Mapping the Megalopolis: Order and Disorder in Mexico City

(Hardback)

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Mapping the Megalopolis: Order and Disorder in Mexico City brings the humanities and the social sciences into a conversation about Mexico City in its social, political, and aesthetic manifestations. Through a shared exploration of the order and disorder that mutually constitute the city, contributing authors engage topics such as the privatization of public space, challenges to existing conceptualizations of the urban form, and variations on the flneur and other urban actors. Mexico City is truly a city of versions, and Mapping the Megalopolis celebrates the intersection of the image of the city and the lived experience of it. Readers will find substantive entries on a great variety of Mexico Citys monumental and counter-monumental spaces, as well as some of its pivotal contemporary debates and cultural products. The volume serves both as supplemental reading on the world city or the Latin American city, and as a central text in a multidisciplinary study of Mexico City.

Reviews

Mapping the Megalopolisis a most valuable contribution to the ever-challenging task of reading Mexico City, its spaces, and its cultures. The collective reflection on order and disorder provides new directions to think and theorize urban space in the grand Megalopolis of Latin America, in ways that help us think about the city as a problem in the global era. -- Ignacio M. Snchez Prado, Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
This exceptionally timely and coherent collection of essays maps out one of the most unmappable cities of the world.The reader comes away not only with a deeper appreciation of Mexico City as a place where elite visions of progress are repeatedly undermined by quotidian disorder, but of the deliriousness of the modern megalopolis itselfthe twenty-first century city teetering precariously on a ledge between modernity and a dystopian future. -- Eric Zolov, Stony Brook University
This delightful compilation will give students, scholars, and travelers a good sense of present-day Mexico City, and its historic roots, from many disciplinary angles. It offers readers a fair consideration of the challenges which chilangos face; but more importantly it reveals the artistry, persistence, and resilience with which they confront life in the big city. -- Anne Rubenstein, York University

Author Bio

Glen David Kuecker is professor of history at DePauw University. Alejandro Puga is associate professor, Laurel H. Turk professor of modern languages, and chair of modern languages at DePauw University.