Mexico City

This was written mostly on the plane back from Mexico City, during which I was reading The World is Flat and using it as a lens to reflect on all I had just experienced, but I wanted to wait until I got at least some of my Flickr pix up before posting.

On the one hand, this city has neighborhoods like Condesa, which is as close to Paris as I’ve experienced in norteamerica, with an urban fabric and economic texture that keeps neighborhoods teeming with the kinds of activities that would have made Jane Jacobs proud – cafes of all national flavors, streetcorner taco stands, shoeshine men, political grafitti, hole-in-the-wall farmacias¸ cab drivers who remember where your house is . . . and more recent additions like tapas bars, hipster hotels, and slick yoga joints. While wandering around, it was hard not to joke that it was the Silverlake of the DF – and even to make specific correlations between establishments in both bohemian outposts. But after consideration I think it compares pretty favorably. Beyond that particular colonia (district), Mexico City is enriched with grand colonial cathedrals and civic architecture, great public parks, dozens of museums featuring international class art, architecture, and archeology, a rich, poly-colonial history, fantastic street life, Aztec architecture, and phenomenal food.

On the other hand, the same shoeshine men have chairs sponsored by Fortune 1000 multinational companies, people buy their sushi at the Superama, and the whole neighborhood is ringed by more nakedly commercial streets with big-box retailers where actual middle-class residents of the city presumably buy their unmentionables. While we didn’t look closely at home prices and rents, it is clear they are going up (a subsequent peek at Craigslist Mexico City confirms this), and the inevitable gentrification is not just making life pleasant for the flaneur, but also showing the back of its hand to longtime residents and via omnipresent rehab sites, swarming laborers, and new construction signs featuring words like “LOFT” – just as it has in Silverlake, Park Slope, Williamsburg, Capital Hill DC, and so many other neighborhoods around the U.S.

It’s the “swarming laborer” part that is one of the most intriguing – and concerning – aspects of the city. Everywhere we went there were domestic workers, and based on the hourly wages implied by the cost of street services from taxis and tacos, there is clearly no shortage of available employees for any given would-be jefe. This makes life great for the tourist – even those who pay the substantial markups these services go for when procured by the international hotels (something we mostly managed to avoid). As when I went to Africa, there seems to be significant human capital here, in a well-enough organized economy, with plenty of opportunity to add to local services or bring new ideas into play. The entrepreneur in me thinks this would be a great place to start a business. . . . many businesses.

But I can’t help thinking Mexico City is an also unwittingly soft target for modern business practices and international ideas. Primitive mural advertising will inevitably give way to conglomerate controlled outdoor media, and the local authorities will fall into line to police this. At some point, it will become intolerable to find prescription medications in suspicious packaging for half off at the corner store. As international entrepreneurs arrive, the shoeshine men will soon follow this Giuliani effect. The big boxes will be the only place “real” people can afford to shop. Eventually, only the rich will be able to afford the good neighborhoods, and – just as in Paris – the middle-class will follow the working-class and the shiftless to the perimeters. Also as for Paris, this will work wonders to attract tourism, given a sub-four-hour flight from LA and a Euro that’s crushing the dollar. (The reason for my trip was a wedding between a New York-based part hindu, part west Indian, Spanish-speaking investment banker and his native wife, and was attended by a veritable united nations of international guests.)

If the bureaucrats typical of state tourism industries realize their dreams, this will become a self-perpetuating cycle. Bringing the cost of real estate up to the point that only the Starbucks’ and McDonalds’ of the world (who are already arriving) can buy their way in.

OK, so this prognostication is undoubtedly an oversimplification. This is, after all, a city whose municipal plumbing leaks 37% of the water that passes through it even as it depletes the aquifer that supports it. It’s hard to imagine any single, monolithic effects from progress (other than the city exceeding its own ability to supply its citizens with essential resources and process its pollution and trash, much as its ancient forbears did). A venture outside the elite neighborhoods brings the unavoidable sight of windowless cinder-block shanties topped by standard-issue PVC water tanks and unfinished rebar sprawling toward the horizons.

(I have to interrupt this parenthetically to note that, as I wrote this, the post-roll from the in-flight screening of Shrek II is currently alternating between images of the ruins & pyramids of Techuatenoc, India’s Taj Mahal, and a man so jowly and well-groomed, I could only assume he was a minister of tourism – a thought seconds later confirmed by a graphic.)

My point, to wrap it up, is that the human capital in Mexico City, fertile though it may be, is no match for China or India, who are turning out hundreds of thousands of engineers a year and steadily building on their various technology platforms, as well as the legal and bureaucratic infrastructure to support them. Forget about orchestrated modern education; this beautiful city can barely keep its lights on. And in this, it strikes me as similar to many countries around the world that will either have to learn to compete with modern economies, become tourism meccas, continue to mine their natural resources until they are depleted, or find some other means to thrive (art?). I suspect Mexico will fall back mainly to tourism — ironically enough banking on the U.S.’s failure to preserve its own wildlands and urban fabric.

I have high hopes for Mexico City and hope that many great chefs and service entrepreneurs will cut their teeth here and make things great for residents, visitors, and expats alike. I know Amy and I enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, if unexpectedly, and certainly plan to return. It is hard to imagine, though, in the long run, that these things will outweigh the forces of globalization enough to last very long.