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 Editorials | Issues | September 2007 
A Towering Success for Community Activists
 Emilio Godoy - IPS
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| | Mexico City’s Mayor Marcelo Ebrard |
Mexico City - The power of organised civil society has overturned the plans announced by the government of the Mexican capital to build the Bicentennial Tower, which was to be the tallest skyscraper in Latin America.
The strength of opposition from residents of neighbourhoods in the northwest of the capital, where the skyscraper was to be built, prompted Mexico City’s leftwing Mayor Marcelo Ebrard to suspend the project.
It had been planned to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the outbreak of the war of independence against Spain, and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution.
"The site is subject to a lawsuit, and who knows how long that’s going to take. It is physically impossible to do anything on the building site until the lawsuit is concluded," Ebrard told the press.
The lawsuit is over the designation of another building on the site as an artistic monument by the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA). The builders intended to demolish it, and are fighting that decision.
The mayor’s announcement showed the clout of residents of the area bordering Chapultepec Park, regarded as the lungs of the city. This is one of very few cases in which community organisations have been able to impose their will on the Mexico City government, instead of the reverse.
Ebrard, of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), had announced details of the planned tower on Jul. 23, amid great fanfare.
It was designed to be 70 storeys high and 300 metres tall, would have involved private investment of 600 million dollars, and would have created 4,400 jobs during its construction, while giving a boost to the economy of the neighbourhood after its inauguration in 2010, he said.
But the announcement of the plans for the massive building immediately drew opposition from residents and from Gabriela Cuevas, the head of the borough of Miguel Hidalgo, one of the 16 subdivisions of the capital city.
Studies carried out by three neighbourhood committees found that the tower would have a negative impact on a radius of 25 city blocks around it, implying additional traffic of 5,000 cars a day and 20,000 people, who would need a further 100 public transport buses, on a route already characterised by heavy traffic.
Cuevas, a member of the governing conservative National Action Party (PAN), welcomed the news of the cancellation of the project, but urged city officials to make a broader public announcement to dispel any possible doubts.
The skyscraper was in trouble from the outset, as it clashed with Mexico City urban development regulations and the local borough development programme, which ban buildings of more than six storeys.
Furthermore, the building to be demolished to make room for the larger building was built in 1948 and is an INBA protected site. Erected in 1948, it was listed as having artistic value by the INBA in 1990 because of its architecture and history.
The Bicentennial Tower was to have occupied an area of 387,000 square metres, and was to house three auditoriums, a ballroom, three restaurants and a museum. Shaped like a coffin stood on its head, it was designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhass and three Mexican architecture firms.
Koolhass was the recipient of the Pritzker Prize in 2000, which is regarded as equivalent to the Nobel Prize in architecture.
The building would be higher than the Torre Mayor, also located in Mexico City and at 225 metres, Latin America’s tallest skyscraper today.
"How will this overarching project interact with its surrounding, near and far? This issue is the central one for many of the genuine concerns and protests by citizens and groups opposed to it," wrote Antonio Purón, an expert with the non-governmental Metrópoli 2025, an organisation devoted to metropolitan studies, in the group’s bulletin.
It remains unclear whether the Bicentennial Tower will be moved to another site, although five boroughs have offered to host it. "The minister of urban development is seeking alternatives to build, if not exactly the same project, a similar one," Ebrard said.
The skyscraper is one of the projects spearheaded by the Grupo Danhos construction company, which has worked in Mexico City for 30 years, and is partnered by Spanish company Pontegadea for this initiative.
Grupo Danhos is headed by Jorge Gamboa de Buen, who was minister of urban development in the capital in the early 1990s, while Ebrard was serving as interior minister in the city government.
Arturo Aispuro, the present minister of urban development, was a close colleague of Gamboa de Buen’s in city hall.
"The debate over the Bicentennial Tower is an opportunity to lay the foundations for a high-minded and civilised dialogue on some of the basic issues of urban development and the relations between different actors in our metropolitan society," Purón wrote in his article.
The Mexico City government has 191 real estate investment projects in the pipeline.
In the last 15 years, 50 skyscrapers have been built in Asia, 40 in the Middle East, 30 in Europe and 25 in North America. |
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