The new center that was never
Mario Pani and a group of colleagues presented in 1944 a proposal to organize a new space that will function as the heart of the city, which would be located in what they considered to be the true focus of the modern city: the intersection of Avenue de l Insurgents and reform. Like many projects, they were on paper and in history. Here we rescued part of this interesting urban proposal.
The decade of the 1940s was vertiginous growth for Mexico City. There were more than one million setecientas thousand people who inhabited it and began to build monuments and housing units, projected the expansion of avenues, and other points began paving works that would leave behind the roads Paved and dirt-roads that abounded in what had been rural Mexico. The international context favoured the creation of industries, including the automobile industry, which for those years had also expanded in the hands of government policies. Cars began to saturate the streets, especially in the city centre, the busiest site and where most of the city's economic activity was still held.
Architects and town planners from that time began to question the way the city was growing, without any planning, which would be detrimental to the capital with form. It was considered then that the modern city was an organism that was in evolution, therefore, this type of city was in continuous growth and adaptation: if it could not grow on one side, this enormous body tried to do it towards another. If it was locked up everywhere, the organism would end up dying. In general, it was thought that the big cities did not correspond with the new necessities of the modern collectivity because they had not been able to transform themselves at the same speed with which the man had transformed his way of life.
On the other hand the specialists of the time also questioned how the Zócalo, the only big square that counted the capital of the country was already relegated to the outline of the city and every day became more an archaeological center whose future was that of a museum on the air Free. Not occupying the "true" center of the new city, the heart of the old Tenochtitlan, the religious and political center of the "Precortesiano" Empire and Center also after the Spanish trace, was no longer viable in the modern city. Likewise, the use of the car had completely changed the very notion of the street, since those that gave to the Zócalo at the time were not planned to contain the vehicular flow that each day was more problematic for the urban mobility.
Taking into consideration all these discussions, the architect Mario Pani and a group of colleagues who formed the so-called Urbanism Workshop, presented in 1944 a proposal to organize a new space that will function as the heart of the city, which would be located In what they considered to be the true focus of the modern city: the crossroads of the avenue of the insurgents and reform. Mexico, great capital, city of Art and business, deserved a large square to the scale of its surface and its volume. The proposal was based on the construction of a monumental roundabout that would be the natural fruit of the urban formation of Mexico. Supported by the Herrey system of rotating circulation, it would solve the problems of traffic, of green spaces, of increase of occupied surface and even the problem of parking that already began to live in the capital.
For these architects, the new roundabout met all the conditions to supply the Zócalo: "Its breadth, in extension as in height, is perfectly on the scale of the walk of the reformation and far from damaging the majesty of so Beautiful Avenue, will give your true Significance of great axis which, now yes, will lead to something great. " According to the project, it would build a circular square of 200 meters in diameter — the center of which would be at the intersection of the two axes of the avenues — which would be limited by the fronts of twelve buildings of equal mass and height (70 m), eight of them linked by six Eleme Lower how many underground (45 m).
Towards the west, the whole was limited by four buildings of 60 m of height and to the east, by four buildings of curved facade that would be destined to hotels. At the same time, a 30 m wide avenue was projected to receive, in rotating circulation, the traffic of the secondary arteries that would reach the cruiser. The ramps and tunnels for the uneven circulation, would also provide access to a large collective parking lot that would be located under the roundabout and the Beltway, which would have a capacity of approximately 1,000 cars. The realization of this urban complex was considered the most important projected until then for the city of Mexico and its creators considered that their costs, although elevated, would be worthwhile due to all the conflicts that would solve, in addition, the Investment would recover quickly thanks to hotels, parking and other luxury commercial premises that would be installed in the same place.
Although it seemed that the great work would take place without problem, things did not come out as expected. It is probable that the city was not yet ready to leave its traditional center and that is why the Pani project and its workshop found opposition from various social sectors. The monumental roundabout was not built, nor its green spaces nor its large shops. The only building that took place was the Plaza Hotel, whose semicircular structure is still standing but with other uses. It is known that the project was finally discarded in 1956.
The intention of the architects and urbanists was perhaps still far from the worries of regulating and controlling the growth of the city by the authorities or it is possible that the vision of the architects did not correspond with the social reality of the moment or With those popular sectors for whom both the Zócalo and its surrounding streets would always be the heart of the capital.
by Paulina Martínez Figueroa