata was an internationally important Spanish urban planner whose work remains highly inspirational today. He is most well known for his concept of the Linear City for application to Madrid and elsewhere. He studied the civil engineer career, but he didn't finish it.

Arturo Soria y Mata's idea of the Linear City replaced the traditional idea of the city as a centre and a periphery with the idea of constructing linear sections of infrastructure - roads, railways, gas, water, etc.- along an optimal line and then attaching the other components of the city along the length of this line. As compared to the concentric diagrams of Ebenezer Howard and other in the same period, Soria's linear city creates the infrastructure for a controlled process of expansion that joins one growing city to the next in a rational way, instead of letting them both sprawl.