Decentralized urban planning

I work at the corporate center of Mexico City – Santa Fé. The curious story behind the area is that it was a sanitary landfill less than 20 years ago. One real estate entrepreneur decided to develop corporate skyscrapers on the valueless land. He was very successful – today Santa Fé is a thriving neighborhood with corporate centers, universities, and residential and commercial centers.

Well, so far so good. Viva the private enterprise. Right?
The problem with real estate development is that they are heavily dependent on public infrastructure – roads, water, energy, security, and transport. The lack of coordination between public goods and private enterprise creates a chaotic situation. Private sector continues to expand into new areas, where land is not expensive and the public sector continues to expand beyond their capabilities.

Santa Fé has one access to the city center, that cannot handle the current flow. You can imagine the chaotic traffic of an unplanned road access to a new neighborhood. There is no metro or reliable alternative transport (unless you consider helicopter an alternative). As a result, I’m stuck in traffic every single day - chatting with Porfirio, the former toreador converted into my taxi driver.

What are the alternatives?

Mexico has managed to attract private investment into the city colonial center (the Zocalo). Should the government intervene to make central areas more attractive to private investments? What would be the way of doing this? Any thoughts?

El Chavo

I have been struggling with the idea of a common Latin American identity.

Brazil considers itself the BIG exception – a huge Portuguese-speaking country in a Spanish-speaking sub-continent (mostly). We had different colonizations all through Latin-America, different economical structures, different people. Are we any similar?

The more I travel through Latin-America, the more I see similarities. We are a mestizo region, deeply influenced by the Spanish-Portuguese culture, colonialist history and institutions.

I would also add that we ALL watched El Chavo when we were kids! El Chavo is the common denominator of our Latin-American heritage. Just try this: put together a Mexica, an Ecuatorian, a Brazilian and a Peruvian and ask them about El Chavo. I guarantee that they will start an endless talk about favorite episodes and the characters.

A little curious note - in Brazil, they translated "El Chavo" (the boy) to Chaves and Chapulin Colorado (the red grasshopper) to Chapolim Colorado (chapolim doesn't mean anything). I just figured out that Chapulin Colorado was inspired by an insect here. Yup, I'm that slow!

Who would have guessed that a 70’s slap-comedy would make it clear for Latin American that we do have a lot in common?

Were the Portuguese anthropophagi?

It’s difficult to come to Mexico and to ignore the presence of the indigenous people – their history is present everywhere, people have clear indigenous features, ruins are a major attraction, and the anthropological museum is a must see to Mexican visitors.

In Brazil, we have somehow managed to ignore completely indigenous people. We have some names that we inherited from Tupi language. We learnt a little bit on how the “good priests” converted Brazilian indigenous people to Catholicism in school (as a matter fact, the Catholic church prohibited Indigenous people to be enslaved because they were “pure souls” as opposed to the African slaves). And we know – for a fact – that Portuguese settlers were more than keen to have children with indigenous women. But we never learned their culture or history. We don’t know what they believe in or the name of their gods (I know one – Tupã – and that is due to a popular character in a children’s comic book).

What happened to the Brazilian indigenous culture? Well, I’m not a historian (my mother is) but I have two theories:

• The Brazilian indigenous tribe were not as “sophisticated” as the Mayas, Aztec and Teotihuacan. They were mostly hunter-gatherers – some of them were good warriors, but from what I recall of the probably 2 classes I had on Indigenous culture back in high-school, they didn’t develop mathematic skills, written language or astronomy. They were not a resistance for Portuguese expansion plans in America.

• In 1922, Brazilian so called “avant-garde” artistic movement released the “Anthropophagic Movement”. Based on the idea that the anthropophagic indigenous people would eat the adversary in order to gain their qualities – if they were brave by eating their flesh they would be brave also – many intellectuals joined this movement. According, to them, the Brazilian were cultural anthropophagi – they would digest the new cultures and incorporate the qualities into the Brazilian culture. We would be truly mestiços (or mestizos), mixing not only the genes but also the culture. Did we do this to our indigenous population?

