View from Lima: The capital of Peru, Lima was once a city that lived in contented harmony with its strange ecology and landscape. But now it has gluttonously devoured much of what made the city work.

Among contemporary Third World cities, Lima may be a case to show how the fierce process of contemporary urbanization has infused irrationality into what, until half a century ago, had proven to be, for over four hundred years, a town that had experienced growth harmoniously and organically. Founded by Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish Conqueror of the Inca Empire in 1535, its urban origins were the outcome of the rational application of the Renaissance principles that the Spanish Crown adopted brilliantly for the layout of new cities. These had to be scattered throughout the New World in order to ground swiftly and efficiently the spectacular process of colonization that quickly led to the appropriation of its vast American domains.

The three basic principles contained in Philip II's ordinance for the creation of new settlements -- the criteria for the selection of the sites, the use of the basic grid, and the quadripartite segmentation of the resulting blocks thereafter allocated to the Church, the State, the conquistadores and main public servants -- testify, in the case of Lima, to the appropriateness and long lasting efficiency of that urban formula. In fact, until the middle of the twentieth century, its urban foundation was still operational, not only because its pattern of uses and public significance were still in full bloom, but also because throughout the four centuries it had proved capable of being adaptive to substantial changes in its infrastructure. Thus, since its foundation, it had to confront what was for the Spaniards a totally unknown telluric phenomenon: the possibility of earthquakes, an unfamiliar threat for Europeans and thus devastating for buildings - constructed in brick or in stonework without reinforcements - which quickly subsided in the severe tremors that are part and place of the western rim of Latin America. By the seventeenth century - and thanks to the Jesuits - the techniques adapted to these circumstances. Quincha (a mesh made of cane woven very lightly, and fixed to a wooden frame, then spattered with mud and finally whitewashed and covered with paint) gradually replaced the brick and stone masonry in every construction above ground, not only in domes or in vaults, but also in walls above the ground floor.

Radical expansion

Another development to which the grid easily adapted was the expansion of urban area. Since the sixteenth century, this had gradually occurred mainly in the form of Indian settlements which sprouted up around villages, informally layered as populous neighbourhoods for the merchants, artisans or workers that serviced the city. Then came the exposure of the population to the threat of piracy, a scourge which the Spanish tried to counteract throughout their viceroyalties with fortifications. Defensive structures are still astonishing in many of their cities, and here they adopted the shape of a linear wall that encircled Lima and its Indian neighbourhoods, a kidney-like figure with the ancient grid near its upper haunch, and an open area with orchards and parks sitting in its lap. A century later, industralization and the brave new spirit that came with the Enlightenment encompassed new forms of urban expansion. So came the French boulevard, the railway, the parks, the metallic sheds and Great Exhibitions, with Classical villas and Art Nouveau palaces lining the new parkways and middle-class neighbourhoods.

The startling advantages of the Spanish planning had of course to do with the initial choice of the inland site, a peculiar trait in face of the fact that Lima was founded 10 miles from the sea on an ample valley that fanned Out from the course of the narrow waterway of the Rimac river, out into the cliffs that framed a large bay lined with sandy beaches. The decision was an outcome of the ordinance of Philip II, which emphasized that initial settlements were to be established where water and farmland were readily available, and prudently distanced from the ocean, to make them safe from pirates and other maritime threats. Still, the fact that Lima should have undertaken its growth towards the sea in the last two centuries Without having turned its surrounding townscape towards the splendid views which the large stretch of high, earthy cliffs offered is very perplexing. Only in the last decades have modern developers suddenly discovered that Lima enjoys this enviable setting, and started to frantically build all sorts of new tenements where its urban areas had approached the cliffs.

But this radical change is threatening the precious survival of the pure relation that had been preserved between open sea, beaches and cliffs and the balanced mixture of scattered constructions and arable land that came to the edge of the fertile valley that dropped towards the ocean. In fact the same viciousness that in fifty years has torn up entirely the gentle relation between town and country that had grown so naturally from Pizarro's grid - that has gluttonously devoured all the arable land that led him to choose the site of his capital - is now on the verge of extending its chaotic mantle of concrete and bustle to the lovely frame of cliffs and beaches.

Deprived of nature?

These are the natural beauty which Lima enjoys, and which unless pressure is heavily mounted on local authorities, the forces will finally transform Lima into a metropolis whose citizens are deprived completely of nature's endowments. It's all a long way from Pizarro's wit, the grid with its churches and secular monuments, our delightful quincha and the splendid walls framing lovely orchards, and even the ordinariness of our modest boulevards and candid suburbia. Too bad we discovered that we had the sea.