Mexico's vast capital — Ciudad de México, the largest city in the Americas — is under threat from a severe water crisis and vulnerable to disasters like earthquakes.
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Transcript:
What makes this place unique? It is the world’s largest city at an elevation higher than 2000 meters. With 21.2 million residents it rivals New York City for the title of largest metropolis in Latin America, and it is one of the world’s oldest continuously populated urban areas. But what truly sets this megalopolis apart is also its biggest challenge. It is the largest city on Earth without direct access to a significant body of water, although that wasn’t always the case.

This is an examination of Mexico City and the water crisis that threatens its continued prosperity.

Nearly seven centuries ago, the Aztecs came across an island in the middle of a lake, in a vast valley, more than 2,000 meters above sea level, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest coast.

Three hundred years later, a small group of Spanish explorers led by Hernan Cortes arrived, and what they found was a thriving capital city, the heartbeat of the Aztec empire with 300,000 souls. It was called Tenochtitlan, and it amazed the Europeans. Its labyrinth of canals dividing a network of manmade islands reminded them of Venice, and they wanted it for themselves.

[Dr. John Pohl] “There in the center of the lake was this gleaming white city, it was something they’d never seen before. And for us we can almost imagine it as Dorothy looking at Oz for the first time. It was far larger at a quarter of a million people than any city they’d ever seen in Europe.”

Armed with superior weaponry — and the most powerful exterminating agent, disease — the Europeans wiped the Aztecs out and systematically dismantled their great temples and pyramids. Then, they set out to quickly build the most renowned city in the Americas.

They rejected the Aztec way of living harmoniously with the land and, instead, filled their canals, destroyed their “floating farms,” and drained water from the lake until it was completely empty. This set the city on a collision course with nature.

Over time, it has grown to cover the entire lakebed, and well beyond. And because two volcanos — one of them still active — loom over the city from the south, the soil is a mix of clay from the lake and volcanic rock. That’s an unusual foundation to build a sprawling, heavy, concrete jungle on—and it’s why the city is sinking.

But people keep on arriving, because the defining feature of Mexico City is centralism, the idea that all paths lead here. What used to be trails converging on grassy highlands, became dirt roads used by carts and donkeys loaded with goods, and are now the arterial roads that move millions.

The jump in Mexico City’s population — like other megalopolises around the world — follows the widespread adoption of the motor vehicle. In 1950, its population was 3.1 million. As paved highways became more common, it jumped to 5.5 million by 1960, then it nearly tripled to 14 million inhabitants by 1980.

Other episodes in this Megacities series:
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