Mapping the Megalopolis

Book excerpt: 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 flâneur 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 City’s 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.