Decentering Urban Informality in and from Mexico City

The Global City and its Other
Decentering Urban Informality in and from Mexico City
Author: Frank Müller
Walter Frey Verlag, Edition Tranvia (2014)
355 pages
Language: English
21 x 14,3 x 2,5 cm
ISBN: 978-3938944882

Mixture of chaos, compaction of the population, migration and the extremes of social polarization are the pillars that Mexico City marked today. That's at least from the statements of the chronicler Carlos Monsiváis (1938 - 2010). He describes how the postmodern megalopolis, the great city landscape rises. This was made possible by the modern and economic conflict, commercialization of urban space, festivalisation its historicity and medialization of communication.

"Informality" reproduces a form of internal colonialism and a form of "othering". This means the separation of a group to which one feels he belongs, from other groups. This can be vividly the example of Mexico City in several micro-spatial environments between real estate brokers, public planners, residents and neighborhood divided. The meaning of "informality" is indeed borrowed from the practice of dealing with urban poverty, however, is misleading when communities are marginalized from access to intervention in the urban planning. Because "informality" is also considered alliance forged in the emancipatory struggle for housing and land ownership.

This and more claims Frank Müller in his 355 pages research from the edition Tranvia. The content includes eight chapters. The directory tree with subsections is correspondingly large. The texts in paperback band are illustrated in color on plain paper in some cases. Color printing is sometimes useful in charts and colored panels, the color reproduction of the images on normal printed paper unfolds not keep his excellent effect.

Mexico City is also connected to the system of the world economy, the flows are always fed from the diverse relations, including migration, communication, finance and goods and a construct of the overlapping cosmologies count. The city is facing a mighty conflict, deciding between water and soil, flow and strength, dynamics and statics. These differences can be explained by a synthesis of heterogeneous bridging rooms, favelas and slums, as well as geometrically fixed premises, the townhouses. In Monsiváis metaphorical abstraction urbanity appears as the "need to live together". This means that his heimatlich and down to earth, which also includes social forms of surveillance and distinction. The police called or be used here as a moral authority for monitoring of human behavior.

What are the center of Mexico City is founded, was once the political center of Tenochtitlan. A city on the water surrounded by floating "chinampas", which are boats of reeds. In the presence of water resources has become an acute problem. This condition is one of the saddest chapters in with to the city's history Mexico City.

The city was before she was one of the global cities, already a major global center within the Indian culture. The socio-economic and political divisions were formed only during colonization in today's fashion. If you forward the urban grid pattern and facing post-colonial architecture, including habitats are so owned the "right to the city" to the typical characteristics of the Indian predecessors. To revive positive conditions, elimination of rigid distribution pattern is required by categories such as center and periphery. This requirement is connected to the terminal edge of urban areas in the center of Mexico City.

One research focus of this study is how the unequal distribution of access to habitat, the "right to the city" can be developed again in the fragmented urban area of ​​Mexico City, so that order and chaos both at the center and at the periphery of the same conditions.

The contrast consists of a center of power, rigid planning, and integration of the surrounding city borders, places of chaos, where the natives lived. This duality with respect to "informality" aside, is one of the major challenges that are facing town and city planning in Mexico City. It is a tool for differentiation of power.

The term "informality" is of central importance in urban studies from Latin America, both in general and with regard to urban sociology. In particular, represent heterogeneous Überbrückungsbauten, favelas and slums and geometrically anchored premises, town houses, a tension between order and chaos, which has spread to Latin America since the beginning of colonization as an American form of urbanization.

Favelas have been interpreted as an expression and aggravating socioeconomic segregation, there was a "Ecology of Fear", which had increasingly environmental destruction. Around the globe, we observed the governments, "slum" relocate residents in social housing projects.

In this context, the band of Frank Müller socio-economic development leads to. The term heterotopia appears repeatedly in the text and as a headline, Michel Foucault briefly used term to provide spaces and places in their proper systematic context. But Jürgen Habermas and the "Theory of Communicative trade" are present among the scientific standard works.
Letzte Änderung am Montag, 16 Mai 2016 13:07
Click me