ABSTRACT
Tuan (1974) explains how medieval monks and hermits contributed to the Western concept of wilderness as a place of desolation and contemplation, of demons and of saintly discipline, which especially influenced the conquest of America. In the liminal process of expansion over ‘virgin’ territories nature, wilderness and indigenous cultures were the foil of ideals of culture and domination, and in this encounter with vast vacant lands, a void of unprecedented dimensions, the idea of the city was re-shaped. This process was to a great extent conditioned by wider historical events, but diverse levels of agency can also be identified to have a compelling role across the narrative: those of social groups and power structures, of nature, of symbolism-laden structures and of urban spaces themselves.
