Urban Engineering: Concepts and Challenges

2.2 Consolidation
In February 1911 Eng. Victor da Silva Freire gave a keynote address at the Guild of 
Escola
Politécnica
of São Paulo in which he advanced a theoretical justification for the proposal
which formed part of a series of 
avant-garde
town planning projects submitted by the
Municipal Works Management Division. This proposal focused on the need to respect
fundamental artistic and traditional principles and the non-static nature of cities which, he
believed, could be transformed by designing and applying specific street patterns (Freire,
1911). Freire, as Professor of Engineering at the 
Escola Politécnica
of São Paulo, was a
Urban Engineering: Concepts and Challenges
3
devotee of the International Congresses for City Construction, which he attended regularly
in Europe.
According to Simões Jr. (2004), Freire was the first to introduce the concept of town planning
to Brazil. He was also the first engineer to treat this as a science rather than as a
straightforward technical approach to street planning (as had hitherto been the case). Freire
was the first to introduce a heightened theoretical approach to the subject – an approach
which was becoming increasingly employed in other parts of the world.
The principal influences at the time were three European urban experts: Camillo Sitte (1843-
1903, Austrian), Joseph Stübben (1845-1936, German) and Eugène Hénard (1849-1923,
French). All these were considered to be the forerunners of modern ‘urban science’. In
addition to these three, the influence of the Englishman Raymond Unwin (1863-1940), was
also notable. Unwin was responsible for Cia City in São Paulo (1912) built on the lines of the
Garden Cities concept formulated by Ebenezer Howard. Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928) put
forward the idea of building new cities with factories and gardens, The Garden Cities with
houses built near to workplaces and the city center and within easy reach of green space.
One of the main features of this design concept was the layout of the road and street systems
which generally followed existing topography, however hilly or winding, thereby creating a
more ‘natural’ environment.
Sitte, author of “Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen” (Building cities
based on artistic principles) was a harsh critic of Haussmaniana (the ‘grand monumentalist’
approach), preferring to think in terms of irregular and more artistically- inspired patterns
of streets and public squares. Baron Haussmann (1809-1891) was responsible for the
rehabilitation of parts of the city of Paris by planning major thoroughfares, laying down fine
parks and erecting a number of prestigious public buildings. Stübben, author of “Der
Städtebau” (The building of cities) was, on the other hand, primarily concerned with
questions of urban growth and issues touching on radial (spoke) and circumferential arterial
road systems, as well as building healthy environments and promoting keener awareness of
aesthetic factors. Hénard, author of “Études sur les transformations de Paris” (Studies on
transforming Paris), produced a number of solutions for developing and improving cities in
the course of his comparative work on the urban development of Paris, Moscow, London
and Berlin.
The word "urbanism" was employed for the first time in Brazil by Freire (1916). This is a
neologism of the French term 
urbanisme
which emerged earlier in the century (in 1910) and
which in turn was a translation of the English term ‘town planning’ (used for the first time
in England in 1906). Similar terms had already been employed in Germany since the mid-
19th century: 
stadtplan 
(city plans) and 
stadtbau
(city building). Thus ‘urbanism’, or town
planning, evolved into a modern urban science, reflecting the need to introduce a degree of
planning discipline as the result of the major changes taking place in cities caused by
industrialization and rapid population growth (Choay, 1965).
According to Freitag (2006), only with the advent of Le Corbusier (1887-1965) considered to
be the founding father of modern town planning, could "urbanism" be considered to have
become a universally accepted science, capable of providing practical solutions to the urban
problems emerging in the context of 20th century industrial society.
The first ‘urbanists’ in São Paulo were civil and architectural engineers. These individuals
left a clearly identifiable mark on the first examples of urban engineering in the growing city

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Methods and Techniques in Urban Engineering
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Military-trained engineers played an important role in the development of the city of São
Paulo and its hinterland, moving on from mapping and surveying the then "province" to
undertaking topographical surveys of the expanding urban area, designing roads and
railways and being closely involved in the construction of bridges, fortifications and public
buildings in general (Simões Jr., 1990).
The growing importance of these activities, which expanded in tandem with the population
upsurge in the interior of the state of São Paulo as a result of the coffee boom, pointed to an
urgent need to train more engineers. The latter began to be referred to, around this time, as
"civil engineers" given that the majority of the public works required were increasingly of a
non-military nature.
The 
Escola Politécnica
of São Paulo was established in 1893. This ran courses in civil,
industrial and agricultural engineering as well as a supplementary course in mechanics.
One year after its establishment the 
Escola
was also able to offer courses in architecture and
was entitled to award formal qualifications in accountancy, surveying and machinery
operation for students who managed to complete only part of its engineering courses
(Santos, 1985).
The first School of Engineering in Brazil to provide exclusively a course in civil engineering
was the 
Escola Politécnica
of Rio de Janeiro, established in 1874. The 
Escola
originated in
1792 with the creation of the Royal Academy of Artillery, Fortifications and Design in Rio de
Janeiro, which later (in 1810) became known as the Royal Military Academy. The Academy
was in the event staffed by the director and most of the members of the teaching corpus
who had previously worked at the Portuguese Royal Naval Academy, having arrived in
Brazil with the exiled Portuguese King João VI in 1808 (Pardal,1985). The second School to
be established was the Ouro Preto School of Mines (in 1876) which instituted a course on
mining and metallurgical engineering.
Other schools soon followed: the Pernambuco Engineering School (1895), the Mackenzie
Engineering Schools in São Paulo (1896), the Porto Alegre Engineering School (1896), the
Escola Politécnica
of Bahia (1897), the Belo Horizonte Free School of Engineering (1911), the
Paraná Engineering School (1912), the 
Politécnica
of Recife (1912), the Itajubá Electrical
Engineering and Technical School (1913), the Juiz de Fora Engineering School (1914), the
Military Engineering School in Rio de Janeiro (1928) and, finally, the Pará Engineering
School in 1931 (Telles, 1993).
The above schools aimed to train civil engineers to work in the burgeoning cities, where
they would be responsible for topographical surveys, all types and sizes of public and
private buildings, road systems, canals, water and sewage networks, as well as for the
conservation, planning and budgetary details involved in the public works that were an
inevitable product of the growth of Brazil's urban areas.