Mexico city offered Landscape Urbanism the chance to explore ways in which the work of the course could serve to operate in the complex conditions emerging in one of the largest urban agglomerations on earth. The unplanned growth of some of the suburbs has left large tracts of the city devoid of basic services and quality urban space. But at the same time it has laid the basis for new forms of inhabitation, which deal with other processes and infrastructural problems, such as soil subsidence and depletion of water resources. The works of Landscape Urbanism in this year focused on the exploration of voids within a semi-continuous urban fabric, looking for potentials of development and exploring the ways in which local conditions and infrastructural constraints could work as a starting point for new urban organisations. The students studied processes of infilling within the street network, expansions, centralities and connectivity strategies in an exploration of the ways to work within the city fabric. The course combined the visit to Mexico City with the realisation of an on-site workshop, lectures by scholars from the National University and a series of technical lectures from Arup infrastructure. An initial bibliography was provided and further investigation was developed during the course through contact with local authorities, non-governmental agencies, developers, industrial sector practitioners, academic institutions, and members of the local population.
Mexico City Agenda 2004-2005
