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On a soft spring night in Mexico City, drawn toward the city's immense main square, the Zócalo, I happen on a free concert by the Cuban troubadour Silvio Rodriguez. Tens of thousands have jammed into a temporary corral, singing along to mid-century anthems like "Ojalá" and "Unicornio" beneath the darkened windows of the presidential palace. Behind the stage, the cathedral towers glow indigo, then magenta, then gold. Riot cops lean casually against a department-store window, their helmets, clubs, and plastic shields piled on the sidewalk. Several decades ago, Rodriguez's lyrics entered the canon of Latin America's left and his soft, downy voice was the sound of revolution. Now the atmosphere is mellow and almost prim. At least at the fringes of the crowd, nobody is drinking or smoking pot.
Welcome to the seat of the Aztec empire, the heart of New Spain, and, until a dozen years ago, the bull's-eye of a bleakly damaged historic urban core. Today, the neighborhood overflows with pleasantness and the Zócalo is a regular venue for free concerts, televised soccer matches, book fairs, and protests. Michael Bloomberg should see this, I think.
He will.
When New York's mayor left office at the end of last year, he took a conclave of top consiglieri, including his planning chief Amanda Burden, streets guru Janette Sadik-Khan, and cultural-affairs commissioner Kate Levin, to form Bloomberg Associates, a consulting outfit that will carry the New York way of urbanism to cities around the globe and provide its services free of charge. Now I understand what Sadik-Khan told me at the end of her tenure when I asked her what she'd be doing next: "The same thing, only globally." Bloomberg Associates has been discreet--secretive, actually--about its plans, but in February the mayor of Mexico City put out a press release announcing that his administration would be the group's first client. It hasn't made much of a splash there.
Bloomberg is not the first...
