Cities and their inhabitants depend on mobility. In a place like Mexico City, commutes from home to work, to commercial areas, and to perform caring tasks are basic needs. The infrastructure that makes movement possible has an intrinsic value, making it of public interest. However, drivers, bus, train, and cable car passengers, cyclists, and pedestrians have a differentiated experience in the modern city. When thinking about basic needs, collective interest, and inequalities, we face a complex phenomenon: a city and its mobilities.

One paradox that defines the current urban experience was condensed in Enrique Bostelmann’s photomontage Con un nudo en la garganta (With a Lump in my Throat): space is organized around cars in a city where most residents do not have access to them. Dependence on cars, the construction of spaces exclusive to them, and the exclusion of other forms of mobility are some of the central problems of a contemporary city. How did we get here? This was not a natural and inevitable phenomenon, but a historical process set in motion by interests, conflicts, transitions, and uncertainty.

In Mobilities and the City, you will explore a large-scale transformation in Mexico City. The first section, “1. Dependencies,” presents a moment in which streetcars were essential for the city and its residents in the early twentieth century. “2. Experiences” tells how and why motor vehicles and drivers became symbols of urban and moral renovation for writer Salvador Novo. “3. Disputes” shows the social tensions that shaped urban life in the automobile city in the mid-twentieth century. What does the history of mobilities in Mexico City tell us about the contemporary experience? What solutions can we imagine for the future?