Urban Planning Characteristics In 16th Century Yucatan: “Regular” Grids For Idealized Repúblicas”

Merida, Yucatan, Mexico was formally founded in 1542 as a república, or Spanish municipality, with a series of acts and ceremonies. Its site was the extensive, ruined Maya city of Tiho. Spaniards believed that ordered urban planning was instrumental in implementing the material common good and social well being of the Spanish citizens in the initially ethnically divided urban area. Some characteristics were impacted by the underlying Maya city. The plan was also associated with the assessment of ecology as means to sustain hispanic civilization in the challenging ecology of the Yucatan.

The parchment drawing of Merida’s grid did not survive, but the linking between social objectives and physical planning was well documented. Its probable shape was recounted verbally and is documented in surviving architecture. There were some anomalies in the grid, probable vestiges of Maya Tího. Some characteristics were consistent with the later 1573 royal ordinances for urban planning, and others were different, illuminating the evolution of sixteenth-century Spanish planning and some influences by prehispanic urbanism.