[citation needed] Cerdà was a multi-faceted man who, in pursuit of his vision, gave up a steady job in the civil engineering service, stood for election and became a member of the Cortes (the Spanish Parliament); drafted useful ground-breaking legislation, drew up a detailed topographical survey map of Barcelona's surroundings, and wrote a theoretical treatise to support each of his major planning projects.

His street layout and grid plan were optimized to accommodate pedestrians, carriages, horse-drawn trams, urban railway lines (as yet unheard-of), gas supply and large-capacity sewers to prevent frequent floods, without neglecting public and private gardens and other key amenities.

The latest technical innovations were incorporated in his designs if they could further the cause of better integration, but he also came up with remarkable new concepts of his own, including a logical system of land readjustment that was essential to the success of his project, and produced a thorough statistical analysis of working-class conditions at the time, which he undertook in order to demonstrate the ills of congestion.

[citation needed] Cerdà's plan for Barcelona underwent two major revisions; the second version, approved by the Spanish government at the time, is the one still recognizable in the layout of today's Eixample, though the low height of buildings and the gardens within every city block were soon dispensed with by politicians inclined toward property speculation.[who?]

Many of the Catalan architects of his time opposed Cerdà's ideas, even accusing him of promoting socialism; in the end, however, they designed the Modernista façades that brought fame to the district.