TIME TO THINK!

By Alejandra Fuentes Salazar

 

Monterrey is located in a large valley at the Northwest of Mexico. It is one of the most important cities of the country, and well known for its highest GDP that oscillates around 7.3% according to INEGI in 2005. Captain Don Alberto del Campo founded Monterrey in September 20 1596. The first settlers of this time were poor but engaged in land cultivation, cattle and mining. With a population of 26,000 people by the XIX century, the city increased its economic power considerably.

 

Investors then handed the establishment of industry in the final decade of the nineteenth century and by the early twentieth century Monterrey has established big iron and steel companies (1900), brick (1890), cement (1907), glass (1909) By the year 1910, Monterrey already had 70,000 inhabitants, becoming the third largest city in the country. The city had a boom in industrial growth and years later the population exceeded 333 000 inhabitants.

Due to a tremendous growth that took over Monterrey in the 50's, the city demanded roads, transportation, and infrastructure for a increasing industrial city; for example, the introduction of the metro transportation system, the establishment of educational institutions and universities as well as the adaptation of a society that demanded an urban identity.

 

 

However, in the last decades of the XX century and beginning of the XXI century a major transformation in technology and local industries occurred. It affected directly the society that at the time was reluctant to the transformation. The city became more and more a model of the American City growing further away from its downtown. It lacked of a planned expansion and emerged with a responsive urbanism. It became a city that sprawled and had similarities to the so-called Generic City "As the sphere of influence expands, the area marked by the center becomes larger and larger, hopelessly diluting both the strength and authority of the nucleus" Rem Koolhaas.

 

Now the city is expanding as an urban metropolitan area known as Monterrey and its 8 municipalities (Apodaca, Garcia Escobedo, Guadalupe, Villa Juarez, San Pedro Garza García, Santa Catarina and San Nicolas de los Garza), which has been absorbed and has been added by a continuous population explosion over the years that gradually loose its roots and traditions. It is time to recover the city, we should go back to the roots and maintain our identity, are we ready to take over the city?