the blow of being back was bigger than expected. i left df (méxicocity) for barcelona may 2006, and hadn't returned since. i forgot what a monster the city is. a constant soft collapse. a wide, circular wreck. half-finished, permanent urban adolescence. the city is just the same as i left it, but worse. here it is as if change only served the grip of the ancient (not so much ancient aztec as ancient pri). change is going back to what we missed and was modern in the seventies. it is so strange and exhausting and infuriating to sense the state pseudourbanity and pseudourbanism in the city. not only is the physical quality of our city grade c, but the overall quality of urban production is absolutely lame, taken buy architectural aristocramediocrity, jerk-off politics and fat rich entrepreneurial rogues. the late-nineties promise of a new phase of city-level democracy (we elected our first mayor in 1997) and urban youngblood feeding neighboorhood life and local production has been miscarried. flaming new barrios go bad in a matter of months, consumed and wasted (the condesa was charming, now it feels cheap)(the centro might be going going gone, as it looses itself to money). huge public expenses go into infrastructure projects that are but temporary glorifications of local (segundo piso) or federal (megabiblioteca) politics, and long term urban traps.
i'm trying to take it in. there is quite the efervesence going on, although efervesence here usually consist of shit being thrown between factions. the latest is the scandal around oma's torre bicentenario, the current fad in local dissing and manipulation. i'll get to it. we also have the projected emptying of the centro histórico with the (negotiated) relocation of the ambulantes (informal vendors) away from the streets of the perímetro a (first section) and into lots and buildings expropriated by the city government. i also wonder if ricky burdett and the lse crew are still advising marcelo ebrard, the city mayor. oh, and i couldn't miss the bipolar construction boom that still has the city by the balls: massive upper-class developments like the ones sprouting all over from reforma to santa fe and the even more massive "social housing" developments splattered onto the periphery, levittown on spurios steroids.
brace yourselves.
