ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the key features of the built environment-buildings and urban
forms-that facilitated economic exploitation of the Americas by European colonial
powers. Architectural styles are discussed as markers of ethnicity and socio-economic
class. Forms of hybridity-“creole” and “New World Baroque”—are highlighted. The
chapter begins with a discussion of economic history as it relates to the colonial Amer-
icas. The relationships among emerging concepts of political and economic liberty and
the colonization of the Americas are also presented as fundamental to the history of its
urbanization. As the administration of territories in the Americas evolved, the patterns of
colonization introduced in Chapter 4 settled in or shifted in response to social, economic,
or political contingencies. This chapter argues that these more mature versions of colo-
nial architecture and urbanism-some oppressive (plantation villages), some permissive
(lawless port cities)—set the stage for various liberation movements at the end of the
18th Century.
