Modern politics in Mexico City: Via Verde and Corredor Cultural Chapultepec

Gallardo Sánchez Ricardo Mauricio November 30, 2016 Understanding the City – 3rd assignment

Modern politics in Mexico City: Via Verde and Corredor Cultural Chapultepec Two urban improvement projects, one controversy This paper will analyze the public reaction towards the construction of two urban improvement projects: Corredor Cultural Chapultepec (CCC) and Via Verde vertical gardens (VV) in Mexico City addressing the controversy created in both cases. The first one was conceived as a drastic improvement to an important avenue in the center of the city in 2014 by building a high-line linear park above the current avenue. It was submitted to public consultation and rejected by civil society voters. The second is a greening project authorized by the Mexican government in July of 2016 that will build vertical gardens throughout nearly 1000 pillars along 30 kilometers of a highly transited highway in the city called Periferico. Both projects were similar in their origins and motivations; they grew out as an idea and design from private sector agents concerned about environmental issues; air and noise pollution as well as a lack of green and public spaces in a city that markedly benefits car usage over other means of transportation. Nonetheless, the first project was rejected and the second was approved. In this respect, the research question I will try to answer refers to: what were the motivations across the different actors involved to reject the construction of Corredor Chapultepec and approve Via Verde. Also, could these motivations illustrate a moment of greater participation of civil society

in political processes of Mexico City? By extending the Via Verde project with the Corredor Chapultepec, I will defend the argument that people who stood against these projects in Mexico City were mostly resentful towards the present left-wing party “PRD” government of Mexico City1, especially since chances are high that the current mayor Miguel Angel Mancera will be nominated as a presidential candidate in 2018. Moreover, the common citizen is suspicious of the low availability of information about the private funding of the projects and is less tolerant than before towards deficient democratic processes. Furthermore, people who support these projects are primarily middle to high class citizens, car and property owners and neighbors of the areas involved; people who would benefit from the land value increase generated. The theoretical approach that I intend to utilize comprises the strategic misrepresentation of costs and benefits argument by Flyvbjerg, Holm and Buhl, in which agents in the government such as legislators (in this case, the governor), as well as investors and constructors have incentives to deceive the general public regarding the funding and the true reasons for approval of the project. They do so by overestimating the benefits of the vertical gardens and the linear park, hence underestimating the costs of construction and maintenance. Moreover, this theory could explain the motivations for the local government to encourage private-public projects rather than public infrastructure implementation. I will further address Alisha C. Holland ideas about politics of law enforcement. Mexico City is governed by a left-wing party whose voters are primarily non-car-owners. My argument in this

1 In Mexico City the terms “mayor” and “governor” could be used as synonims. Miguel Angel Mancera has been the PRD, left-wing party governor since December 2012.

sense is that given the environmental crisis, the left-sided governor, who is likely to be a presidential candidate for 2018 elections, has been forced to apply contingency public policies that do not please higher income sectors of the society, and therefore, it has become urgent to regain popularity by improving highways and avenues through amenities that do not affect interests for this sector of society. I will also include John R. Logan spatial thinking theory, in regards to the consideration of spatial arrangements in the city and how they shape social agency and psychological mood in a certain region. There is much being said about traffic congestion, environmental aspects such as pollution and noise reduction, political dimensions and financial issues, but the highway is also spatially allocated and people who live in the vicinity have also an opinion about it. Last but not least, I find useful the argument from Ansell (2014) concerning the political economy of ownership. The point is that the public-private projects addressed in this work are socially exclusive since they are spatially located in economically relevant areas of the city 2 and will therefore be mostly beneficial for the local residents, car owners and middle to high class consumers. Therefore, these agents, who happen to be a major fraction of land owners, are more likely to support the construction of these amenities in the city. The opposite view, coming from non-property owners, would either not care or be against them because they feel excluded. They point out the lack of government investment in the design and construction of public spaces in more vulnerable areas of the city. Also, they address to the corruption and deficient transparency in the projects’ funding and the privatization of public spaces. In March 2016, Mexico’s capital received unpleasant news: Pollution levels were twice as they 2 See figure 1.

