The Transnational City and its Other: Formalizing Lifestyles in Mexico City

Since colonization Latin American cities have been formed by their transregional interdependencies, producing different forms of exclusion. This project wants to shed light on the continuities of those socio-political inequalities that derive from the interdependent connectedness and mark urban spaces. For that objective two case studies of the production of housing in Mexico City will be conducted: The first study focuses on the escape of an urban elite out of the city of "disorder" as its "other" into the closed urbanization of order and security, as in the case of Ciudad Bosque Real in formerly uninhabited territory in the State of Mexico. The second is interested in the search for a life close to the financial centres and cultural heritage as the "other" to the own modernity in the closed urbanization of Torre Paseo de la Reforma 222 in Mexico's historic centre. The cases will serve to show the transregional dimension of inequality in the access and the production of livable space which is good that encompasses intimacy and social position. Widely uncontested as regular forms of the production of urban space these actual processes of urban transformation hide the negotiation process between political and economical actors, locals and transnationals that constructued the exclusionary regularity of closed urbanizations. The division between the regular and its other, the irregular will be explained both as deeply embodied by the urban population and as (re)produced in scientific discourse.

Book Chapters

(2008): Reterritorialisierung und Empowerment. Bauen, Wohnen und Sprechen in Maclovio Rojas, en: Bandau et al.: Pasando Fronteras, Berlin: Tranvia.

Journal Articles

(2008): Sicherheit gleich Freiheit? Ein Besuch in dem geschlossenen Wohnviertel Ciudad Bosque Real in Mexiko Stadt, en: Lateinamerikanachrichten, Nr. 421, S. 53-55.

Reviews

Review of: Becker, Anne et al. (2008) Verhandlungssache Mexiko Stadt. Umkämpfte Räume, Stadtaneignungen, imaginarios urbanos, b_books, en: Das Argument, Berlin.

To be published

with Beatriz García Peralta Nieto (forthcoming, 2010): Espacio de transformación: proyecto de desarrollo urbano y disputa ciudadana por la ribera del río Spree en Berlín, en: las Diputas por la Ciudad, coordinada por Patricia Ramírez Kuri, México.

Others

(2009):  „Herón Proal“, „Vicente Ogé“ y „Sebastian Lemba“, en: International Encyclopedia of Protest, Wiley/Blackwell.