Nezahualcóyotl: A metropolis of 1.1 million people, known locally as Neza or Nezayork for its links to New York City, Nezahualcóyotl located on the eastern border of Mexico City. One of a dozen
tianguis in Neza, this one runs over a mile and a half through a highly rectilinear grid. Connections to New York come not only from migration, but also from trafficking in narcotics, pirated
music and knock-off branded clothes. All this is amplified in the commercial nexus of the tianguis, where one finds an abundance of Yankees and Mets caps, Knicks jerseys and ‘I ♥ NY’ T-shirts.
3 Circuitous tianguis are similar to linear types, but they contain looping or interconnected branches, their colours exposing discrete parts of the metropolitan grid. In a simple case, the tianguis at Mixcoatl begins at the bottom alongside a large primary and secondary school campus, then branches into two filaments, one following Calle Tlilalpacatl (left) and the other Calle Cuitlahuac (right). The two branches connect back again along Villa Franqueza at the top.
4 Tianguis that follow the contours of natural or human-made features , reveal elements of the landscape such as ridge lines, valleys, elevation changes, roundabouts and curvilinear street layouts. The tianguis at Naucalpan de Juárez follows a ridgeline created by a combination of ancient earthquakes, pyroclastic flows and water erosion. These natural processes have folded the landscape into ribbons, around which varied urban morphologies have taken shape. The tianguis extends at intervals into cross streets. Located in a barrio with very few grocery options and no public market building, this tianguis serves a mix of agricultural produce and prepared foods.
5 Many tianguis combine two or more typologies into hybrid forms that optimise the spatial conditions established by the grid. The tianguis in Moctezuma combines three types: the contour, the linear and the cluster. Colonia Moctezuma, with its highly regimented grid, is located in the Venustiano Carranza delegation near the airport. The colonia’s Saturday market forms a red arrow connecting the Aviación roundabout with the tree-lined diagonal Avenida Iztaccíhuatl. A small filament of canopies links the tianguis to the public market – the large white building in the roundabout – while a triangular cluster forms at the other end alongside Iztaccíhuatl. Luis Preciado de La Torre, Moctezuma
Mixcoatl
Naucalpan de Juárez
all images Joseph Heathcott
28
on site review 36: our material future
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator