La Plata is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires and of the partido La Plata. It has a population of 740,000 and its metropolitan area has 900,000 inhabitants. La Plata was planned and developed to serve as the provincial capital after the city of Buenos Aires was federalized in 1880. It was officially founded by Governor Dardo Rocha on 19 November 1882. Its construction is fully documented in photographs by Tomás Bradley Sutton. La Plata was renamed Eva Perón City (Ciudad Eva Perón) between 1952 and 1955. La Plata is a planned city, urban planning paradigm of the late 19th century. It is also an example of “hygiene”, which was becoming important in that time. Rocha decided to erect a new city to host the provincial government institutions and a university which had already been planned. Urban planner Pedro Benoit designed a city layout based on a rationalistconception of urban centers. The city has the shape of a square with a central park and two main diagonal avenues, north to south and east to west. In addition, there are numerous other shorter diagonal streets. This design is copied in a self-similar manner in small blocks of six by six blocks in length. For every six blocks, there is a small park or square. Other than the diagonal streets, all streets are on a rectangular grid and are numbered consecutively. Thus, La Plata is nicknamed “la ciudad de las diagonales” (city of diagonals). It is also called “la ciudad de los tilos” (city of linden trees), because of the large number of linden trees lining the many streets and squares. read more…
