Creating the Imperial City

2021 ◽  
pp. 175-209
Author(s):  
Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Green Spaces ◽  
Clean Water ◽  
Street Lighting ◽  
Napoleon Iii ◽  
Imperial Capital ◽  
Local Transport ◽  
Sewage Systems

This chapter discusses the creation of imperial cities: Paris was remodelled by Napoleon III, the layout of Vienna was altered in the era of Franz Joseph, and Berlin was expanded under Wilhelm I and Wilhelm II from a Prussian into an imperial capital. In each case this meant creating broad boulevards, green spaces, and impressive buildings, but also providing clean water, efficient sewage systems, street lighting, and local transport. Monuments celebrating victories and generals were also part of the urban design. London only built a ceremonial avenue in the twentieth century. Maximilian had great plans for Mexico City based on what he had seen in Paris, Vienna, and Brussels, while Pedro II built Petrópolis, a summer residence in the hills above Rio de Janeiro.

scholarly journals Institutions and Interest Groups: Meat Provision in Mexico City, c. 1850–1967

Mundo Agrario ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (46) ◽  
pp. e130
Author(s):  
Maria-Aparecida Lopes ◽  
Reynaldo De los Reyes Patiño
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Supply System ◽  
Working Poor ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
The Masses

This paper examines Mexico City’s meat supply system from the 1850s to 1967. During this period, whereas some urban centers in the Americas replaced traditional provisioning methods – abattoir system – with meatpacking companies, Mexico City continued to rely on the municipal monopoly to provide meat for the masses. This study focuses on the role that ranchers, cattle purveyors (introductores), and slaughterhouse (rastro) workers, alongside city officials, played in this process. It shows how these actors evolved accommodating to any authority in power, regardless of ideology. As interest groups, introductores, workers, and ranchers not only delivered a service to city dwellers but with varying degrees of influence, they also provided essential political support to governments. For their part, city officials protected these associations as a means of managing supplies and in the name of public order. Such a mutually beneficial relationship allowed both (interest groups and the municipality) to resist meatpacking conglomerates well into the twentieth century. The work underscores that although at occasions these arrangements facilitated meat provision, in others, they hindered the extension of animal proteins to the working poor – one of the main goals of post-revolutionary Mexico.

The Modern City

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIANE E. DAVIS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shifting Balance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The City ◽  
Rich History

What constitutes modern Mexico? Is there a clear distinction between the historic and modern Mexico City? And if there are, does this distinctions hold up throughout the twentieth century, when what is apparent is a mix of legacies coexisting overtime? This chapter discusses the semiotics of history and modernity. It discusses the struggle of the Mexico City to find its own image including its struggle to preserve historic buildings amidst the differing political alliances that either promote change or preserve the past. However, past is not a single entity, hence if the preservation of the rich history of Mexico is pursued, the question arises as to what periods of history represented in the city are to be favoured in its future development. In this chapter, the focus is on the paradoxes of the Torre Bicentenario and on the pressures to preserve Mexico’s past, the ways they have been juxtaposed against the plans for its future and how the balance of these views has shifted over time. It determines the key actors and the institutions who have embraced history as opposed to progress, identifies the set of forces that dominated in the city’s twentieth-century history, and assesses the long-term implications of the shifting balance for the social, spatial and built environmental character of the city. The chapter ends with a discussion on the current role played by the cultural and historical authorities in determining the fate of the city.

The Cat’s-Paw

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
New World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
The Family ◽  
Napoleon Iii ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Death Knell

In the decades before the Civil War many Southerners argued that their slaveholding region should expand territorially beyond the boundaries of the United States into Latin America and the Caribbean, especially Cuba. Instead, during the Civil War the Confederacy renounced the capture any new territory in the Americas. Historians have neglected to explain fully the South’s failure to to fulfill its prewar ambitions to expand territorially in the New World after secession. Patrick J. Kelly argues that examining the Southern rebellion from the perspective of Mexico City, Havana, London and Paris reveals the stark geopolitical realities facing the Confederate nation in the New World. Instead of dominating the New World, the Southern rebellion served as a pawn, especially to the French Emperor Napoleon III, in hemispheric affairs. Ultimately, the Confederacy proved too weak internationally to to capture any new hemispheric territory or gain the foreign recognition it sought in order to operate as a sovereign state in the family of nations. In an ironic twist, instead of insuring the future of Southern slavery, secession marked the death knell of the South’s dream of creating an empire for slavery in the Western Hemisphere.

