Journal Article: Colonial Urban Planning and Land Structures in the Philippines 1521-1898

Pilar Chias y Tomas Abad, 2012
Escuela de Arquitectura, Universidad de Alcalá
Madrid, España

Abstract: The Spanish Colonial period in the Indies extends from 1492 to 1898, when last colonies - Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines - attained their independence. The Philippines depended on the Spanish Crown from 1521, the date of the first settlement on the island of Cebu.  More than 200 new cities were founded along the archipelago with the traditional grid structure, but some with other urban typologies have not been studied before. At the beginning they were mostly located on the coast and later became port cities, but the ensuing exploration of inland territories led to the construction of new settlements, later linked through a network of roads, railroads, and navigational routes. Based upon the ancient cartography of the Philippines that the authors recently discovered in the principal Spanish repositories, the present article studies the unexplored and unpublished fields of research, analyzing the different urban patters, as well as the territorial structures that were consolidated during the Spanish Colonial period in the Archipelago.

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Keywords: spanish colonies, urban typology, land planning, Philippine Islands, Islas Filipinas, ancient cartography