chapter one

Master Plan

What is a Master Plan?

The question emerges after profound reflection;

It is not a simple map.

It is something deeper, almost ancestral: a long-term vision, a strategic framework for the evolution of an urban area, a neighborhood, an entire city, or a metropolis that does not yet exist.

It is man’s attempt to impose order onto the chaos of urban growth.

Streets, buildings and parks are brought back into a single, coherent system. Yet, behind this apparent rationality pulses an ancient tension: the desire to control that which is by nature, unpredictable.