Professor Arq. Juan Pablo Serrano, Universidad Ibeoamericana Mexico City, Regenerating Mexico City by Densifying Vertically. Installation view at Palazzo Mora, 2016.

Is México City a bad master plan or a Magic place?
México City is located in a system of lakes over 2000 km2, surrounded by mountains at 2200m above the sea level.
PPeople have inhabited this place for more than 6000 years. Since the Aztecs, we have increased the size of the main island limits.
The City was created over a harvest system of mud and floating gardens over the lake. This was the way to feed thousands of people and win land.
Dikes, wide streets, gates, bridges were built in the Aztec period. In the Spanish Viceroyalty Period they start to build drains which drain the lakes and withdraw the water out of the basin.
The old streams now are viaducts filled with cars.
The drainage system mixes with rain water.
We pump water to the city from thousands of meters away for more than 20 million people.
What can we do?
The proposal is to demolish certain strategic points of the city, from two to four blocks so that the city can stop growing horizontally and transform the city to a vertical one. With these actions we can increase to ten times the amount of housing in these areas. Economically and socially include the people who live there and not move them to other areas of the city. We´ll integrate them in the same place but with a better quality of life. People who live so far from work areas, normally live at their parents homes, and on weekends they go to their houses, making certain areas of the perimeter abandoned.
Through these strategic points that already have an efficient public transport infrastructure; we would upgrade these areas to have cores with correct distances for bicycles and pedestrians mobility.
Try to demolish these extensions that were created over time, which were built unplanned and inefficient on the perimeter of the city and thus to regain these areas as part reforestation of the city. The idea is to also recover the glens, to retain water in dams to generate electricity when the water runs down. This would also prevent flooding’s in the city. Instead of having the buildings connected to the system of the city, we´ll equip it and they will be the ones that give services to the city.
The buildings would generate potable water through the capture of rainwater, preventing flooding’s and not throwing the rainwater to the sewer system. The toilets would work with treated water and as well as. South facades of the buildings will be equipped with photovoltaic cells to provide energy to the area and not only the building, create green mark on all terraces, roofs and lower bodies, creating public parks within buildings.