Keeping a blog means you have to add a message frequently otherwise it's not interesting to keep coming back to the blog. My apologies for not posting for a while.
Recently I have been to Riga for inventarising and registrating developments in the study area. After that I started to work on my first part of my thesis, the Analyses book. Part of this analyses is the historical development. By doing research on the maps available and comparing them a lot of things become clear why the study area looks nowadays as it is. Also I found out that the development of Riga has been very much influenced by Dutch and other European designers during the past centuries. It shows again how open and what an interesting mix of East, West and North Europe this city actually is.
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| An english common meadow in Sudbury |
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| The preventive city fire of 1812 destroying the wooden suburbs, nowaday central rayon |
Other remarkable discoveries where the fact that this area was really a long time the cities common cattle meadow (Deutsch: Stadts Vieh weide, Nederlands: Meent of veeweide) and that the grid structure central rayon actually is the result of 7 or 8 city fires after which the layout of the city was optimalised again and again.
Hereby the maps on the development of Riga and the Skanstes area starting from 1600 to nowadays:
