The People of Surburbia by Alejandro Cartagena
Throughout much of the last decade, Mexico’s export economy struggled to compete with that of China, which started undercutting Mexican manufacturers after joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001. The pendulum has however swung back in Mexico’s favour. “The minimum wage in Shanghai and Qingdao is now higher than in Mexico City and Monterrey, not least because of the rocketing renminbi,” reported The Economist in 2012. Transport costs from Mexico to the neighbouring United States are also far cheaper. The revival is partly attributed to Mexico’s free-trade model of doing business, a laissez-faire approach that has also impacted its urban landscape. New box homes in new grid-mapped suburbs have rewritten the traditional boundaries of its cities. In the affluent northern city of Monterrey, which is home to a range of multinational companies, including Mercedes-Benz, Samsung, Toyota, Siemens and Whirlpool, construction firms have been feeding—some argue overstimulating—the demand for new houses. Interested in examining social, urban and environmental issues through photography, Alejandro Cartagena, a Monterrey resident born in the Dominican Republic, embarked on an ambitious five-part project to document the suburban sprawl in his hometown. As the new suburbs have taken shape, he has noticed the inadequacy of their roadways, parks and public transport systems, also the increasing divorce between Monterrey’s well-developed core and its fragmented new peripheries. Of this particular essay, entitled “People of Suburbia”, he writes: “… my commitment as a photographer is not only to denounce our need for a privately owned household, but to point the struggle our contemporary world faces between the ideals of capitalism and the striving and desire for fairer and more equal cities in which to live in.”*
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