The Evolution of the Urban Acequia Landscape of the American Southwest

Abstract

[EN] This paper describes the evolution and erasure of the urban acequia landscape in three urban centers of the American Southwest. These cultural landscapes were first developed by Native American peoples in present day New Mexico, Arizona and California. In the late sixteenth century, expansion of New Spain into the region introduced acequia irrigation methods to establish permanent agricultural settlements. Further expansion of these systems occurred in the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries. Spanish settlement policies followed La Recopilación de Las Leyes de Las Indias which established design criteria for organizing acequia irrigation systems and the built environment. This study explicates the transformation and adaption of the urban acequia landscape from the settlement period under Spanish Law, the Mexican Period, and through the organization as modern cities of the American Southwest. Today, the cities of San Antonio, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles have evolved into major population centers while containing the material memory of the acequia landscape in the urban form of the city. Through the use of geospatial visualization mapping, this paper documents the morphological process of urbanization and how irrigation systems became the framework for the spatial organization of the southwest cities that were within Mexican territory before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.