Re: <nettime> Mexico City is crowdsourcing its new constitution

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

I also think this is quite something and it would be interesting to
get some accounts of this process from people up close. Any nettimers
in Mexico city at the moment?

This is, indeed, a mega-experiment, but it's one that's in line with
others. Again and again, the metropolitan area, or the large city,
emerges as the most progressive layer of the political system: it's
still small enough that people can feel organically connected to it,
after all, it's where one lives, where one's children go to school
and, for all but most cosmopolitan elites, its where people expect
to spend most of their time. At the same time, it's where all the
dynamism of globalization concentrates and it's big enough to be
control very significant resources to make a change. All of this makes
large cities relatively open to experiment, thus progressive and, as
much as that's possible these days, optimistic.

Below that scale, in small cities and the country-side, at least in
Europe, is where resentment accrues, out of a feeling of lack of
control over one's own destiny. It is a situation without positive
perspective from which which most smart people, particularly women,
flee. So there is a feeling of being left behind, both historically
and biographically. Nothing good will come out of that!

Above that, the nation state, seems hopelessly taken over by special
interests, lobbies and arcane processes while, at the same time,
vetted to an outdated idea of homogeneity of "the people".

I wonder if there is any horizontal communication between the current
city administration (or fractions thereof) and the new "rebel cities"
in Spain which also fight for a renewal of democracy on the level of
the city.

Felix





On 2016-06-06 18:00, Brian Holmes wrote:
> Whoah. Change.org or not, this is a fascinating greater-than-life-size
> experiment.
> 
> Mexico City is at once one of the most difficult and one of the most
> vibrant urban regions in the world. The spirit of the early 20th century
> Mexican Revolution, relayed by 1968, continually clashes with the
> massively corrupt political-economic oligarchy, itself both entangled in
> and threatened by the narco cartels, which are street-level gangs
> fractalizing into murderously efficient transnational supply chains. In
> my view, the destiny of North America is being played out in Mexico. Can
> that country's capital govern itself as a democracy? What an audacious
> thought!

<...>



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