The «El Cercado del Marqués», from Frustrated Vocation of Garden City to Gentrification in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife

Abstract

The garden city «El Cercado del Marqués» arose as a result of the urban design project for an estate located on the outskirts of the historic centre of San Cristóbal de La Laguna (Santa Cruz de Tenerife). This dates from the first third of the 20th century, and was carried out on the initiative of a private individual (a doctor by profession) who commissioned the young Canarian architect J.E. Marrero Regalado, who had recently arrived from Madrid, to develop the area. The site had the ideal conditions for the construction of a garden city, but the promoter’s interest soon took a new direction, as he limited himself to selling the plots that emerged from his division to private individuals, who built new residences based on projects carried out by the most prestigious Canarian architects of the time, who used the architectural styles in vogue at the time: regionalist, eclectic and rationalist. Until the 1960s, urban plans and regulations regulated open building with landscaped areas throughout the colony, but from 1965 onwards, there was a change in the type of building on one of the plots, which became a closed building for collective use. A few years ago, a large real estate construction company bought this plot, where it intends to build a residential building with garages. If this construction were to be carried out, it would change the existing urban morphology of the entire garden city due to the increase in traffic, parking, reduction of green spaces... This would open the doors to a process of gentrification of the entire area and the disappearance of the garden city «El Cercado del Marqués».