If we already live in a chaotic city, we’ll barely survive in the chaos: endless traffic jams, noise, water shortages, pollution… Nothing better bodes well for the General Development Plan (PGD) for Mexico City devised by the new government. Following in the footsteps of the previous PGD project, which thankfully failed, the authorities intend for the local congress to approve this “planning” project that will promote even more real estate speculation and gentrification than we already suffer from and have so vehemently criticized. The PGD, among other absurdities, proposes “redensifying” areas of the city that already have “sufficient” public services and infrastructure, under the pretext that new development “nodes” will benefit us. Since the General Development Plan (PGD) doesn’t even mention the partial programs that protect the capital’s heritage and monument zones, San Ángel, downtown Tlalpan, Polanco, Santa María Nativitas, and all the neighborhoods included in the 47 existing partial programs could be devoured or besieged by real estate speculation and corruption.
The existing partial programs, achieved after years of work by specialists, residents, and authorities, encompass heritage and monument zones that, due to their value to present and future society, and to the city’s history and memory, require specific regulations governing land use, building heights, and the types of businesses permitted, in order to protect and preserve these areas. By overlooking the partial development plans in the General Development Plan (which would be a law, and therefore mandatory), the authorities are opening a wide door to real estate speculators and those who have tried, and continue to try, to circumvent regulations and build high-rise buildings, hotels, nightclubs, and shopping malls wherever they please, saturating neighborhoods that preserve churches, mansions, gardens, cobblestone streets, and, above all, a diversity of social strata and businesses—a plurality that fosters human interaction.
One example, already mentioned in the media, is the San Ángel area, included in the partial development plan that also protects San Ángel Inn and Tlacopac, all areas of tangible and intangible heritage value that have managed to preserve their old layout, cobblestone streets, and diversity. San Ángel is surrounded or bisected by major avenues where thousands of cars, trucks, and buses circulate, and where the vacant lots of old mansions attract greedy speculators who are not concerned with contributing to sustainability but rather with maximizing the potential of the land. Until now, the existing regulations for partial development plans and neighborhood advocacy have temporarily halted illegal construction, such as the half-finished building at Altavista and Insurgentes. However, if the General Development Plan (PGD) is approved without an explicit reference to these partial development plans, specifying that they cannot be modified even if there are “sufficient” services and infrastructure, and if these regulations are not respected, buildings with hundreds of apartments, hotels, and shopping centers will soon spring up, making it impossible to travel along Altavista, Insurgentes, Revolución, Desierto de los Leones, and the Periférico, and effectively strangling San Ángel.
San Ángel is just one example. The same could happen in downtown Tacubaya or Chimalistac. Besides the fact that this “development” is unsustainable, it is paradoxical that the self-proclaimed “People’s Government” is promoting “luxury” developments aimed at those who can afford to pay millions of dollars (some already advertised online, as if this law were a foregone conclusion). It’s also striking that in the “consultation to include a gender perspective in the PGD,” the authorities claimed they wanted to guarantee a city where women feel “happy” and safe, as if contributing to skyrocketing rent and property tax increases, displacement from neighborhoods, increased traffic and commute times, and water scarcity… somehow improved well-being. They don’t even spare us the slightest mockery.
The PGD institutionalizes real estate speculation and accelerates the destruction of Mexico City. There are only a few weeks left to stop it.
Source: eleconomista
