Fourth St. 02

Local newspapers have been criticizing construction details. Even merchants from the street have, still, been doing so. Mostly claiming economical losses derived from the construction stage of the project.

I’ve been visiting the downtown market area since January this year when we started the competition. I’ve never seen the street so live as today. I think that the hundreds, thousands in the whole day, of pedestrians using this renewed public space must agree with me. At the least, they seemed happy.

Fourth St.

(Back in Chihuahua for the holiday)

Our project for Fourth Street in Chihuahua is almost unrecognizable. The main issue of the design, the pavements, were built without following the material, colors, and patterns specified. But, today is an almost fully pedestrian street that’s really working as a great public space for the traditional and popular market area in downtown. It’s a shame that the money and time invested in public projects very often is doomed to be lost (in this country) because of tight-senseless construction schedules determined by the government and unprepared-lazy low quality contractors.

Alberto en NY

2006 – 2012

What am I’m going to be doing in 2012? I’ll be 37 then.
Today we felt so far away from our country, or beloved México. Adriana and me had no opportunity to speak about what happened today with anyone! In fact, I’m sure that almost nobody in the Landscape Department knew about the first day of the new presidency of México. Unfortunately I think that most of my classmates are not going to know of our international shameful spectacle. Changed my mind, it’s great that nobody knows.
If I was in México I’d had a full day and night speaking about this. Anf after some hours drinking maybe the real debate would come in, friends would speak their minds freely…
We waited for the ceremony watching www.reforma.com between breakfast and coffee, all of a sudden, Felipe and Fox come out of nowhere! It was the best moment of the morning, if something like that can be said of this oblivious ceremony (My friend Gustavo has the best description for this: it was like Batman and Robin appearing to defeat the bad guys). I felt so satisfied of this happening. I’m so glad that the PRDists were reduced to whistling and yelling, in a vain attempt. I’m so glad that the Peje keeps moving frenetically in the mud, each movement sinking more and more. His speech was worse than the parallel official ceremony. He’s a living contradiction, a black hole star sucking everything around him into nothingness. I´m also glad that at least some politics were done between the PRI and PAN for Felipe’s oath. A good sign indeed.
I have the best of hopes for Felipe’s government, hopefully he will do better than Fox, something that might be easy. His secretaries of state might be grayish as a team, but, overall, I think they deserve the benefit of doubt, they’re very young, as Felipe, and might not have the personality of older politicians, but they should develop. This is also a generational change, and that’s always good. Anyway, much better to have guys like Mouriño and Germán; than somebody like Batres!
This past election has been traumatic. One of my best friends even blocked me or erased me from messenger because of our political differences, our former communication channel since we’re apart. Thankfully, with the president in office, our tensions will vanish… as the radical and anachronical PRDsts, haha.