I can’t breathe; I lack air. I can’t move; I lack space. Everything collapses over me, my vision blurs, and I find myself lost, lying on the streets. I see nothing but black; all my senses collapse. Still, I can hear the echoing footsteps of people walking by. In the distance, the melody of a flute echoes – I instantly recognised it. It’s “The Knife Sharpener” – nowadays, a sporadic sound. The increasing volume of chaos overlaps with those sounds that were once part of you. While lying on the sidewalk, more sounds echo in my memory. The barrel organ man passes by, another sound of your streets soon to be extinguished.
Suddenly, I’m awake, surrounded by chaos, trapped in it; I’m part of it. I find myself in a living urban organism. Your metabolism is composed of a complex urban fabric that I don’t understand: an urban system and an environment home to 22 million inhabitants. I feel helpless, overwhelmed by your magnitude. I try to stand on my feet, but I can’t; I’m in pain. I feel like a needle in a haystack, powerless, insignificant, ignored. I get up from the ground with the help of a street vendor who normally stands on the corner of Amsterdam and Michoacán, right in the heart of La Condesa.
Tired of that overwhelming chaos, I try to run away from you, but there is something that always brings me back. When I escape, my perception of you changes entirely; you become another person. I learn to value you as you are, to value the charm of that overwhelming chaos.
For me, still today, it’s hard to understand that, born after the death of ancient Tenochtitlan, you are a reconstruction of an extinguished civilization, a reconstruction of the past. Your streets lie over what were once waterways across the metropolis, following similar paths, an urban organism designed in grids. Emblematic constructions are built out of materials extracted from your prehispanic body; caged in your older shape, you are painted over an old canvas with existing drawings. The water once surrounded you, Lake Texcoco, was turned into a giant concrete stain, placed in that valley 2.200 meters above sea level. Inspired by Vienna’s Ringtraße and Paris’ Champs-Elyseès, Paseo de la Reforma crosses your heart entirely, making it one of the most emblematic avenues in Latin America. On the sides and all along Paseo de la Reforma, skyscrapers rise to the sky, shaping your skyline during the day and night. Concrete, glass and iron beams are in a constant race to achieve the tallest and most imposing avant-garde structures. Yet, Paseo de Reforma remains timeless, frozen in time – a place of intersection where past and future are finally reconciled. Some colonial mansions resist change and are safeguarded by their big brothers more than 200 meters tall who stand upright alongside them in a simple phalanx formation.
Your brutalism rises in multiple volumes of concrete – landmarks that define you: cold and grey, yet attractive, peaceful, and imposing. They are part of your attitude, your essence. When I walk through the streets of La Roma, I feel at home, trapped in time – a place where your bipolarity is translated in Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and French style architecture, coexisting in harmony with the modernism of the 70s. You are home to my favourite architectural movements, the playground of Barragán, Legorreta, Goeritz, O’Gorman, and Agustín Hernandez. Mexican modernism is what I like most about you, one of the main reasons I keep coming back. Your continuity, transparency, and colourful yet timeless essence translate into emotions and feelings, awakening my senses. I feel deeply connected to your spaces. Light penetrates the lattices of your modernist structures, hitting your vibrant walls, creating spaces filled with thought-out shapes meant to exist. As the main character, the water creates a sense of peace and harmony – an oasis rests trapped in chaos. Nature is designed to interact with your shapes created by light, your sounds created by the flow of water, your materials that perfectly blend with the textures and colours of the surrounding landscape.
I have been a witness to change. You constantly evolve; every time I return, something new awaits me. What once were unsafe neighbourhoods in complete decay are now clogged with small specialty coffee shops, thrift shops, markets, Michelin-star restaurants, bars, and small boutique hotels. You are a victim of gentrification.
I enjoy walking in these streets; I feel safe; I’m safeguarded by hundreds of trees that cast a pleasing shade and create an urban environment so characteristic of you. Amsterdam Street, where I fainted some years ago, is one of these streets. I must acknowledge that while I enjoy this shift in culture and urban development, I often ask myself how an area that was utterly forgotten a decade ago now has New York City-style lofts on the market for more than seven thousand dollars a month?! Gentrification. You are displacing thousands to the peripheries due to the high cost of living. But you cannot displace 22 million inhabitants; you have to find a balance, an alternative that is accessible for everyone. You urgently need resilient, affordable, culturally suitable, and sustainable housing. Society doesn’t just need a place to live; society needs a place to grow.
Mexico City, I’m upset. Maybe I’ll never fully understand what’s going on in your brain, but I’ve got to ask you: How can you keep growing and expanding without a life plan yet? Where are you going? What’s your future? Where are you expanding to? How will you survive with all those unfixable urban flaws that unplanned growth is causing on your peripheries? Your ADHD is making you fail to complete your tasks; your urban metabolism is failing to function. You are starting to collapse.
