building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

The first America
A short premise is required to place the first events of exploration and settlement
of the coastal territories of North America into context.
The historiography and sociological and political literature about American city have
dissected and analysed in detail the decisive aspects of the first colonial settlements
on the Atlantic coast. Philological expertise has now reconstructed how the first
settlements were founded and their significance derives naturally from the
economic role played by the formation of the colonial empires of France, Spain and
above all England. Thus, the foundation of the first towns was based for practical
and symbolic reasons on concepts of Europe’s experiences of town planning.
Traditional town planning in the Old World was, therefore, the background on
which to root multiple needs and stimuli, which often differed greatly from those in
Europe. These towns took on a shape which reflected the purpose of creating a
common market, a controlling base (not merely a military outpost), a place from
which to govern and exploit the territory, according to the talents of the settlers.
However, in the initial years the very shape of the towns was based on defensive
criteria against possible external enemies.
The United States began as a sort of extension of Europe, subject also to a cultural
dependency, which remains evident today especially on the East Coast, where
contacts with the old homeland were more direct, and where intellectual influences
had less possibility of being diluted by contact with the great prairies of the Mid‐
West and the endless deserts of the West.
However, as the years passed, reciprocal cultural influences mixed until they
merged to create a regenerated awareness and a latent consciousness, so very
different from that of their countries of origin. The historian Maldwyn A. Jones
clearly described the spiritual essence of the new‐born American man:
Long after they became politically independent, Americans remained in
a state of cultural (and to a lesser extent, economic) dependence upon
Europe, reading European books, aping European fashions, drawing on
European technological “know how” and recruiting European labour to
till their fields and develop their mines and factories. Yet even the first
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