Foreign companies in the technification of the city at the beginning of the 20th century

Abstract

This work frames the process of technification of cities from the planning and design of public works to build water networks and clean up urban infrastructures in the early twentieth century. From the advances made in the Industrial Revolution and the technical transformation of processes through new materials and scientific processes, professionals moved away from artisanal systems to incorporate regulations and tools in the search for healthy environments, free of epidemics and diseases. Thus, the advances achieved by science were applied by European and North American companies that through the development of infrastructures focused on achieving productivity, efficiency and comfort, took the city as a stage to massively introduce cutting-edge technologies and tools. In this scenario, the British company Pearson & Son evidences the foreign intervention as the means through which the public service networks that unleashed the greatest urbanization processes in the first decades of the 20th century were developed.