Arturo Soria y Mata published the Ciudad Lineal Project in 1892, on which he had been working for 10 years. The aim of the plan was to surround the outskirts of the capital and join it to the towns that had been annexed between 1948 and 1984: Canillas, Chamartín and Hortaleza, among others.
An elongated town built on both sides of a street or central avenue 40 metres wide, with housing on both sides. The idea obeyed the slogan: “For each family, a home. In each home, a vegetable patch and garden”. Soria put forward the idea of linear construction, joining two towns with buildings that changed the urban approach.
The project obeyed the new ideals of the time, since from the second half of the 19th century, sociologists, doctors, hygienists and writers had been denouncing the serious deficiencies of industrial cities. Therefore, the ideal sought to reinsert nature, combining countryside and city. The aim was to achieve some of the proposals of the plan by Arturo Soria, such as isolating houses within their gardens, limiting the height of buildings and the distances between houses and the street, etc.
In 1894 the Madrid Urbanisation Company was incorporated to build in the Ciudad Lineal area, although it was dissolved shortly afterwards due to a lack of resources. The crisis affected many workers at the time, and the project was suspended following the death of Arturo Soria, and completely abandoned due to the Civil War.
The subsequent modifications somewhat perverted the project, and only a few of the original detached houses remain in the area between Avenida de América and the Aragon Highway.
Among the more recent buildings, the Eduardo Torroja, Club de Stella and the detached houses designed by the architects Coderch and Valls in 1958 stand out.
