This research establishes that from 1831 onwards, large-scale landscape projects were conceived and built in Santiago in anticipation to an institutional planning only defined from 1939 onwards, thus guiding the transformation of the city from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.

In the first place, the work aspires to elucidate which were those sites and projects that, in their capacity to articulate geographic and artificial systems (pre-existing and proposed), led the processes of transformation of urban forms in the long term and before they were defined by official management plans.

Second, it argues that the projects that triggered those processes correspond to what today we would call projects of landscape architecture that organized territorial transformations capable of synchronizing relationships between proposed programs and imagined urban futures for Santiago.

Third, it establishes that the configuration of these landscapes was possible thanks to the action of public leaders who outlined critical positions of the urban condition, promoting the adoption of foreign models as a possible solution.

Finally, the work uses a contemporary interpretation of landscapes highlighting the notion of longue durée as an intrinsic condition of the landscape project. This long duration of design strategies coincides with the long duration of the landscape, which cannot be captured in a single moment because it is always becoming something, collecting its processes of creation, materialization, growth and decay.