The Evolution of Moral Planning in the City of México-Tenochtitlan

• Published in: Nuevas de Indias (Online) Vol. 2; p. 146
• Main Author: Serés, Guillermo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Spanish
• Published: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 22-12-2017
• Subjects: city square; colonial urbanism; humanistic design; indigenous Indian villages
• ISSN: 2462-7291; 2462-7291
• DOI: 10.5565/rev/nueind.26

I analyse the three great theoretical axes or foundational ideas regarding the new colonial city (grid planning, bucolicism, and the continuity of European urbanism), which were not completed in their entirety, as the original plan was “frustrated” and a return was then made to the city-square model. The city did not integrate the Indians within its core; rather, it confined them in its spatial restraint, and the vaunted bucolicism petered out into outskirts of a less than “civilised” kind. What was, in effect, the pillaging of earlier civilisations served only to adorn or complement this new urban planning.