Statistics & General Information

By Asahel Urbiola

Monterrey is a city in the process of becoming a generic city, and its main attraction is its anomie. The urban area has grown considerably and it is mixing with the neighboring towns positioning it as the second largest city and metropolitan area with the biggest expansion in Mexico. As an industrial town attracts people from other parts of the world, increasing its diversity and cultural differences, thus creating a lack of identity that causes a negative change. The city is becoming a model and a combination for common images and sensations that shows weakness and lacks of emotion.Due to the large growth cities, sedentary users need to find a place to settle definitively, the city evolves considerably and it is leaving behind its identity. It becomes common, generic, like the others everywhere in the world.

 

Pictures taken from the book "Monterrey Area Metropolitana" by Mario A. Santoscoy. Photos by Camilo Garza y Garza

 

According to Rem Koolhaas' a Generic City grows dramatically. By 1970s a generic city was inhabited by an average of 2.5 million residents, it now holds about 15 million. According to INEGI, during the 70's, Monterrey had a total population of 858.107 inhabitants. It currently has a total of 1'135, 550 inhabitants. Koolhaas refers that “a generic city is purely fractal, an endless repetition of the same modular structure, an ordinary city, but it has lost its identity because of the excessive growth and poor planning.”

 

In this type of city, the use of cars becomes essential and indispensable. Traffic surpasses the capacity of the streets and roads. A very clear example in Monterrey is Gonzalitos Avenue, in which the road was planned for a small flow of vehicles, now with the excessive growth of the city, the street cannot hold the amount of traffic at its high peak hours creating a complete chaos in the area.

 

Monterrey has become a copy of the North American cities, especially the Texan, where, in order to move from one place to another the use of a car is essential. There are long distances a user must travel through highways in a city that is not planned accordingly due to a responsive urbanism, a problem that must be resolve by architects and planners and be considered in the first place by demands of all citizens.