The lay of the land

I am not sure how many of you really took a look at how La Plata is laid out on a map. The google satilite image of it actually does an amazing job of showing just how planned and semetrical the city is.

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Oh wow, it loaded the map in Spanish. Disfrutá (have fun!).

Now that we have established a birds eye view (the rules of the urban planning was to have a park every 6 blocks and to have diagonals connecting them all, with two big diagonals cutting the whole way across the city. They all are very apparent in the map), I want to discuse how the it looks/feels from down here, not just from up there. So I went around today and did a case study of the housing in La Plata.

All the houses are constructed right up to the side walks, in a VERY European tradition. There are no laws or front yard, and all the houses are packed right in next to each other, conserving a TON of space.

I really am not a fan at all of big yards and houses set back really far from the street. I find it a waste of space, and I am much more in tune with these houses squeezed in and packed up to the street and then large communal parks to break things up.

The BEST thing however about these houses that abutt the street, and about the European tradition of construction in general are the courtyards. All these houses APPEAR to be little houses crammed together, but what is on the other side of the wall to the street is the true hidden fruit! The houses all have adorable little court yards, or terraces or patios hidden behind these walls, like a little personal paradise cut off from the world! But honestly, my absolute favorite part is that the houses are not cookie cutter, so I can spend ALL DAY dreaming about what it looks like on the other side of the wall.

Guessing what is hidden back there! When I was younger I used to like to wander around my neighborhood and imagine what the INSIDE of the homes looked like, and now I get to guess even more, because many times there is only a wall with a door in it!

The houses are also extremely different in that sometimes you get a really slummy looking house, pressed right up against a really modern or well maintained victorian home (kind of like a creapy old man touching a really pretty little girl…it seems the Argentines dream with their archetecture as well as with their minds!), but I can garentee that while it looks really old and run down outside, that it is pretty and homely with beautiful courtyards inside (okay my metaphor stops there….dirty old men are dirty old men!).

Here is a good example

Due to this, however, it is hard to really classify some neighborhoods as being significantly nicer than others, they all look pretty similar, with a good blend of old (some beautiful art nuevo and art deco homes) and new (pretty trendy modern ones), and some run down ones sprinkled in.

I love this one! Want to live there!

I spent some time and took a pretty broad array of pictures to give a good feel for the texture and the lay of the land. I encourage everyone to take a look, there are some really pretty homes!

So to finalize my broad study of the housing situation in La Plata, I did a case study of my host house. To give you a good example of what I mean.

Here is the entrance, with a sadly really crappy house to the right of it.

After you enter what look like (correctly) garage doors, this is the view. The house is actually set WAY BACK from the street, actually wrapping around the house in front of it (it is to the back and to the left….)

Then when you go around to the back of the house, there is a little yard with an AMAZING fig tree in it. Had never had a fresh fig before in my life….completely adicted now!

I am in love with the archecture and the lay out of La Plata, and I would love in the future to have a house that forces itself up to the side walk, and then holds a little treasure trove behind that protective wall! And then I can spend my afternoons (as I do here alot) walking around and dreaming about how other people construct their secret gardens!