Régularité morphologique et volontarisme social

Abstract

Very little is known of the morphogenesis of mediaeval villages in southern Portugal; on the basis of a number of cases that have been better elucidated by field studies and written sources (other than old plans), the article proposes some means of interpretation, and above all it seeks to guard against a geographically-inspired «intentionalist» reading of the forms appreciable in the present day. In the case of large villages –the castra– the regularities of the urban fabric seem more than anything else to be outcomes of progressive self-organisation prompted by a combination of natural constraints (relief), private accommodations among neighbours and latterly some modest supervision by local authorities; aside from the role of public buildings as poles of attraction, whose erection may reflect an organisational intent on the part of the authorities, what really regulated land development in the 13th-15th centuries was the progressive «filling in» of that fabric.

Keywords

• Habitat
• Morphogenesis
• Portugal
• Reconquest
• Rural communities
• Urban planning