should be and people were advised not to be exposed in open spaces. Immediately afterwards, several contingency policies were applied, such as no-drive days for private car owners and public transportation gratuity in certain areas (New York Times, 2016). But little did these measures improve the overall state of pollution in the city and the metropolitan area since the public space is designed to privilege car driving, undermining green areas and with an unsustainable rate of deforestation in the inner city. Mexico City’s urbanization process has been historically conflictive and chaotic. Proof of that is the notable urban sprawl in the outskirts, especially in the metropolitan area comprising the State of Mexico, the most populated entity in the country with over 16 million residents and located at the north and northwestern part of the capital. Both metropolitan areas comprehend the most important economic zones in Mexico and are part of one of the largest megaregions in the world with nearly 20 million inhabitants (INEGI, 2016). These two regions are interconnected by a network of public transportation structures, such as buses and trains, but the most important linkage between both economic centers is a two-level highway called Anillo Periferico, a monumental artery in which thousands of vehicles transit every day. The second level in this highway was built fairly recently, at the beginning of the 2000’s and its construction was highly controversial too. Civil society perceived it as a disamenity for the urban environment, unpleasant, ugly, grey and a source of stress, noise and air pollution, not to mention that the traffic congestion issues were far from being solved with this measure. Nearly 15 years afterwards, the results are palpable. Traffic congestion is worse than ever and air pollution levels are not improving. Given the state of emergency declared in March and contingency measures such as no-drive days even for new cars, the governor’s popularity rapidly

decreased. Not too long afterwards, the project proposed by Monasterio and Mendez (VV) gained popularity through the social media. They placed a request in Change.org, an online platform to engage civil society into a discussion for public policy, and a way to “virtually sign” their agreement with it. The government in Mexico City accepted to grant permission to build the vertical gardens if they could gather 150,000 signatures in this platform. Two months later, nearly eighty thousand signatures were registered and the government granted permission to begin with the project (Corona, 2016). The project consists on building vertical gardens throughout nearly 1000 pillars along 30 kilometers of the highway. According to the official website, it intends to filter every year around 27 thousand tons of toxic gases and process five thousand kg of suspended dust, as well as 10,000 kg of heavy metals in the air. It is designed by the company Verde-Vertical and funded by private capital, although no specific information about the investors is available yet. The maintenance and equipment would be funded by private investors as well. Such investors would have a 10-year license to place advertisements in 10% of the gardens installed. The main arguments against it in the media comes from architects, engineers and environmental scientists. They are not convinced about the benefits claimed by the official website of the project nor the government statistics. There are also no official and serious environmental analysis of the impact and most importantly, the funding and maintenance is suspicious because there is no such information available at all, in spite of being approved and in process of construction already. On the other hand, Avenida Chapultepec is a 10-lanes avenue where roughly 75,000 cars transit every day. It is located in a historical area near the center of the city and is part of the interconnection of several medium-high income districts such as Roma, Cuauhtémoc, Condesa,

Juarez and Polanco. These are high density zones and comprise a large proportion of skyscrapers and high-rise buildings with mixed use in the city. The result is a vibrant, complex urban tissue with multiple cultural and commercial amenities, but whose main target are local residents and middle to high-income citizens. Therefore, Avenida Chapultepec is seen as a disamenity; because of its size and conflictive crossroads, it’s perceived as a physical division between the Juarez and Roma districts. Traffic congestion is also a problem and informal commerce that has overtaken a large portion of the avenue. One of the main problems with the avenue is that the sidewalks were too narrow and the crossroads dangerous. Pedestrians sometimes have to run in order to get from one side to the other, and look out for cars turning around in the corners. In May 2014, an improvement project for the avenue was announced in the official government newspaper. It contemplated the construction of a multilevel park running above Chapultepec avenue and comprised the removal of some lanes to increase the size of the sidewalks, giving space for pedestrians and bicycles3. Its name: Corredor Cultural Chapultepec (CCC). The first response from the civil society was favorable. Most people realized that it was indeed necessary to do something about the avenue. Nonetheless, a few days after the project was introduced a debate erupted. Several agents declared their opposition to the CCC: journalists, researchers and environmental scientists such Rodrigo Díaz (who would eventually be against VV project as well). Civil society also got involved in the debate, specially residents of the districts affected. The government announced a three-months period for debate and public consultation before the 3 These neighborhoods together comprise a major region of bicycle users in the city.

