I’ve already discussed the incredible and affordable food in this city, but it’s worth mentioning a few more times. It’s wonderful to be able to have access to world-class food without spending our savings. The streets are filled with the smell of frying fat and cheap cuts of meat. Everyone can eat. That’s a plus, particularly for so many people living in poverty. (Of course, there is the ever present reality that eating cheap food will mostly make you fat. In that way, a lot of Mexicans share body types with the U.S. population. 70% of Mexican adults are overweight compared with 68.8% of the U.S.. Over 30% of adults in both countries are obese.) There are plenty of ways beyond food that illustrate the ways this city nurtures those without lots of money.
A subway ride in Mexico cost 5 pesos(the equivalent of 25 cents). Like New York and unlike a lot of other dumb cities, it doesn’t matter whether or not you take it for one stop or for twenty. This, naturally, does not accurately reflect the cost of a ride. Rather, it reflects the incomes of the people who ride the subway to work. The government subsidizes the cost, so that the lower income workers are able to commute vast distances to work every morning. Without this, the city would quickly grind to a halt. Money well spent if you ask me.
We’ve been going to see the National Symphony. My favorite seat is front row mezzanine of course, but who can afford a seat like that in NYC? The average ticket to the Metropolitan opera is between $150 and $200. Tickets to Carnegie Hall in the mezzanine run from $120-$150. Contrast that to the seat of my choice to see the National Symphony, which run to 120 pesos or $7 USD!! This too, obviously, does not reflect the true cost of the tickets. The arts are heavily subsidized by the government as well.
It seems there are a lot of things that the cash-strapped Mexican government spends money on. They fund the Cervantino Arts Festival in Guanajuato, a sweeping festival celebrating the arts from around Mexico and the world. They fund the weekend bike lanes that close the main boulevard in Mexico City to traffic every sunday for a brief bike Shangri-La. They even hold Zumba classes in the roundabouts, where people who might not ever experience dancercize get to publicly shake their asses to music. They fund a number of National arts organizations, that provide scholarships and funding for the arts. There are many other examples of government funds being used to enrich life for everyone at all income levels. These programs are, for me, some of the more noticeable things that make Mexico City so memorable and wonderful to live in. Incidentally, they are all at risk if the peso keeps going downhill and the government doesn’t manage to curtail corruption, and balance the budget, but what else is new?
Being a New Yorker, I can’t help but draw comparisons between Mexico City. Sure there are a lot of free events in New York, and there are a few museums with “suggested donations”, and you could get by with street falafel and canned food (probably a lot of people do). I just don’t think you could make an argument anymore that NYC is a place for everybody. It’s increasingly a place only for the well-off. It used to be THE city for everyone. Sure, it could chew you up and spit you out, but it also had a place for everyone, rich or poor. It nurtured the dreams of the creative class like no other place in the world. Do we even remember what it means for a city when everyone, or nearly everyone, can afford food, and a place to live, to say nothing of access the arts, cultural experiences, and even affordable transportation?
This is where Mexico city is at the moment. Cities are always at crossroads, but Mexico City is fast following in the footsteps of cities like New York. The real estate market is shooting up so fast it’s hard to believe. At the moment, people can still afford to live here. As it goes in cities, the poor mostly live in the sprawl, (hence the importance of decent, and affordable methods of transportation) but it’s easy to predict a time in the near future when the affordable bits are so far outside the commercial areas that the commutes will become impossible. Something needs to be done. Everywhere you look, new luxury apartment buildings are shooting up. Every store space that opens is filled by a new boutique restaurant. The public transportation system, though excellent, is hopelessly overwhelmed every day.
It is utterly naive to expect the free market to sort this one out. How can anyone expect an average real estate investor to also be a benefactor for the public? How many investors have the vision to take a short term loss in order to build things that will benefit the local communities and ultimately providing a sounder financial future for the city at large. Not the majority, I’m betting. We need government to regulate this kind of growth before it metastasizes. We need public funds to work for the public; saving spaces that benefit everyone in the community, and funding the arts and culture. The only way places like Mexico City (and New York City, if it’s not already too late) can hope to survive as the diverse, productive, culturally relevant, AND profitable place it currently is, is by combining careful planning and effective government regulation, with the kind of rampant investment we are currently seeing. Cities are for everyone. It is surely worthwhile to build shining cities of the future, but not if they are walled palaces surrounded with squalor and suffering. Can we even call it progress if it is accomplished without protecting our rich histories and most vulnerable citizens. It’s a brave new world. There is just no reason we can’t insist on doing both.