scholarly journals Gwendolyn Brooks and the Legacies of Architectural Modernity

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 167
Author(s):  
Gill
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Structural Steel ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Office Buildings ◽  
Gwendolyn Brooks ◽  
World's Columbian Exposition ◽  
Columbian Exposition ◽  
American Architecture ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Relationship

This essay reads the work of poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, in terms of its critical engagement with the architectural modernity of her home city, Chicago. Taking her poetry from A Street in Bronzeville (1945) through to the 1968 collection, In the Mecca, as a primary focus, the essay traces the significance of Chicago style architecture on Brooks’ aesthetic. It was in Chicago that some of the first tall office buildings were designed; it was here that structural steel and glass were first used to distinctive architectural effect, and it was here, in 1893, that the World’s Columbian Exposition was held – an event that, for better or worse, was to shape American architecture well into the twentieth century. Brooks’ poetry is alert to this history, attuned to contemporary debates about urban design and sensitive to architectural experience and affect. This context informs and shapes her work in often unexpected ways. Her approach is often oblique (registered in metaphor, style, and voice) but nevertheless incisive in its rendering of the relationship between architecture, modernity and power.

scholarly journals THE INTERACTION BETWEEN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT. DO WE HAVE A COMMON GOAL? / KRAŠTOVAIZDŽIO ARCHITEKTŪROS IR URBANISTIKOS SĄVEIKA – AR TURIME BENDRĄ TIKSLĄ

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaiva Deveikienė
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Landscape Architecture ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Goal ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Relationship

The article analyses the problem of the relationship and interaction between urban design and landscape architecture. This refers to the period of the modern city from the late nineteenth century to the present day. There are presented and discussed urbanization processes and examples of solutions with emphasis on problems arising from the relationship between a city and nature as well as those related to urban landscape and sustainability of urban landscaping in the twentieth century. Straipsnyje analizuojama urbanistikos ir kraštovaizdžio architektūros santykio ir sąveikos problema. Aprėpiamas moderniojo miesto laikotarpis – nuo XIX a. antrosios pusės iki nūdienos. Pateikiama XX a. urbanizacijos procesų ir sprendinių pavyzdžių, aptariama akcentuojant miesto santykio su gamta, želdynais, t. y. gyvo, tvaraus miesto kraštovaizdžio, formavimo problematiką.

scholarly journals Nineteenth Century Urban Labor Precursors of the Mexican Revolution: The Development of an Ideology

1974 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Hart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Urban Labor ◽  
New City

Mexican industrialization, which began during the second half of the nineteenth century, was paralleled by the appearance of an urban labor movement. Industrialization resulted in a sudden concentration of new workers from the countryside in a few urban areas—especially Mexico City. Living conditions for the new city dwellers were generally intolerable and were compounded by chronic economic and political instability. Crowning the laborer's difficulty were the almost impossible working conditions in the new factories. The working class, virtually in self-defense, began to organize. Because the urban labor movement during the last third of the nineteenth century was a prelude to similar and more famous developments during the violent years of the early twentieth century, analysis of its causes, nature, and significance is essential for understanding an important aspect of the Mexican Revolution.

Tamales or Timbales: Cuisine and the Formation of Mexican National Identity, 1821–1911

1996 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey M. Pilcher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Old World ◽  
Pork Sausage ◽  
Salvador Novo ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
Chile Peppers ◽  
Corn Tortillas

Mexican writers of the twentieth century have often imagined cuisine to be a symbol of their national identity, a mestizo blend of Native American and Spanish influences. Salvador Novo, for example, a member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua and official chronicler of Mexico City, traced the beginnings of mestizaje to the “happy encounter” between corn tortillas and pork sausage that produced the first taco. The most common culinary metaphor for the Mexican nation was mole poblano (turkey in deep-brown sauce). Authors in the 1920s began attributing the origins of this dish to the convents of colonial Puebla, and in particular to Sor Andrea de la Asunción of the Dominican Santa Rosa cloister. About 1680 she supposedly combined seasonings from the Old World with chile peppers from the New in honor of Viceroy Tomás Antonio de la Cerda y Aragón. Mole thus represented Mexico’s “cosmic race,” created by divine inspiration and served up for the approval of the Spanish crown.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document