This article examines the practices of urban planners in the early decades of this century as a basis for thinking about the public sphere in Mexico. It offers a general description of downtown Mexico City, its physical and social character, and the foreign and domestic reference points used to build the city in the period of revolutionary transition when competing views about downtown changed the profession of planning and the city itself. The article suggests that the existence of conflictive views of the city advanced by different planning elites impeded any real consensus on government efforts to develop downtown. This owed in no small part to the fact that the low-income, market, and trading-centered activities of downtown residents did not figure into modernist views of city planners, conservative and progressive alike. As downtown areas fell out of the urban planning picture, its populations were neglected, its physical spaces deteriorated, its social composition narrowed, and its so-called publicity became ever more circumscribed.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Bartolovich, C. (2000). Inventing London. In M. Hill & W. Montag (Eds.), Masses, classes, and the public sphere (pp. 13-40). London: Verso
2.
Casanova, P. G. (1970). Democracy in Mexico. New York: Oxford University Press
3.
Cisneros Sosa, A. (1993). La ciudad que construimos: Registro de la expansión de la Ciudad de México, 1920-1976 [The city we built: A registry of the expansion of Mexico City, 1920-1976]. Mexico City, Mexico: UAM-Ixtapalapa
4.
Cohen, M. P. (1999). The Porfirian Paradigm: History of drainage in the valley of Mexico. Mexico City, Mexico: Miguel Angel Porrua
5.
Collado, M. C. (2000). Jose G. de la Lama en la expansión urbana de los años veinte [Jose G. de la Lama in the urban expansion of the 1920s]. In G. Altamirano (Ed.), En la cima del poder: Elites Mexicanos (1830-1930) [At the heights of power: Mexican elites, 1830-1930]. Mexico City, Mexico: Instituto Mora
6.
Collado, M. C. (2003, April). Private and public interests in Mexico City’s growth in the 1920s. Paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association Annual Meetings, Dallas, TX
7.
Contreras, C. (1925, July). National planning project for the Republic of Mexico. City Planning, pp. 3-15
8.
Daniels, J. O. (2000). Rituals of disqualification: Competing publics and public housing in contemporary Chicago. In M. Hill & W. Montag (Eds.), Masses, classes, and the public sphere (pp. 62-82). London: Verso
9.
Davis, D. E. (1997). Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Populares [National Confederation of Popular Organizations]. In Encyclopedia of Mexico: History, society, and culture. Chicago: Fitzroy and Dearborn
10.
Davis, D. E. (1998). El leviatán urbano: La Ciudad de México en el siglo veinte [Urban leviathan: Mexico City in the twentieth century]. Mexico City, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica
11.
De Gortari, H., & Franyuti, R. H. (1988). Memoria y encuentros: La Ciudad de México y el Distrito Federal (1824-1928) [Memory and encounters: Mexico City and the Federal District (1824-1928)]. Mexico City, Mexico: Departamento del Distrito Federal/Instituto Mora
12.
Fernández Christlieb, F. (2000). Europa y el urbanismo neoclásico en la ciudad de México: Antecendentes y esplendores [Europe and neoclassical urbanism in Mexico City: Antecedents and grandeur]. Mexico City, Mexico: Instituto Mora
13.
Fogelson, R. (2001). Downtown: Its rise and fall, 1880-1950. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
14.
Franzen, J. (2002). How to be alone. New York: Farrar, Giroux, and Straus
15.
De Garay, G. (2000). Mario Pani: Historia oral de la Ciudad de México, 1940-1990 [Mario Pani: Oral history of Mexico City, 1940-1990]. Mexico City, Mexico: Instituto Mora
16.
Habermas, J. (1991). The transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
17.
Johns, M. (1998). The City of Mexico in the age of Díaz. Austin: University of Texas
18.
Lear, J. (2001). Workers, neighbors, and citizens: The revolution in Mexico City. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
19.
López Rangel, R. (1982). Algunos antecedentes sobre el functionalismo arquitectonico y el pensamiento de Hannes Meyer en Mexico [Some antecedents to architectural functionalism and the thought of Hannes Meyer in Mexico]. In Apuntes para la historia y crítica de la arquitectura Mexicana del siglo XX [Notes on the history and criticism of Mexican architecture in the twentieth century] (Vol. 1). Mexico City, Mexico: SEP, Instituto de Bellas Artes
20.
Marquez, V., & Davis, D. E. (1994). Repensando la democracia en México: Participación, contestación, y acomodación desde una perspective histórica [Rethinking democracy in Mexico: Participation, contestation, and accommodation in historical perspective]. Revista Internacional de Filosofía Política (Madrid), 4, 90-126
21.
Monnet, J. (1995). Usos e imagines del centro histórico de la Ciudad de México [Uses and images of the historic center of Mexico City] (P. Rodriguez Avinoa, Trans.). Mexico City, Mexico: Departamento del Distrito Federal
22.
Morales Moreno, J. (1988). Discurso, urbanismo y ciudades: De la ciudad de la razon a la ciudad de México [Discourse, urbanism, and cities: From the city of reason to the city of Mexico]. Sociología, 3(6), 35-72
23.
Negt, O., & Kluge, A. (1993). Public sphere and experience: Toward an analysis of the bourgeois and proletarian public sphere (P. Labanyki, J. O. Daniel, & A. Oksiloff, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
24.
Reese, C. M. (2002). The urban development of Mexico City, 1850-1930. In A. Armandoz (Ed.), Planning Latin America’s capital cities, 1850-1950. London: Routledge
25.
Rivadeneyra, P. (1982). Hannes Meyer in Mexico,1938-1949. In Apuntes para la historia y crítica de la arquitectura Mexicana del siglo XX [Notes on the history and criticism of Mexican architecture in the twentieth century] (Vol. 1). Mexico City, Mexico: SEP, Instituto de Bellas Artes
26.
Rodríguez Kuri, A. (1996). La experiencia olvidada: El ayuntamiento de México: Política y gobierno, 1876-1912 [The forgotten experience: The municipality of Mexico: Politics and governance, 1976-1912]. Mexico City, Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico/UAM
27.
Sluis, A. (2002). The Mercado Abelardo Rodriguez: Revolutionary microcosm, urban landscape, and female space [Mimeograph]. Unpublished manuscript, Department of History, University of Arizona
28.
Toca, A. (1982). Arquitectura posrevolucionaria en México, 1920-1932 [Postrevolutionary architecture in Mexico, 1920-1932]. In Apuntes para la historia y crítica de la arquitectura Mexicana del siglo XX [Notes on the history and criticism of Mexican architecture in the twentieth century] (Vol. 1). Mexico City, Mexico: SEP, Instituto de Bellas Artes
29.
Vargas, S. R. (1982). Historical recovery of functional socialism. In Apuntes para la historia y crítica de la arquitectura Mexicana del siglo XX [Notes on the history and criticism of Mexican architecture in the twentieth century] (Vol. 1). (pp. 66-114). Mexico City, Mexico: Secretary of Public Education, National Institute of Fine Arts
