Walking in Mexico City:
the social and material production of sidewalks
UNAM-France
Speakers:
Federico Fernández Christlieb (director of the Center for Mexican Studies UNAM-France)
Dr. Jérôme Monnet (director of the French Institute of Urbanism and co-director of the Paris School of Urbanism)
Jérôme Monnet is talking to us about the historical importance of walking in cities and specifically in Mexico City, capital of The New Spain, Stories of this activity in the city can be found in literature since the 16th C. Professor Monnet is answering questions about the collective research projects that he has been leading in the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City that analyze public and urban policies regarding sidewalks and pedestrianization. The sidewalks are a material and social product that have been the subject of multiple reflections. The uses of sidewalks are typified according to the forms of occupation that are verified and the difficulty that pedestrians have had to be inserted in the development plans of the public road where the car is the emphasized object.
Federico Fernández Christlieb
Geographer with a Master's degree in History of Mexico from the UNAM. He was a fellow at the Higher Institute of Architecture-La Cambre in Brussels and in the Erasmus program of the European Union at University College London. He holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Paris-Sorbonne.
Federico Fernández is the author of several books and dozens of chapters and articles on cultural and historical geography, particularly on the transformation of the landscapes and territories of Central Mexico between the 16th and 19th centuries. He was a visiting professor at the Universities of Sussex, England and Ottawa, Canada.
He is currently a researcher at the UNAM’s Institute of Geography and a professor at the National School of Earth Sciences and the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM.
Federico Fernández Christlieb (director of the Center for Mexican Studies UNAM-France)
Dr. Jérôme Monnet (director of the French Institute of Urbanism and co-director of the Paris School of Urbanism)
Geographer and professor of development and urban planning at the Paris School of Urbanism, researcher attached to the City Transport Mobility Laboratory (LVMT) and co-founder of the transversal group Urban pedestrian mobility at LABEX Urban Futures. His research focuses on social representations in the planning of public spaces and in urban and transport policies. He is particularly interested in analyzing the conditions for the development of active mobility, particularly pedestrian mobility,
in collaboration with local authorities and civil society actors.
Jerôme Monnet taught and conducted research on Latin America at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail. He was an invited fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and served as director of the Center for Mexican and Central American Studies (CEMCA), in Mexico City. In 2005 he joined the research group of the Urban Mutation Theory Laboratory and in 2019 the Lab'Urba (Collective Urban Action Laboratory) of the Gustave Eiffel University. He is currently director of the French Institute of Urbanism and co-director of the Paris School of Urbanism.