STRUGGLE FOR IDENTITY

By Emmanuel Hernandez

 

The city of Monterrey is the third largest and most important in the Mexican Republic. It contains 85% of the population of all the state of Nuevo León. According to statistics from the book The Endless Cities, in 2050 75% of the population will live in cities while in 1900 it was only 10% of it.

 

Discussing the perspective of Rem Koolhaas on his essay "The Generic City" we can say that Monterrey is certainly to be generic. As the economy was thriving in the city, a consistent growth began generating sprawl to its periphery. Much of the population had to moved outside its downtown, which then turns to create nine municipalities now called the metropolitan area of Monterrey.

 

For instance, downtown Monterrey was affected by a variety of changes such as informal regulations, responsive urbanism, bad planning and a lack of norms that eventually transformed the city into a system that is not adequate to the culture or the regional identity. Its streets and roads forces people to use cars only and it is not pedestrian friendly.

 

The city now struggles to adapt, not only to the growing population but also to its surroundings. Nature calls, and San Pedro Garza Garcia and Valle Oriente are using what is known as the "free style" for planning and urban development. Today the city continues growing on the residential category actually building vertically rather than horizontally.

 

Usually most of the new urbanities have the tendency to eliminate horizontal sprawl and gain a vertical skyline. But as in the case of Monterrey, the city struggle with regulations for preservation of historical sites with outdated urban policies, that rather helping the city, they generate untouchable architectural icons, which in most cases do not have a real architectural value. The city planning is contradictory; on the one hand preserves “icons” with no real value and on the other it creates an urbanism full of outdated postmodernist buildings and parks that reveal a lack of real identity.