CONSIDERATIONS ON TYPOLOGY OF SPANISH COLONIAL CITY MODEL IN CUBA

Abstract

Authors have been conducting the field research under the title ‘Origin, Transformation, Alteration and Conservation of Urban Space of Colonial cities’ since 1999. This paper discusses the characteristics of the Spanish Colonial cities created in the Cuba Island. In the period of the Spanish urbanism in America, approximately a sixty of colonial cities were established in Cuba. This study on these cities has been accomplished based on the analysis of old maps corresponding to colonial Spanish period. As cartographic database, 916 images and maps from AGI (The Archive of the Indies in Seville- Archivo de Indias de Sevilla), are used for analysis.In the analysis of the city maps, we classify them into several types according to the criteria of urban items such as location, urban, plaza, blocks, streets, measures, plots etc., which Law of Indies describes.