ABCDMXYZ- Mexico City Iniciative – GSD

From Mexican Cities Initiative Blog:

The Mexico City Urban Dictionary released its first 10 episodes on iTunes last November 7th, 2019.

This collaborative project aims to identify and organize the terms we use as frameworks for contemporary urban work. It makes use of the podcast as a space for mapping, discussing and defining the urban and architectural concepts that make this city a disputed territory. Each episode is a conversation between architects, urban planners, engineers, activists, logisticians, among many others.

Through these conversations, the project aims to contextualize terms in their spatial, social and temporal dimension by presenting different definitions and notions of each concept. It promotes new definitions and socio-territorial relations by highlighting territorial, social and cultural diversity. Through the medium of the podcast, the project aims to develop new references and function as a public consultation platform that enables access to a multiplicity of definitions around these terms. In doing so, it provides a starting point for new explorations around socio territorial relations.

This project is made possible by the Sistema Nacional de Creadores Artísticos FONCA – CONACULTA and the support of the UNAM, Facultad de Arquitectura UNAM , Radio UNAM , Reurbano, and Comunica la Ciudad.

Laura Janka Zires, former student at the Harvard GSD and part of the MCI community, is an architect and urban designer (Architecture-UNAM + Urban Design-Harvard). She has focused her professional and personal interests on cities. She has experience in public space, civic engagement and creative planning processes, leading strategic political projects inside and outside the government.

Currently she lives in Sao Paulo sharing her time between her research project “Mexico City Urban Dictionary” and developing projects for the Mexican and Latin American context.