Thread by @davidjmadden

The Utopías created by Mexico City’s borough of Iztapalapa are a brilliant example of collective amenity and a public infrastructure of care—and the most inspiring ongoing municipal project with which I‘m familiar. Every city should be learning from Iztapalapa and Mexico City

With something like two million residents, Iztapalapa is the largest Mexico City borough. It’s also the poorest. The Utopías were promoted most significantly by @ClaraBrugadaM, who was Iztapalapa’s mayor before winning the election to be the next mayor of all of Mexico City

Brugada is a member of Morena (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional), the left-wing populist party founded by AMLO. It’s also the party of Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s president-elect. Brugada has a long history in politics & social movements in Iztapalapa and DF more generally

The name UTOPÍAS is an acronym for Unidades de Transformación y Organización Para la Inclusión y la Armonía Social, or Units for Transformation and Organization for Inclusion and Social Harmony. I was told Iztapalapa currently has 12 up and running and another 4 in the works.

The idea is a network of safe, free, public sites that provide poor and working class people with what they need for the maintenance, enhancement, and enjoyment of everyday life. Food. Health. Elder care. Child care. A cheap laundromat... These are photos from Utopía Meyehualco

There’s a very explicit feminist dimension. It’s women-led. There’s women’s health care, and counselling, legal aid and safe houses for women facing domestic violence. There’s also a space for men to discuss masculinity and to learn how to do care work traditionally done by women

But the idea isn’t just to provide minimal services. The Utopías project seems to aim for a kind of populist public luxury. It’s not just physical rehab; there’s hydrotherapy, which in a private clinic would be totally inaccessible to DF’s poor. Not just food; a five-course meal

Making concrete the idea of a right to culture, creativity, and leisure, there’s a very active school of music with orchestral training, a high-quality performance space, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a huge gym, multiple football pitches, a velodrome, basketball courts…

There’s a lot more to these sites. For example, each Utopía is apparently built around a major attraction to draw people in. Utopía Meyehualco features a garden with animatronic dinosaurs. Others have airplanes on site that have been turned into libraries.

The Utopías are social infrastructure for some of the poorest, most marginalised people in Mexico City—and it’s clearly intended to show that nothing is too good for them. It’s very high-quality design. But it’s not aimed at architecture’s tastemakers. It’s meant to be functional

It’s urban development actually aimed at meeting social needs. And the Utopías are not the only thing happening in Iztapalapa—there are lots of new public spaces, an incredible and heavily used cable car transit network, various projects for upgrading and painting housing…

As mayor, Brugada promises to build 100 Utopías throughout the city. Meanwhile, Sheinbaum has plans around housing & other urban issues. The optimism in Mexico could not stand in starker contrast to the vibe in the country on its northern border

A functional, joyful and fully public infrastructure of care, community and collective leisure, built by and for the poor and working class: this is what urban life can look like when municipalities and grassroots movements work together to transform and democratise the city.