T.U.S.C.A. was a transportation and land use plan for Puerto Rico, created in 1970-1971.
T.U.S.C.A. stands for “Transportation and Urban Settlement Combined Action”. It was a visionary transportation and land use plan prepared by Architect Etienne Dusart, heading up a team of architects, landscape architects and transportation planners and engineers during 1970-71. The plan was prepared by a team of planners, engineers, and landscape architects, headed by Etienne Dusart for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico's Planning Board. Due to the unwillingness of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to invest the necessary resources in the project, the plan was never implemented. Twenty years later, David Fairchild, one of the original planners for T.U.S.C.A. headed up a plan to design the 'Tren Urbano' heavy rail transit system, but only for the metro area of San Juan, and without the land use component of the original plan. [1]
Preparation of the T.U.S.C.A. plan was financed jointly by both the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT Contract No DOT-UT-402) and by the Government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Its purpose was to connect the cities and towns around the entire coastal plain of the Island of Puerto Rico with a transit system and to construct a series of new towns served by that transit system.
See "The color of politics: Red, blue … and green" by Susan Fairbanks, San Juan Star, July 2, 2007. A report for this pioneering study was published by the Puerto Rico Planning Board in 1971: "TUSCA Project-Preliminary Planning Study", 1971, 534 pages. That report is available from TRIS (PB-211 841).
Transportation in Puerto Rico includes a system of roads, highways, freeways, airports, ports and harbors, and railway systems, serving a population of approximately 4 million year-round. It is funded primarily with both local and federal government funds.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is an American architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois. In 1939, they were joined by engineer John Merrill. The firm opened its second office, in New York City, in 1937 and has since expanded internationally, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., London, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seattle, and Dubai.
The Tren Urbano is a 10.7-mile (17.2 km) fully-automated rapid transit system that serves the municipalities of San Juan, Guaynabo, and Bayamón, in Puerto Rico. The Tren Urbano consists of 16 stations operating on 10.7 miles (17.2 km) of track along a single line. In 2022, the system had a ridership of 2,453,100, or about 10,800 per weekday as of the fourth quarter of 2022.
Condado is an oceanfront, tree-lined, pedestrian-oriented upper middle to upper class community in Santurce. It is one of the forty subbarrios of Santurce in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Land use planning is the process of regulating the use of land by a central authority. Usually, this is done to promote more desirable social and environmental outcomes as well as a more efficient use of resources. More specifically, the goals of modern land use planning often include environmental conservation, restraint of urban sprawl, minimization of transport costs, prevention of land use conflicts, and a reduction in exposure to pollutants. In the pursuit of these goals, planners assume that regulating the use of land will change the patterns of human behavior, and that these changes are beneficial. The first assumption, that regulating land use changes the patterns of human behavior is widely accepted. However, the second assumption - that these changes are beneficial - is contested, and depends on the location and regulations being discussed.
Frederick "Fred" Peter Salvucci is an American civil engineer and educator, who specializes in transportation issues. Salvucci was the Secretary of Transportation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under Governor Michael Dukakis, serving a total of 12 years. He was a Senior Lecturer of Transportation Planning and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Santurce is a barrio or district in the municipality of San Juan. Its population in 2020 was 69,469. It is also the biggest and most populated of all the barrios in the capital city with a bigger population than most municipalities of Puerto Rico and one of the most densely populated areas of the island.
Rail transport in Puerto Rico currently consists of a 10.7-mile (17.2 km) passenger metro system in the island's metropolitan area of San Juan. Its history can be traced back to the mid-19th century with the construction of a limited passenger line in Mayagüez. Between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Puerto Rico's rail transport system expanded significantly, becoming one of the largest rail systems in the Caribbean at the time thanks to an economic boom in agriculture industries, especially the sugar cane industry. The rail system was expanded to include passenger travel with a direct line from the island's northern capital of San Juan to the western and southern cities and towns, greatly improving travel and communication within the island. However, the entire system was soon overshadowed by the arrival of the automobile, and by the 1950s was completely abandoned. Small remnants of this system still exist in some parts of Puerto Rico, some conserved for tourism purposes.
Urban, city, or town planning is the discipline of planning which explores several aspects of the built and social environments of municipalities and communities:
Eldridge Hirst Lovelace was a city planner and author who prepared comprehensive plans for many large US cities.
A site plan or a plot plan is a type of drawing used by architects, landscape architects, urban planners, and engineers which shows existing and proposed conditions for a given area, typically a parcel of land which is to be modified. Sites plan typically show buildings, roads, sidewalks and paths/trails, parking, drainage facilities, sanitary sewer lines, water lines, lighting, and landscaping and garden elements.
An urban planner is a professional who practices in the field of town planning, urban planning or city planning.
José Miguel “Pepe” Izquierdo Encarnación served as the 19th Secretary of State of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
San Antón is one of the 31 barrios of the municipality of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Along with Canas Urbano, Machuelo Abajo, Magueyes Urbano, and Portugués Urbano, San Antón is one of the municipality's five originally rural barrios that are now also part of the urban zone of the city of Ponce. It is totally enclosed within the Ponce city limits. It was founded in 1818.
The Professional College of Engineers and Land Surveyors of Puerto Rico —Spanish: Colegio de Ingenieros y Agrimensores de Puerto Rico (CIAPR)— is the association mandated by law that groups all professionals that call, present, or represent themselves as "engineers" or "land surveyors" in Puerto Rico. As with many other countries, the profession of engineering and land surveying is both regulated and licensed in Puerto Rico; while another entity, namely the Puerto Rico Examining Board of Engineers and Land Surveyors, regulates the profession and emits its corresponding licenses, the Puerto Rico Annotated Codes and Act 173 of 1988 requires that all licensed engineers and land surveyors in Puerto Rico be members of the College. The quasi-public nonprofit corporation was established on May 15, 1938, through Act 319 of 1938 in order to bring together professionals with the right to practice engineering, architecture, and surveying in Puerto Rico.
Salvador Padilla, was a Puerto Rican politician who served as Puerto Rico Governor Rafael Hernandez Colon's last Secretary of State of Puerto Rico from January 1992 to January 2, 1993. Padilla Escabi studied in the school's public system and then earned a BA in agriculture and mechanical arts from the University of Puerto Rico. He then graduated from the University of Cornell and in 1958 is the first Puerto Rican to get a PhD in planning. Salvador Padilla began his military career in the United States Army Reserve in 1942 making it to the rank of Sergeant. He earned his commission as a 2nd lieutenant via the Army Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. He also served as Puerto Rico Adjutant General of the Puerto Rico National Guard. Mayor General Salvador M. Padilla Escabi was the founder of the Language Center at Fort Allen, Puerto Rico. He died on July 21, 2010 in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico.
San Juan Bay is the bay and main inlet adjacent to Old San Juan in northeastern Puerto Rico. It is about 3.5 miles (5.6 km) in length, the largest body of water in an estuary of about 97 square miles (250 km2) of channels, inlets and eight interconnected lagoons. The San Juan Bay is home to the island's busiest harbor and its history dates back to at least 1508.
Bahía de Ponce is a bay in Barrio Playa, Ponce, Puerto Rico. The Bay is home to the most important commercial harbor on the Puerto Rico south coast and the second largest in Puerto Rico. The Cardona Island Light is located on the Bay to mark the way into the Bay from the nearby Caja de Muertos Light.