Page 70 - Bulletin 12 2008

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three, in vast tracts of it not more than two, centuries. To the more romantic observer,
this much shorter time span also has its drawbacks. The heavy hand of modern

developments, such as industrialisation and transport, has perhaps had a greater
opportunity to impact on an as yet not fully formed cultural landscape than in older

countries. Perhaps only Cape Town (in parts), Stellenbosch, Simon’s Town, Graaff-

Reinet, McGregor, Montagu, Prince Albert, Grahamstown and a few mission
settlements like Wupperthal can truly still be experienced as ‘old towns’.

New Towns in the Western Colonies

In most Western colonies in the New World, as in Greek and Roman colonies or

English possessions in France, the gridiron or checkerboard system was customary. The

gridiron system, at least as used in the Dutch colonial empire, must have been strongly
influenced by the ‘ideal city’ ideas and plans devised by the military engineer Simon

Stevin (1548-1620), using Renaissance principles of symmetry, whereby straight streets

could be kept under surveillance and fire from strong points. But Stevin’s city was more
than that, and provides for open market spaces and sites for public buildings in rational

relationships. The aesthetic element, however, seems entirely absent from his ‘ideal’
city. There are no concessions to the natural setting, no surprises, no climaxes, no foci,

no intimate spaces.

The Dutch Colonial City

In the cities the Dutch founded in their vast colonial empire the principles of Stevin are

much in evidence, but nearly always with modifications, because of local circumstances
and settings – at river mouths, on narrow coastal strips or islands – and also because

they were seldom laid out in one go but grew piecemeal. In the design of Cape Town,
too, Stevinian features can be found. The main street, Heerengracht, was the spine of a

fairly rigid grid, the logical continuation of the Company Gardens’ avenue, the two

together forming a highly meaningful axis to the city though in no way celebrated by