Mexico City

México D.F.: A pathological case of the old Pericles saw: "All good things of the earth flow into the city." By the late Neolithic, cities were already endemic among humankind. Obviously, they form for a variety of socio-econo-political reasons, each in the context of unique resource constraints. But at some point, in some cases, so much capital is concentrated in a geographic singularity, so many food and resource/energy webs are cut and redirected into its maw, that an event horizon of concrete forms, drawing everything that approaches it into the gravity well of the city. The surrounding countryside is no longer merely poor, it is actively impoverished. Homeostasis, resilience, and sustainability all become increasingly unrealistic. And so more and more economic pilgrims stream into the city, and the event horizon widens. I'm curious what happens when two or more of these things converge. Will our megalopolises ultimately give rise to an ecumenopolis like the one envisioned by Greek city-planner Doxiadis--the whole skin of the planet replaced with built space? An unlikely, but still ghastly, possibility. All of that aside, I really like this image.

I should also point out that Mexico City is a pretty happening place. Amidst palimpsest ruins of empire, colonization, revolution, industrial modernity and even some early, unstable forms of hyper-modernism, ~19 million people now stew in its vast cauldron of history and myth, Catholic heterodoxy, political theater, narco (and anarco-primitivist) terrorism, environmental depredation (and environmentalism), miraculous gastronomy, rhizomatic musical developments, a century of world-class literature and poetry, an incredibly hip modern art scene, etc. etc. In short, the city is not only full of the living; it is also full of life. We should go.