Could History Repeat Itself with Mexico City's Ambitious Airport Plan? Andalusia Knoll - Vice News
go to original July 9, 2015

Mexico City's new airport will be the most sustainable airport ever built. A unique skin wrapped around a giant structure will let in air and light, collect rainwater, and provide amazing views of planes circling the sky. (Foster + Partners )

Almost 15 years ago, a government plan in Mexico to build a much-needed new international airport terminal in Mexico City was bungled almost from the start, leading to a protest movement that resulted in a violent crackdown on a community that rose up against the plan.

That airport proposal was eventually abandoned, and Mexico constructed a second terminal in 2008 across from its dated original. Yet even with the addition of Terminal 2, the need for expansion at the Benito Juarez International Airport has remained apparent.

Mexico's government is now hoping to avoid its previous mishaps and build a new airport for Mexico City close to where its current air terminal complex sits.

Environmentalists, opposition politicians, and community leaders in the town of San Salvador Atenco are already raising red flags about the project, claiming a lack of transparency on the part of the government could jeopardize local residents and vast tracts of wetlands on the outskirts of Mexico City.

And if Mexico chooses to use a decree to grab communal farmland for the new airport — as it tried to do in 2001 — the results could once again be disastrous.

Read the rest at Vice News

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