South of the Border

[czsz]

El Paso is the typical western US city, with the typical sprawling metropolitan area...

...except that half of it is in Mexico. In fact, it is Ciudad Juarez, the most violent city in Mexico, where reported homicides (probably a fraction of the normal amount) were quadruple the rate in the worst-ranked US city. Juarez is emblazed in a violent drug war confrontation fueled by this year's bumper crop of cocaine.

It is also a fascinating place. Imagine it parked across the river from a city like El Paso - say, a Denver or a Salt Lake.

(Crowded streets! New York-style newsstands!)

Now consider the rest of Mexico. Consider cities like these, which blow away nearly every North American cityscape outside Quebec:

Durango

Campeche

Guanajuato

Morelia

Cuernavaca

Queretaro

Xalapa

Zacatecas

Why do these places occasion so little fascination or even interest among Americans interested in cities?

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Fantastic pictures. If I could take a shot at the question I'd say it's mostly due to the fact that America has always had it's eyes set on European cities as something to look up to and compete with.

We really only started looking at Chinese cities because they were building so fast and competing with American cities.

I think I need to bone up on my Spanish.

 

[kennedy]

I've always hated those big, stone plazas with the fountains. In Europe and Mexico, all over the place. They drive me nuts, even if there are people using them.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Why?

 

[statler]

^^ Yeah, that's the oddest thing. Could you explain?

 

[bdurden]

Beautiful -- some of these remind me of Barcelona's Gothic Quarter.

 

[BarbaricManchurian]

I'm going to play devil's advocate here. In all of the cities except for Zacatecas, you can actually see the end of the urbanity in the picture. These pics are trying to show Mexican cities in a flattering light, but just do a little examination and you'll see the "urban" area ends just outside of the city center. Mexico is almost as car-dependent as the US, they just may have done a little less urban renewal in downtowns, and maybe that has an effect on downtowns being havens for drug cartels.

 

[czsz]

Oh, I agree, barbaric - that's why I didn't include photos of Monterrey, Guadalajara, and San Luis Potosi - some of Mexico's largest cities, and seemingly analogous in urban form to places like Dallas and Houston. (Although, looking back over the photos, I can't really discern any background sprawl in the cities above...that they tend to filter out into countryside may just be an indication that they are compact and don't sprawl endlessly.)

My point was simply that these gorgeous city cores do exist in Mexico, and they get much less play than similarly sized (and, in many cases, similarly under-contextualized) European ones. Several are even UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

 

[ablarc]

"Under-contextualized"?

 

[czsz]

Yes, as in, we praise many European city cores without really examining their outskirts as well.