Rejuvenating Mexico's Polluted, Crime-Ridden Cities

[M II A II R II K]

Rejuvenating Mexico's Polluted, Crime-Ridden Cities


June 20, 2012

By ROCKY CASALE

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/bu...en-cities.html

Mexico’s leading architects, planners and civil servants are working together in a long-overdue battle to clean up some of the country’s most polluted urban areas. Public parks are being rehabilitated and designated pedestrian zones are cutting traffic in car-clogged cities. Leading the way in green initiatives is Villahermosa, capital of Tabasco state and a hub of the oil and natural gas industry. The city of nearly 700,000 people commissioned the architect Enrique Norten of Ten Arquitectos to overhaul its Tomás Garrido Canabal Park, which was a crime-riddled and polluted dead zone.

- “The problem with Villahermosa is that it was built for the car,” Mr. Alí said. “We’re trying to change that now by encouraging pedestrian culture and building or improving existing urban projects that eliminate traffic and ultimately put more eyes on the street” to discourage crime. “We recognize that it’s time to link people back to their parks and public spaces,” Mr. Alí added. Phase 1 of Mr. Norten’s three-phase master plan for Villahermosa opened in September. The Museo Elevado de Villahermosa, or Musevi, an elevated museum and food court, spans the traffic-jammed Paséo Tabasco highway to link the Tomás Garrido Canabal Park, in the heart of the city, with a large lagoon, the Laguna de Las Illusiones and the lake Vaso Cencalli.

- But perhaps the biggest environmental turnaround for Villahermosa, in the first phase of the plan, “is a cleaned-up water supply,” said Mohammad Tareque, finance secretary for the city. “Before we installed a $2 million sewage filtration system in neighboring hillside communities, unregulated runoff left our city’s lagoons and ponds polluted and lifeless.” Since the sewage system was put into operation in 2010, alligators, water fowl and more than a dozen species of fish have repopulated Villahermosa’s urban wetlands — particularly the lake Vaso Cencalli, where a $4.5 million dollar musical fountain, said to help aerate the murky water, was installed in November last year by WET Design, the masterminds behind the Bellagio Hotel’s fountains in Las Vegas. Later this year an estimated $20 million will be spent on Phases 2 and 3 of Mr. Norten’s master plan.

- Skeletal concrete eyesores like abandoned buildings and parking decks, many of which are being replaced with subterranean parking complexes, are being ripped down to make way for permanent fruit and vegetable markets and other commercial centers. “Improvements to these parks and the reinforcement of urban spaces is about celebrating public life,” Mr. Norten said. “The booming oil and gas economy here lost sight of that. We looked for it again by studying major urban traffic corridors around the world, like Paris’s Champs Élysées, to understand and implement the means to encourage pedestrian culture.” After Musevi and Villahermosa’s improved parks opened last year, the number of robberies and sexual assaults, two of the city’s largest problems, dropped significantly. Incidences of those crimes fell 70 percent in the first quarter of this year, said the city council’s chief administrator, Adriana Del Rio González.

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