Eduardo Neira Alva. Aportes profesionales para el debate sobre el desarrollo territorial y la ecología urbana en América Latina, 1961-1998

Abstract

The exceptional professional career of Peruvian architect and urbanist Eduardo Neira Alva (1924-2005) was not only limited to Peru. Between 1960 and 1980, Neira worked with important Latin American institutions created to promote economic development in the countries of the region such us the Center of Development Studies (Cendes), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the Latin American and Caribbean Institute for Economic and Social Planning (ILPES). The positions he held enabled him to know professionals from several countries and di?erent ways and methods used to promote economic development in each reality. The main purpose of this article is to understand the development of his ideology and his contributions in Latin America. To do so, this research analyzes the most representative texts that Neira wrote in the aforementioned professional contexts (including both published and unpublished works) between 1961 and 1998. These texts reveal his eagerness to understand the link between architecture and human habitat, and his concern to «expand scales», from regional development to territorial planning, and discuss issues that had not been discussed before, such as eco-development.