The “vértigo horizontal” and an urban gridiron:
Buenos Aires old streetcar network diagram revamped
Find below more about the diagram and the story behind it
I discovered some time ago an old and outstanding map of streetcar routes of the city of Buenos Aires. This map is in the digital collections of the Biblioteca Mariano Moreno, the National Library of the Argentine Republic. This map is only 38cm wide by 42cm high, and I never saw or touched the physic copy that lies somewhere on a shelve, in a row among countless other rows, in the guts of this library.
The map is dated from 1924 and signed by two individuals: C. Di Paolo and H. Pares. The routes are distinguished by companies, through two variables: color and the grain of the lines.
This map has something different for its time, as it would have today, in its way of depicting the network; this is helped by the urban layout of the city. It looks like a diagram rather than a map in the most traditional sense, that’s what immediately appealed to me.
Besides the title of the document, “Plano central de los tranvías de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires”, composed mechanically, all the labels were drawn by hand, so the route signs (numbers and letters) are often illegible or dubious because there are too many variations in the drawing; the medium resolution of the only image available for consultation does not help either.
My desire to see it better and follow the paths of those numerous routes in this grid pattern was so strong that, frustrated by these shortcomings, I decided to design a document following the same principles.
This was the beginning of a new project.
As mentioned, the resolution of the scan is not high, so the route reminders are not legible and it was rather difficult to figure each route and where it would go after several turns. I spent some time to figure out the exact number of routes depicted, as no index was provided and there were no other sources. Finally, after some days, I had completed the first draft which implied the numbering (or inventory of routes) as well. The initial result was crude.
Then, I was dissatisfied with the network of somewhat undifferentiated lines I had right in front of me, but this result was also up to me to change, since it was entirely drawn by me.
I changed the orientation (to the north) from the right to the top, I adjusted all the route lines and the underlying invisible streets in a more strict regular pattern than in the original map – or even in the reality for that matter – following which, it was time to go on with some other changes to dig out something different than the simple depiction of the route paths in this geometric maze.
As it happens, I was an avid reader of J. L. Borges in my teens and, as a matter of fact, this map was contemporaneous of the man – a young man of 25 at the time – in his own city, to which he came back three years earlier from his long European exile. This very city which inspired him so many fables and tales, several of them specially influenced by its tyrannical geometry; the ubiquitous esquinas (street corner, the word is the same in Portuguese), which will become allegoric. There is hardly a better maze than a perfect grid, only a desert can beat it, according to Borges. He was desperately looking to the south, beyond the sprawling suburbs, to reach the vastness of the Pampa, liberated from the countless cardinal crossroads and their corollary porteños tropes: the recurring four corners.
Back to the geometry of this territory: in fact, very few routes follow the same street for long, they turn several times, their paths are way more convoluted than it appears. As many streets being one-way, many routes turn out entirely circulars, distorted ones, but circulars all the same.
I decided to adapt the thickness of every segment to the number of routes that are travelling along, to give an image of the intensity roaming this flat grid, which conceals a vibrant urban life of nearly 2 million people in the mid-20s.
This made a lot of segments to treat, a lot of routes to figure (84), a lot of possible errors to rectify, and eventually a quite different drawing appeared.
I chose to handle differently some sections and all the outlying area, I extended slightly the land covered. I also added several points of interest and landmarks.
I keep the original restraint, which suits me perfectly, in the use of only two colors, black and red, as well as choosing to draw rigorously nothing but the transit routes.
Progressively a thriving network, reflecting a thriving city, was emerging through a vivid framework of movements, it was not just a large graph any more.
That is what I hope I have achieved in doing this specific schematic map, and what I hope you will see too.
Design and text by Aurélien Boyer-Moraes
NB: this diagram covers the central part of the large city. Limits: N, Parque Las Heras; W, Parque Rivadavia, Calle Senillosa, Av. La Plata; S, Almirante Brown, Parque Patricios, Calle Uspallata.
