From the Aragonese orthogonal city to the Spanish American squared city,as a process of innovation and diffusion conditioned by the utopia

Abstract

The innovation and diffusion process of the medieval gridded lay-out of the Crown of Aragón cities, from the orthogonality of the foundational map of Jaca (1076) to the grid pattern theorized by Eximeniç (1384), was moved to the New World from 1513, date of the Aragonese King, Fernando el Catolico Instrucción. The model is reformulated in the Mexican context (1523) towards a hierarchically gridded pattern, from the monumental Main Square under the prehispanic influence and a grater of the Catholic Utopie impact rather than the Reinaissance utopian ideal. A closer inspection of Gottman's antinomy reveals that the inspiration of the Apocalypse, found in the first grided city foundations, such as those of Tlxcala (1528), is more correspondent with the Spanish American colonization. This colonization started with the cities of the colonized territory articulation (as was traditional practice in the Crown of Aragon). This idea derived from the Book of Ezequiel which inspired the North American protestant colonization process in the 18th century, in which the territory is first distributed in regular portions, and then the city.