The tecnical and the political: the engineers of Polytechnic School and the institutionalization of urban planning in São Paulo

Abstract

This research aims to discuss the formation of the urban planning framework and its institutionalization, from the experiences inserted in São Paulo, after the creation of the Department of Urban Planning at the turn of the nineteenth century to the twentieth. A few years before the creation of this department, also gave the creation of the Polytechnic School, founded in 1893 in São Paulo, to form professional engineering and forging thus increasing technical staff both in the Municipality of São Paulo, as in the government of State of Sao Paulo. These engineering graduates from the Polytechnic School, from its work with the Department of Urban Planning in São Paulo, contributed to the formation of the framework of the Brazilian urbanism and its institutionalization as well as the dissemination of ideas modernizer to the cities. Some of these professionals also highlighted the political field, as the length of stay the same with the technical staff of the Department, as the arrival of some of the leadership of the Municipal Executive. Among which the Arthur Savoy mayors, Luiz Romeiro of Anhaia Mello Henrique Jorge Guedes, Francisco Machado de Campos, Fábio da Silva Prado, Jose Pires do Rio and Francisco Prestes Maia, who ruled São Paulo in the first half of the twentieth century. This research proposes to investigate from the efforts and the work developed by these engineers and other engineering professionals the front of the Department of Municipal Works relationship and overlap between the technical and political, so in order to verify the permeability between them and the influence of policy on technical issues. We seek thus elucidating the experiences that contributed to the institutionalization of city planning framework in Brazil, and the influence of the Polytechnic School forward ideas, actions and political positions of these technicians. (AU)