The case of the Mexico City Metropolitan Region (MCmr = comprised of 16 delegations of the Federal District and 27 municipalities of the State of Mexico with a population of 16.4 million in an area of 4719 km2) has been challenging the discourse on the future of urbanism and the revalidation of the Megacities (a large agglomeration of population = 10 million or more, a degree of physical extension that encompasses even the area beyond the administrative boundaries, with a complex economy and unifying transport system, with a heavily polarized geography of centrality and marginalization) as a model of social organization with different physical, economic, environmental and cultural structures.
The emergence of the megacity has caused the re-apparition of large scale planning projects as the Lakes Project, which proposes the reconstruction of a water body within the MCmr, the return of a Lake as infrastructural system or element for the re-conceptualization of the relationships between city and its environment, its economic-cultural context, its role in global imaginary, and its future existence.
The ignorance about cohabitation with water (present in the MCmr nowadays) has its origins during the Spanish Colonial era, where water could be understood as a metaphor of revolution, independence and liberty. Today, 500 years ago, the Lake Project tries to be more than a nostalgic preconception of the past, is committed to a vision as well as a series of actions to allow its materializations. The project succeeds in activating discussion about the future of the region but lacks of viability in its realization, which leads in the tradition of utopian planning.
The actual planning and design for the City cannot only account the MCmr but also the Mezquital Valley (a poor arid conurbation about 83000 hectares and 500 000 inhabitants, mostly dedicated to agricultural production), which has become an enormous garden extension of the Capital City. The reconstruction of the Texcoco Lake could help the efficient use of water in this Valley according to the Lakes Project proposal.
Although imaging that five centuries of ecological transformation in this region through the reappearance of a Lake seems a fantasy future, the understanding of the Lakes removal history could help to redirect the evolution of the city.
A planning proposal, of this scale, should go beyond hydraulics and geography, financial or operative viability; it must integrate layers of information within different scales and realms as global city.
Today the 90% of Latin America´s poor population inhabits urban center called “cities”, where the lack of services and culture traditionally has challenged the redefining the notion of the city itself. In this cases the informal sector represents a potential in the small and micro enterprise, which cannot being ignored.
The text pointed out the necessity of looking at the production and consumption of culture in the future city. Cities need a new productive sense, implying creativity to erased the division between living and working, work and leisure activities.
Urban propositions should be understood as ongoing researches evaluating multiple scenarios (scenario technique = these new tool of urbanism was design in order to deal with uncertainty) the design process should allow “shape” to be informed and transformed constantly during the planning processes. All strategies and actions should be flexible in an open ended planning (=a new form of planning foregrounds potential and open ended solutions, where architectural design will have to connect itself to an urban development to become into an interactive and networked process).
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