implementation. In social media, news and newspapers people reacted aggressively, saying that the three-month period given was not enough time to analyze a project of this magnitude. Citizens also resented the fact that the project had already been designed and was set to be implemented, from the architectural design, legal framework to the funding and investing. According to the government (represented by the City Mayor and Simon Levy, the chief officer of a government enterprise dedicated to promote investments in Mexico City), the project would be entirely funded by the private sector; specifically, Invex Group, a Mexican financial services company. In return, the company would own property rights of 18% of the nearly 100,000 squared meters of commercial-use land created by the CCC (Moguel, 2015). The way in which everything had already been carefully planned made suspicious several journalists such as Carmen Aristegui and widely-known architects like Teodoro González de León, Miquel Adriá and Alberto Kalach). They reacted critically in social media and left-wing newspapers such as La Jornada. Miquel Adriá mentioned in an interview: “A city that charges taxes should be able to create its own future. Instead of beautifying the city with architects and urban designers that turned into mere decorators that only serve for marketing and retailing, we must look forward to a resilient urbanism that restores the basic functions of the street”. (Translation by myself of Miquel Adriá in Aristegui, 2015). Other architects like Alberto Kalach declared: “The CCC is actually a mall, like Walmart. The risk if we build it is that once a private developer is given permission to build on the street, others will keep breaking an old agreement: The street is for all. There are simpler and cheaper ways; putting the car, buses and bikes lanes in order and widening the sidewalks. In this way, the profit would be split among the neighbors and not in a single investor. The CCC is an abusive project”. (Translation by myself of Alberto Kalach in Aristegui, 2015). Mexico City has been governed during the last decades by a left-wing party (PRD) whose main

voters are low-income people who do not own a car. Therefore, there is a strong need to benefit higher-income sectors, mostly vehicle-owners, by promoting public policies that improve highways and roads. There is also a high probability that Miguel Angel Mancera could be nominated as a candidate for president in 2018 and is therefore a strong incentive to gain popularity by all means. That could explain the lack of regulation from the government and the speedy process of validation of projects that might as well not be as beneficial as they claim to be. There is, however, an opposite view, especially in the social media, that agrees on the importance of improving public spaces in the city. Some of them live in the vicinities of the track and are anxious to see an improvement in the aesthetics of the environment by greening the area and thus making it visually attractive and perhaps reducing the noise. Conclusion The creation of public spaces and urban improvement projects in the past decades has been predominantly performed by public-private and private investors. However, until recently, civil society has been more involved in the decision making of projects that will transform their vicinities. The government of Mexico City has been during the past 20 years in hands of left-wing parties. Nonetheless, the creation of public spaces, beautification projects and urban improvements have primarily taken place in the most economically dynamic areas, which has decreased the overall popularity of the party and therefore, the governor, who is suspected to run for national presidency. In this respect, the government of the city has tried to satisfy everyone, but has failed to do so. On the one hand, the cancellation of CCC project was a response to the democratic demands of citizens. On the other, I consider that the construction of VV is an attempt to regain popularity

with middle and high income voters. The failure of the first one CCC was due to deficient democratization processes that intensified resentment towards the left-wing party. On the contrary, the success of the second VV was highly due to a rapid consultation of public opinion before the planning processes begun. Although both are projects are similar in their design, implementations and funding, the first one could’ve created more wealth and economic benefit than the second. My opinion is that the government adjusts its position according to the political environment it foresees. Therefore, in spite of being a left-wing party government, concedes benefits that will please middle to high income voters such as VV, and rejects those that will not satisfy lower income voters and the academia, such as the CCC. This could serve as a proof of how Mexico City’s politics run nowadays.

Appendix Figure 1. Space interventions in public spaces in Mexico City (2015)

Source: Moreno (2015).

Figure 2: Map showing the location of the Corredor Chapultepec in Chapultepec avenue

Source: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1764199&page=6

Figure 3. Map indicating the location of Periferico Avenue in Mexico City (Yellow outer circle)

Source: Mexico City Public Transportation office at http://www.fimevic.df.gob.mx/images/tolucatacubaya-observatorio/presentacion/02g.jpg

Figure 4: Chapultepec Avenue now and how it would have been with CCC

Source: http://cdn.lopezdoriga.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Pipa-Chapultepec-Florencia-4.jpg and http://www.revistacodigo.com/wpcontent/uploads/2015/08/61.jpg

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