Abstract

During the sixteenth-century when the Spaniards were colonizing the New World, they built a network of urban centres that followed a specific template in their layout and organization. Known as gridiron, or ordered cities, these urban centres had a checkerboard design with streets that intersected at ninety degrees. Built to express Spanish rationality and superiority over the natives and hinterlands of the New World, the gridiron city was an imported urban plan that did not exist in Europe at the time. Sixteenth-century European capitals were chaotic, organic and, medieval. Although the plans for the gridiron city originated in Europe, the space and economic conditions did not exist to remodel the cities on that continent. The New World however, offered the space, wealth and, slave labour needed for the gridiron concept to be realized. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis examines the conditions and communication systems that interwove and allowed for the implementation of the gridiron city in the New World. In part, this includes: a vast exploitable work force, the practice of the encomienda (a grant of land and slaves given to favoured conquistadors), Spanish bureaucracy, and the beginnings of a new era of thought in Europe.