I will endeavor to answer your question as it pertains to Latin America.

Before we get into it, the answer is yes, but of course it is more complicated than that.

The Spanish art of city building was quite structured. The typical colonial structure places a city square in the center of the town/city with a church (generally) on the east side of the square.

There were actually extremely detailed laws that pertained to city building in the Americas. There were literally hundreds of decrees dictating the organization of the cities.

They were to be laid out on a city grid with a square in the middle. The most important buildings were there, including the church. The church property would have been one of the first lots picked out, and likely one of the first buildings constructed. Often church locations were chosen to be built on the location of important indigenous religious structures.

Here is a very well put together overview.