The ironic Mexican Green Party

Mexico will have elections on July, 5. It's regional elections and for a part of the Congress. As you can imagine, the city is a big political outdoor. Buses are covered, many outdoors and even in movie theaters you have political ads.

From the ads, it's possible to infer that security is the top priority of the voters. Every candidate tries to convey the message that they will tackle down the crime issue.

Including the Green Party. But they are way more drastic than the other parties. I have photographed one of the Green Party (partido verde) but the city is filled with the outdoors and they have an actress-slash-ecologist on the TV spots promoting the party ideas.

Judge for yourself. Dark humor? Or willingness to do anything to win an election?



NB: pena de muerte in spanish is death penalty

Road-blog

I was reading things that I wrote a few years ago and stumbled upon an article for the NYT. The author is the Brazilian movie director Walter Moreira Salles (from Central do Brasil and Motorcycle Diaries among others – and he’s also one of the coolest Brazilians ever and he’s gorgeous).

Ans then it hit me: this blog will be a road-blog. I quote Waltinho (as he is known in Brazil) talking about road movies:

“Because road movies need to trace the internal transformation of their characters, the films are not about what can be seen or verbalized but about what can be felt — about the invisible that complements the visible. In this sense, road movies contrast starkly with today’s mainstream films, in which new actions are created every three minutes to grab the attention of the viewer. In road movies, a moment of silence is generally more important than the most dramatic action.”

There will be little action – but I hope all the information (both at academic and personal levels) I have gathered the first year at MPA/ID will start to make sense.

Flânerie

I was reading an article on Monocle Magazine about the joy of flânerie. I have always been a keen flâneuse – every time I’m in a new city, I love to walk around to really see what the city is like.

Baudelaire described the flâneur as “a person who walks the city in order to experience it”. I think this is one the greatest strengths of the cities – this possibility to observe many faces of the city and of the people, taking your time and using all of your senses.

Sometimes, the city is not made for walking – like Amman, a city clearly designed for cars, but when you reach the city center (the gold souk) and the streets are bustling (Laila, any thoughts?). Soham is in Freetown and described his flânerie attempt here. From my point of view, a good city is one that you can understand more of the local history and the culture by enjoying a nice and pleasant stroll. With pauses for food and drinks. And, maybe some shopping.

Mexico is a lovely place to flâner: the city center is a lively area, with beautiful old architecture, a vibrant commerce and a really Mexican flavor. Polanco (where I live), is a leafy neighborhood and I love the many restaurants and little shops that can still be found in the area (you can also find Louis Vuitton, Cartier and everything else, I just don’t find it that interesting). However, Santa Fé – where I work - is a flâneur’s nightmare: tall glass buildings, very little street commerce, everything is far away and most of the buildings look as any random corporate neighborhood.

Urban development

In one of our classes of development economics, we studied the Industrial Revolution. One of the consequences of the Industrialization of UK was the displacement of rural workers into more productive activities in the cities.

The cities were not only the beautiful boulevards, with women dressed in silk and chariots on the pavements. The poor lived a miserable life – crammed into dark rooms, with no water or heating. It was a Dickens world, as one of professors put it.

And yet, they kept coming.

The world today is an urban world – over 50% of the world population currently lives in urban areas. In Latin America, the urbanization rate is even starker – it’s not uncommon to find urbanization rates of 85%. Adding urbanization, medium-low income per capita and high inequality of income distribution and you have a Latin-American average city. Now, imarrrine (little MPA/ID joke...) providing public services for 20 million people, dealing with local, provincial and federal government. The track record of efficiency is very poor in the region.

Chaotic, crammed, huge traffic jams, potholes, violent, scary place. Lively, energetic, beautiful, fun, creative, welcoming people. This summer, I have immersed myself on yet another huge Latin-American city – Mexico City.

I know myself better than to promise daily posts but I will try to have a little discipline this time.