Megaprojects

Abstract

Mexico is experiencing a series of debates about the shape of its cities. Most observers draw deeply pessimistic observations, noting a growing commodification of the urban landscape, high levels of crime and violence, social and spatial polarisation, state withdrawal and a general lack of innovative architectural design. Globalisation is widely held to be a root cause of these problems. Pressure to attract global capital and to cater for globalisation’s ‘winners’ have provoked government support for a series of megaprojects that seem to offer diluted representations of national or regional identities, anodyne design and architectural motifs. This paper looks at two of the largest megaprojects in Latin America, Santa Fe in Mexico City and Angelópolis in Puebla. We argue that, seen through everyday practice, these global spaces are highly differentiated and present forms of spatial appropriation and possibilities of transformation and subversion. Everyday contestation reveals ‘the local production of the global’.