Mexico City, Mexico The Mexican National University, founded in 1553 by order of the Spanish emperor Charles V, is the oldest university on the American continent. Institutes and colleges of Entries A–F 503 the National University were located in the historical center of Mexico City, but in the 1940s, the structural problems of organizing the increasing academic activities led Mexican politicians to commission plans for a new campus in the southern periphery of the city. Inspired by Madrid’s university city of 1927 and by the tradition in the United States of suburban campus and university planning, the Mexican planners designated a seven-million-square-meter site of lava landscape at the Pedregal de San Angel for the university city. In 1953, four centuries after its foundation, the entire National University moved to Ciudad Universitaria. The project of constructing a university city following contemporary urban planning and architecture standards had high symbolic importance for the...