For today’s journey on Google Maps we will be visiting the
capital city of the Ancient Aztec Civilization, Tenochtitlan, also known as the
large metropolis Mexico City. Spanish colonizer Cortes arrived at this very
populous city in the early 1500’s, and colonized the area and destroyed the
aboriginal population. When looking at the objective of this blog, I must
compare these two important cities, from a representation of the past and
present, by analyzing the size and scale of the cities.
Tenochtitlan and present day
Mexico City have many similarities. First, Tenochtitlan was a political and
cultural center much like Mexico City is today. It is said that the Aztec City
is actually buried underneath Mexico City today. Within my ability to view
these places, Mexico City seems to incorporate a much larger expanse than
Tenochtitlan. According to some specific stats found from research, Mexico City
includes 21 million people in the metropolitan area, and nearly 1500 square
kilometers of space. As for Tenochtitlan, it had nearly 225 000 people in the
area which was a lot of people for a city back then, but only covered an area
of approximately 10 square kilometers, which shows the greater density and
centrality. The larger population may have resulted in a more stable economy.
It
seems as if the growth of Mexico City is rooted from the Aztec City from the
past. Tenochtitlan was the largest city of the time with power and beauty to
its array of attributes. Mexico replicates this characteristic from a modern
day example, as Mexico City is the largest metropolitan city in the western
hemisphere today, and has major influence over the neighbouring areas just as
Tenochtitlan did. I can see that the size of these areas, the unique
organizational features of both areas, and the dominance and grandeur is
relevant in both cities.
The colonization of Tenochtitlan
is in direct line with the importance that the great city stood for at the
time. That Mexico City was founded on the remains of the Aztec city suggest
that the Spaniards wanted to erase all traces of the old empire. The city’s
elegant beauty, and strong size, was very influential to the Europeans. Cortes
believed that this already fairly developed city would stand as a good place to
create the capital city, and in addition the island interior for the city is
spatially perfect for control and organization. The city and takeover shows the
power that comes along with the unique land shape and the overall size. I
believe Cortes was intelligent in choosing this site for development because it
was a large area, had an inland mass which could act as protection as well as
the control of power, and it could stand out from the rest of the area, making
it a more visually pleasing setting.
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