You are sick; you are making all of us sick. But the truth is, it is not merely your fault. I forgive you. Maybe individuals are the cancerous cells that multiply without a feasible solution to treat such an advanced disease. Your lungs are collapsing; they are burning. You need to stop chain smoking! Your skies turn grey; sometimes, a grey blanket covers you entirely, preventing the sun from touching your skin. Interaction between light and structures vanishes away.
You are failing to meet the demands of an exponentially growing population. Your peripheries are secluded, socially degrading, and culturally unsuitable. Kilometres of low-income, inaccessible neighbourhoods extend across your valley, places where the quality of life is non-existent and a sense of community is buried in history, from the time when living in the city wasn’t a luxury only a few could afford. Your peripheries grow exponentially, filled with thousands of empty and abandoned row house developments: ghost towns, white elephants caged in your metropolitan area. Poorly designed urban developments pose a challenge to you. Millions of dollars are poured into these developments yearly, without the understanding that these are places where community doesn’t exist, public transportation is unreachable, and basic services are kilometres away.
Who are we to blame for this urban catastrophe? I know that it’s not your fault. Innovation and development are rather political than technical, based on a selfish structure of power infested with a nest of rats that hinder you from improving, from healing, from becoming a place where everyone enjoys an optimal living standard.
As I walk around you, I notice how hypocritical your streets can be. They divide social classes; municipalities with the highest budgets house the wealthiest one percent of your population, while those who need an extraordinary budget to improve development levels that are left without your support.
Your body hosts an extensive network stretching across your skeleton, moving the cancerous cells that make your systems collapse. Four million commute daily through your veins from your peripheries to your heart – a place of opportunities and prosperity. Every time I enter your underground network, it reminds me of an ant colony, twisty and confusing, infested with millions of individuals moving back and forth across the most extensive subway system in Latin America. Unfortunately, you are failing to meet the needs of a growing population; your transportation system isn’t growing fast enough to meet the demands of today. Your failures are translated into self-reinforcing loops. Inefficient mobility design forces more people to rely on a car, blocking the arterial branches that bring millions to your heart daily. Vehicles stand still during rush hours, turning you into a highly polluted environment. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge that in the past decade, I haven’t seen your skies covered with a grey blanket daily. You are trying to quit smoking, but you have become so addicted that it’s difficult to stop. At least, sometimes, your level of addiction resembles the one of your American neighbour, Los Angeles, not outstanding, but not catastrophic. Maybe try Snus?
The more I think about who you are, the further I am from finding out. You are a complex being, multifaceted, one of a kind. Friendly when you want to be, yet cold and rough if we find you in a bad mood. You are a hypocrite with your children, yet warm and welcoming with those who come from far away. You are reserved but too open at the same time. Your superiority complex, alongside your narcissistic tendencies, makes me believe even more that you are a reflection of your people; your personality is a puzzle composed of twenty-two million pieces. I try to think of something we, all Mexicans, have in common with you. What is the collective consciousness that brings this particular individual together? As silly as it may seem, I believe it’s hope.
Dear Mexico City, we hope that one day, all your urban shortcomings will improve and that you will be able to accommodate a population in search of a prosperous future. We are not asking you to make the chaos disappear; in the end, it is part of your identity, of who you are, of your past and future. It makes you interesting, unique, different and special. However, chaos in a metropolis of your magnitude can coexist with the order and efficiency of a utopian urban metabolism. It is not easy, but it can be achieved through solutions that will improve you and all the millions you host. You must boost your suburban rail network to create a city efficiently connected to the peripheries.
Instead of investing in street amplifications, why not look for solutions to reduce the traffic flow on your streets? Why not build linear parks and green urban corridors with integrated bicycle paths for people to move from point A to point B without needing a car? Instead of buses, why not invest in electric trams to reduce your carbon footprint? Instead of empty row house developments on the peripheries, why not have resilient, affordable, culturally suitable, and sustainable vertical housing in the city? Instead of venturing into the future spontaneously, why don’t you have a defined plan and a long-term urban projection to start now on those infrastructure projects that will be necessary to satisfy the needs of your future children with efficiency?
Mexico City, I’m a dreamer. I dream of a place where everyone equally enjoys access to services, an efficient public transportation network, and accessibility for those who live in your darkest and most secluded areas. I dream of a place powered by non-polluting energy, a clean urban environment, and a well-functioning urban metabolism. You must rethink who you are and how you have changed and evolved. You must reimagine and reinvent yourself while maintaining your charisma, soul, and essence. I have seen you improve slowly, but you still have challenges to face. Managing change is what will move you forward; in the end, “It’s not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive, but those who best manage change.”
Dear Mexico City, change is possible; I believe in you.
Featured image showing Mexico City Valley, Mountain Itzaccihuatl on the back and provided by Reygolens, December 2023.
