MODERNITY FOR THE MASSES: Two ways of producing the city in the Mexican capital (1952-1976).

Abstract

During the 20th century in Mexico, two types of producing the city were in constant tension: the rationalist city and the popular city. The first of these, configured institutions from the first decades of the twentieth century. At the same time, the "informal city" was also developing, which grew more rapidly and proportionally from the 1940s onwards. The tension between these two visions of the city or urban cultures can be traced from the projects, testimonies and ideologies of its different actors. In this paper we propose to analyze some key discourses and ideas of these two ways of making the city between 1952 and 1976, in order to evidence a high point of the tension between rationalist and popular urban cultures, during a period in which modern urbanism became a state urbanism and the popular city shaped the Metropolitan Zone of Mexico City. It also seeks to vindicate popular urban culture as a category of analysis belonging to the history of urbanisms in Mexico.

Key words: Mexico, rationalism, popular urbanism, Mexico City.