![]() ![]() It is also the last space in the Valley of Mexico open to large-scale urbanisation. The site of Mexico City’s new airport is covered in red volcanic gravel. The planned international airport, which would be the third-largest in the world. Should it be a fiasco, future generations will see it as an ostentatious monument in an era long on mathematics and short on wisdom, in which natural resources existed to be consumed, megaprojects were a way to keep the poor fed and occupied, and the future was an afterthought. ![]() Should this project be a success, it will be his crowning glory, a symbol of his role in shaping Mexican modernity and a great gateway for the country’s global ambitions. The stakes are high, and not just for Slim. “This is the only area where there is still room for such a large project,” says Gabriela Bojajil of DAFdf Arquitectura y Urbanismo, one of the architectural bureaus that participated in the bid for the Ciudad Aeroportuario, a planned mixed-use development by the terminals. This is where the man known as el Ingeniero, the engineer, will make what is likely to be his last great urban intervention: a massive new airport, expected to be the third-largest in the world. The only large open area remaining lies to the east, amid the swampland of Texcoco – almost all that is left of the once-great lake system that filled the basin. Grey concrete has raced up the ravines and invaded the wooded slopes of the Sierra Madre mountains surrounding the city and stretched out to the Lake of Zumpango to the north. Now, in the autumn of his career, the Valley of Mexico – Slim’s canvas – is running out of space.
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