THE URBAN REDENSIFICATION OF MEXICO CITY AND COVID 19

Abstract

Public policies such as urban redensification, rather than mere technical interventions addressing concrete problems, work as a power mechanism. Analyzing the visibility of the politics of life - biopolitics - and of death - necropolitics - in Mexico City derived from the COVID-19 pandemic will allow an understanding of this. In addition, it will allow revealing the paradox that the same policy, redensification, is a failure as a public policy and, simultaneously, a success as a policy of life and death. Starting from sociology and based on a genealogical methodology, data on the effects of urban redensification and the pandemic in Mexico City were analyzed, to subsequently intertwine them and recognize a relationship between them. Special attention was paid to the period of non-compulsory confinement and two neighboring districts of Mexico City: Iztapalapa and Benito Juárez. Thus recognizing a class configuration of space linked to urban design that influenced the localized consequences of the pandemic.