Download as PDF [10.6 MB]

045 Issue # 11/11 : PublIc Issues
In the early 1980s the Federal District was the most densely populated area in the
country but it underwent major readjustment following the 1985 earthquake, part of the
population of the central districts worst hit by the disaster moving to the south of
the city. This resulted in these areas becoming populated by younger people, who popu-
larized them, eventually leading to a process of gentrification, which is currently
under way in another of the districts most severely affected by the quake, the Historic
Centre. The nature of these districts has thus changed from being residential to mainly
commercial.
In 2003 the city officially exceeded the territorial limits of the Federal District and
has since been known as the Metropolitan Zone of Mexico City (ZMCM). This includes the
entire metropolitan area that is part of the urban sprawl of the neighbouring states.
Even under a new name the city is still vast. One of the works that documents this sheer
magnitude is spiral city (2002) by British artist Melanie Smith. In it she records the
urban sprawl in a 5 minute video shot from a helicopter following the spiralling lines
of Robert Smithson. The black and white video ultimately reduces the city to a grey
texture.
But seen from close up, there is not just one Mexico City, there have been many through-
out history. What used to be the lake around the island of Tenochtitlan is now paved
over, traversing it involves moving back and forth through the ages, exploring the syn-
cretism evident in its architecture and social relations.
The City of the Palaces
The loss of economic capacity in Mexico has profoundly affected its architectural
development and urban development, which in the past has proved more pleasing to its
inhabitants. The generous architecture, planned and crafted, has gradually been re-
placed by minimally functional structures, economical materials, standard designs and
standard measurements, creating residential spaces that appear to be built on the
socio-economic scale of the majority of the population, rather than on a human scale.
With a recent project that took the form of sculptural work, a film and a play, Abraham
Cruzvillegas performs the important task of analyzing the urban practice known as self-
building (fig. 4). Using personal historical references as a starting point, he comes
to see it as a warm-hearted process in which solidarity between neighbours and family
members is fundamental, not just as shared capital but also as an educational envi-
ronment that helps any individual who is part of a community to understand their own
situation. And it is precisely this practice of self-building that has created the
working class residential areas in which spaces such as markets, squares and streets
fulfil their true function as social public spaces.
4 — Abraham Cruzvillegas, Autoconstrucción: The Film, 2009, Courtesy of Galería Kurimanzutto.
Mexico City.