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All posts by ccastro

30
Sep 2016

Recent UNESCO-ITESO Efforts

By Raúl Díaz The UNESCO-ITESO Chair (UICH) was founded in 1998 at the Universidad ITESO, in Guadalajara, Mexico. One of its main objectives is to put in practice alternative forms of urban development as opposed to functionalist and pragmatic schemes. For over 18th years, UICH has worked with dozens of communities living on poverty and marginality to overcome their living conditions and to empower their own initiatives. One of the recent experiences is the construction of a community center that shelters 220 head of household that gather every Thursday to receive and share a human formation from the hand of the […]
2
Aug 2016

Public Space and Democracy in Mexico City: Privatizating Public Space

We are proud to present this guest post by urban planner and researcher Guillermo Bernal, founder of the Mexico City consulting firm Lugares Publicos and a member of Taller Participativo Barrial. The Mexican tradition of the “tianguis,” or open-air market, dates to pre-Columbian times. Every important city had a tianguis where, on certain days of the week, the public plaza was occupied by stalls offering a wide variety of food and other products, as well as services. People came from surrounding towns, and sometimes from very far away, to buy and sell. The tradition of open-air commerce in public spaces […]
6
Apr 2016

Redesigning the Public Sphere

MAUD ’14. Víctor Manuel Rico Espínola, MAUD ’14. Mexico City is often portrayed as a kind of self-organizing chaos. Nonetheless, it follows a logic of its own. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire in 1521, insistence to consolidate the new capital in the middle of a marshy island, and a continuous battle against floods, led decision makers of the time to drain an entire lake to the ocean. In that sense, Mexico City confronted its own geography in a way very few cities have. Not only has the city’s form been the result of political intention, it has […]

1
Mar 2016

Presentation of 2015 Grantee Research & Reception

Please join us for: Presentation of 2015 Grantee Research & Reception March 3rd, 2016 Gund Hall-Loeb Library Lobby 6:30 pm Reception to Follow Presentations Presenting: En Bici–Michael Meo & Carlos Hernandez Tellez Invisible Infrastructure — Jessica Bello & William Rosenthal Nested Informalities–Yi Li & Dennis Harvey Housing Resilience–Margaret Scott & Irene Figueroa-Ortiz

17
Feb 2016

Public Space and Democracy in Mexico City: Political Time

by Ricardo Nurko and Analiese Richard In order to understand how local government actors operate with regard to public space in Mexico City, you need to be acquainted with the overlapping administrative layers and temporality of bureaucratic processes. As it turns out, the management of public space has a lot to do with “political time.” In the first place, it’s important to point out that our grand megalopolis is composed of several different federal entities ruled by legislatures with a certain degree of independence: The Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico (ZMVM, by its Spanish acronym) is an urban […]

10
Dec 2015

Public Space and Democracy in Mexico City: On the frontiers of gentrification

by Ricardo Nurko and Analiese Richard Pushkin Park is a liminal social space, located on the border between two central Mexico City neighborhoods: La Roma, a hotbed of cultural creativity and real estate speculation sometimes referred to as “Williamsburg South” and La Doctores, a less prosperous zone of government facilities like hospitals and courts, run-down housing blocs, and small-scale industry. The eastern limit of the park is Cuauhtemoc Avenue, a major thoroughfare that also marks the frontiers of gentrification. In the cultural geography of Mexico City, La Doctores is still viewed with disdain and suspicion by many residents of La […]

16
Nov 2015

Public Space and Democracy in Mexico City: Who decides what is good for public space?

BY RICARDO NURKO AND ANALIESE RICHARD This is part of a series exploring public space and democracy in Mexico City. How can citizens have a say in the management of public space? Building a good strategy depends on mapping out the other actors involved and understanding the bureaucratic cultures and political timeframes of the many governmental entities that share jurisdiction over any given space. In Pushkin Park, multiple agencies with different scales and scopes of operation have power over particular aspects of the space, and there is very little communication or coordination among them. For citizen groups in Mexico, figuring […]

30
Oct 2015

Public Space and Democracy in Mexico City: Introducing Taller Participativo Barrial

by Ricardo Nurko and Analiese Richard This is part of a series exploring public space and democracy in Mexico City. Public spaces are important points of encounter and interaction among different social groups. As cities grow and societies become more stratified, public spaces take on renewed importance as sites and symbols for cultivating democracy. In this series we plan to explore the role of experts, authorities, and lay people in planning, creating, and inhabiting urban public spaces, through accounts of the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, where we live and work. Ricardo Nurko is founder and principal of the architectural […]

28
Oct 2015

Habitat III must rethink the role of housing in sustainable urbanization

Thinking differently about housing offers a key tool to generate new social arrangements, transform city landscapes in ways that fashion a more vibrant urbanism, and create new possibilities for urban value creation. The following commentary by Diane Davis was originally published in Citiscope. Economists, sociologists and political scientists have long theorized a positive relationship between the growth of cities and national economic development. But the contemporary experience in many emerging economies suggests that we need to rethink these assumptions. Next year’s Habitat III conference and the current process to define its 20-year urbanization strategy, the New Urban Agenda, offer an […]

27
Oct 2015

Rethinking Social Housing in Mexico

Mexico is implementing far-reaching changes to its housing and urban development processes. The work done at the Rethinking Social Housing in Mexico Project explores and documents such transition, particularly how housing and urban policies are implemented by various levels of government across Mexico. The project includes the following components: Studios Research Workshops Learn more about this project.