Imagining University City: The Unbuilt Plans for Mexico’s National University, 1928-1942

Abstract

After the Mexican Revolution, statesmen and educators envisioned a new urban complex for the National Autonomous University of Mexico to expand public higher education and support the consolidation of the postrevolutionary state. Although construction of Ciudad Universitaria (CU), or University City, would not begin until 1950 due to political upheaval and university-state conflicts, this article examines unbuilt plans and sketches of the project that circulated in the interim decades to trace the urban planning models that shaped it, including other Ibero-American ciudades universitarias, Beaux-Arts architecture, and the Garden City Movement. Despite state rhetoric insisting that the project reflect a Mexican national character, this article shows that early plans drafted between 1928 and 1942 primarily reflected international models because the aesthetics of Mexican revolutionary nationalism were still in development. Although the early plans were never realized, they served as crucial antecedents against which planners eventually imagined a Ciudad Universitaria imbued with Mexicanidad.