José Carlos Fernández

Modern Mexico, the one that tourists visit, shares with other large cities of the world urban issues such as gentrification and lack of affordable housing. Is there any alternative future in the Mexican experience? Perhaps there is one in the history of ejidos, comunidades, colonias proletarias and other collective arrangements for land tenure.

Juan Fernández González

This project studies the permanent physical presence of different modes of public transportation in Mexico City, focusing on peseros. These public transit vans serve enormous informal economies throughout greater Mexico City. The high visibility of peseros, and of the crowds that wait for them, is contrasted by the invisibility of their stops in the built environment. Comparing peseros with other local means of public transportation exposes their lack of “pink transportation” women-only spaces, their reduced safety, and their lack of universal design.

Angélica Oteiza | Cristina Dávila | Tanushri Dalmiya

In an attempt to map the dualities of tourism–its destructive nature through the commodification of culture, and its potential for state-led economic development–we looked at realities of extraction, commodification, and the generation of spaces of opportunity through tourism in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. We analyzed the management of weed, water, diesel, and waste to understand how tourism shapes the right to the city and cultural narrative, and how policies and regulations around tourism-oriented development disregard the ecological complexities and cultural identities in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Gerardo Corona | Arty Vartanyan 

Along the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, a network of luxury travel destinations is situated
on the clear waters and white sands of the Mexican Caribbean. The appeal of this unique landscape–formerly Mayan land–of jungle, sea, and archaeology is threatened by the aggressive market demands of a growing tourist influx. The various stages of urbanization seen in the Yucatán between reveal the pressures of rapid development as a gradient between the built and the unbuilt, exhibiting the potential future of the relationship between tourism and ecology in the Mexican South.