Pierre L'Enfant and the foundation of a city with a strong symbolic value

Abstract

In the field of urban studies, research on the history of planned cities has focused mainly on explaining the factors that led to the emergence of those cities; identifying the options underlying their urban design; as well as understanding the way in which the initial stages of their planning subsequently conditioned their social, economic, cultural and political dynamics. Less common, however, are the studies concerned with revealing the main influences and references that underpinned the urban planning options followed by the planners and visionaries of these new cities. This article, favoring a historicist approach based on archival research and literature review, demonstrates how, in the case of Pierre L'Enfant's 1791 Plan for Washington DC, it was deterministically influenced by his biography and the socio-political context in which he lived, but also by other urban planning exercises to whose sketches he had access or whose practical implementation he had the opportunity to know.

Keywords: Urban History. Urbanism. Urban Planning. City.