Mexico’s capital is a complex and contradictory place. As the saying here goes, there is not one Mexico City, there are many Mexico Cities. Indeed, sprawling shantytowns coexist with gated communities. Fourhour commutes are a reality for many, while helipads crown developments for the uber-rich. The metropolis’ history is equally surreal and tumultuous. Once the heart of the Aztec civilization, it has since seen waves of colonizers come and go. But over the course of half a millennium, it has become accustomed to ongoing conflicts and crises and has developed an incredible resilience. In the face of countless challenges including inequality, pollution, crime and corruption, the megalopolis has learned to bounce back and life continues unceasingly with will power and vitality that will stop at nothing.
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While the country wrestles with the increasingly gruesome violence spurred by the nation’s drug war, Mexico’s vibrant capital seems to dance to its own beat. Forget what you think you know about “el monstruo”, as the city has been known in the past, and you will be surprised to find a cultural epicentre bursting at the seams with fresh, raw energy.
“A cultural epicentre bursting at the seams with fresh, raw energy.”
Chefs are cooking up a new culinary movement by remixing age-old pre-hispanic recipes. The city’s flourishing contemporary art scene has led many to call it the next Berlin. And a new generation of architects is pursuing an architecture that is both contemporary and timeless, Mexican in its extraordinary sensuality and material sensitivity, yet by no means folkloric. Add to that a veritable renaissance in the film, fashion and design scenes and it becomes easy to understand why young creatives have started to stream in from all corners of the world. Key to Me-Mo – as this “Mexican Moment” has been affectionately dubbed – is the rediscovery of a number of decaying historic neighbourhoods located adjacent to the old city centre. A devastating 8.1-magnitude earthquake in 1985, exacerbated by the fact that the city is built on the unstable and sinking ground of a dried-out lake bed, had killed more than 3,000 and led many to relocate from these areas to the city’s outskirts in search of the safety of the bedrock. In the following years, insecurity led to an increase in gated communities. Urban life became more and more segregated.
Since then, however, the city has gone through a catharsis. In recent years, neighbourhoods such as La Condesa with its stunning Art Deco architecture and lush parks have been rediscovered and are in a process of reinvention. In the eclectic colonia Roma dilapidated French-style mansions from the turn of the last century have been retrofitted and transformed into art galleries and restaurants. The municipality’s investment in upgrading public space has breathed new life into these barrios’ plazas and tree-lined boulevards. While 15 years ago cycling in the city was unthinkable there is now an abundance of bike-sharing schemes and use of the automobile is being disincentivized. The rehabilitation of these central districts goes hand in hand with their redensification. In a sense, the metropolis’ seemingly endless sprawl has reached its physical limits, a necklace of mountains and volcanoes, and the city has started to fold back on itself.
“The metropolis’ seemingly endless sprawl has reached its physical limits.”
About six years ago, the government introduced zoning modifications that combat urban sprawl. While applaudable in principle, this shift in policy opened the floodgates for high-rise office towers like the ones popping up relentlessly along the city’s principal avenue Reforma. Mono-programmatic ghettos for ultrawealthy corporations, they have exacerbated traffic problems and put a significant strain on the city’s service infrastructure. Luckily though, private actors have started to step up to the challenge of sustainable densification. Young developers with a keen passion for architecture are championing the adaptive reuse and extension of historic properties.
“The city centre is virtually bursting with the energy of the reinvention.”
Their projects are highly dense despite being low- to mid-rise and cater to a more tenable mix of use and income. The urban model of radiating growth is thus being challenged by a new ideal: one of restoring, adapting and upgrading the historic urban fabric. As a consequence, the city centre is virtually bursting with the energy of the reinvention. The main beneficiaries of this tendency are of yet a privileged elite. While it remains to be seen whether the more than 20 million inhabitants outside of this gentrification bubble will benefit from this new urbanity, there is optimism in the air. New government incentives are targeting corruption and pollution while poverty is being countered by the growth of the country’s middle class. Give it some time and the Mexican spirit of persistence might just deliver.
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Max von Werz is a German architect who has lived in Mexico City since 2014. He studied at the Architectural Association in London and after gaining extensive work experience with David Chipperfield Architects and Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, established his own architecture practice in 2013 with a particular interest in adaptive reuse, housing and projects related to the arts.
Read this Metropolis Explained and other articles in topos 110.
In 2016, as part of the global initiative 100 Resilient Cities sponsored by The Rockefeller Foundation, Mexico City ‘s CDMX Resilience Office released the first resilience strategy ever developed in Mexico. Based on a holistic approach, it defines the broad lines of action that will guide Mexico City’s long-term development plans and emphasizes the role of public space in responding to the ever more pressing conditions related to environmental and social risks. Built in a socially stratified area, the park La Mexicana is a manifesto of the dynamic and integrated approach proposed by the CDMX Resilience Office.
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The southwestern outskirts of Mexico City are barren, topographically complex territories scattered with abandoned mines, where two adjacent but antithetical social realities and urban forms coexist: The formal and informal settlements of the worker communities that had originally settled in the area and that, resisting building speculation, struggled to remain there; and Santa Fe, an expanding, affluent neighborhood of high-rise buildings, whose construction begun after the catastrophic earthquake of 1985 with the aim of creating a new business center for the capital on the site of the former landfill. That real estate development project was carried out with considerable private capital, and resulted in an ultra-modern urban structure in terms of the quality of its architecture. It lacked, however, basic infrastructure, services, and public open space. Designed by Mario Schjetnan and his firm Grupo de Diseño Urbano (GDU) together with VMA Victor Marquez & Asociados, La Mexicana is the only large park in Santa Fe.
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Mitigating the area’s social divide
Completed in 2017, the park unfolds along a pit formed by excavation activities on the eastern edge of the modern urban development. The transformation of a brownfield into a lush park through a complex operation of ecological remediation had two different intertwined dimensions. These were related to the improvement of urban living conditions in an extremely stratified area: a sustainable dimension, as the park provides a variety of ecosystem services ranging from heat mitigation to the improvement of the urban hydrological system; and a socio-cultural dimension, as it not only promotes physical activities and recreational practices within the gated communities of modern Santa Fe, but also aims at mitigating the area’s social divide, encouraging interaction between all the local residents.
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Shaping a complex topography
Covering an area of 29 hectares, La Mexicana appears as a green canyon that establishes a dialogue between the glittering skyscrapers of Santa Fe and the roughness of the rock walls of the former mine. The park exploits the uniqueness of the terrain by shaping a complex topography of gentle green undulations that conceal a large artificial basin. The newly constructed landscape is dotted with a variety of functional areas: an open-air theater, a sophisticated skateboard park, a dog park, richly programmed playgrounds and areas for sport activities, lawns, plazas and pavilions housing restaurants, cafes and various facilities. The park’s design concept is based on a juxtaposition of areas with different atmospheres and spatial qualities, producing a continuous sense of surprise. Higher elevations scattered with irregular groves alternate with gentle landforms with expansive lawns, placid water basins are disturbed by a cascade, and areas for active recreational activities alternate with areas for passive recreation and solitary contemplation.
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