Urban insurgent architecture plan
Introduction
Mexico City has been massively expanding its urban fabric and population density, becoming the fifth largest city in the world.[1] A combination of neoliberal policies, complex geographic location, socioeconomic disparities, and inefficient strategies have influenced the city's gentrification process.
The combination of numerous megaprojects and inefficient urban planning strategies has led to dysfunctions in circulation, community allocation, and equal access to resources. Consequently, low- and middle-income communities have been directly or indirectly alienated and challenged to adapt to a complex and evolving urban environment.[2][3].
History of the development of Mexico City
The history of Mexico City begins with Tenochtitlán, a Mexica settlement built around 1325 AD in the Valley of Mexico. Developed as a series of artificial islands on a lake, the town was connected by a system of canals, surrounding the Chapultepec aqueduct that served as the main freshwater resource and therefore as a base for the evolution of the settlement. The Mexica Empire grew rapidly after gaining control of the surrounding lands, reaching a size of around 15 km and a population of around one million inhabitants. These people lived in low houses made of adobe, commonly attached to chinampas for cultivation. The homes were shared between families and were grouped around a patio, creating a diversity of neighborhoods that surrounded the central public buildings around the Templo Mayor. The main areas defined by the empire (Tepeyac, Tlacopan, Coyoacán, Iztapalapa and Texcoco) continue to be part of the modern city.[4] Social divisions according to family status, wealth, occupation, age and gender were also culturally predominant and influential in the architecture and urbanism of the time. For example, elites (or European settlers) often lived in large homes called haciendas, while the rest of the indigenous communities survived on small, informally built lots.[5].
The development of Mexico City as the urban environment we recognize today began to take shape with the arrival of Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador, to Tenochtitlán in 1519. When the Aztec Empire led by Montezuma was overthrown, the Spanish took control of the planning and organization of the city.[5] The division of blocks into a grid, around a central plaza accessed via four main streets, created a practical layout that helped the Spaniards to retain control, manage the division of lots and maintain a consolidated power unit. The placement of buildings of authority, religious institutions, and economic and social spaces emphasized the square as the physical, cultural, and commercial starting point of the city. The standardization of architecture and the creation of an urban fabric through a network of diverse settlements also speaks to the sense of permanence and expansion that the conquerors aspired to. The construction of new sites was encouraged by granting the early Spanish settlers an urban elite status and political power that would be maintained from generation to generation. The Ordinances of the Indies of Philip II laid the foundations for the founding of cities in the New World, following a set of strict rules of spatial organization and hierarchies, inspired by classical Roman urban planning ideas.[6] In this system of acquired wealth, other forms of exploitation emerged such as forced labor, the expropriation of land, the control of mineral resources, the imposition of high prices on goods and taxes, as well as more complex systems such as the encomienda and the latifundio, often related to the implementation of Christianity.[7].