<
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-08-02/in-mexico-city-a-vast-wetland-park-rises-from-a-dead-airport>
"Early morning, it’s eerily quiet on the shores of Lake Nabor Carrillo. Just 30
minutes from the clamor of downtown Mexico City, this placid water body has
languished for decades with few visitors and little love.
But as the sun rises, so does a dawn chorus from some of the 60,000 birds that
have made a home here, surrounded by the blinking lights of the megacity.
Flocks of herons appear silhouetted against the smoky pink sky as they emerge
from nests amid the palms of a small island. Soon after, the water’s edge is a
flurry of waterfowl and black-and-white shorebirds — known locally as “nuns” —
that hurry over rocks and plants.
This vista of lake, lights and wildlife will soon be revealed to the public as
the centerpiece of the colossal Lake Texcoco Ecological Park. (It’s also known
as PELT — the Spanish acronym for Parque Ecológico Lago de Texcoco.) From the
shoreline, the enormity of the area is revealed. Lake Nabor Carillo alone is
three times the size of New York City’s Central Park; it will make up less than
a tenth of the full park, encompassing 14,000 hectares of restored grassland,
marsh and forest, plus sports fields and hiking paths. When it opens in August,
the city will gain a natural wilderness twice the size of Manhattan.
For Iñaki Echeverría, director and the architect of the megaproject, this
shoreline is the first testing ground for an audacious feat of adaptive reuse.
Six years ago, the land was a construction site for a $13 billion international
airport designed by international architect Norman Foster. Planned to be the
biggest in the Americas, the airport was abruptly canceled in 2018; its
half-built foundations stand as just the latest in a long string of failed
industrial and development projects that dot the dry lakebed of Lake Texcoco,
which once spread for hundreds of miles across what is now the modern Mexico
City.
Today the lake has been drained to just 5% of its historic extent. But a
wetland ecosystem has clung on, Echeverría says, and when it rains, the lake
rebounds. “Nature is resilient, luckily.”"
Via
Fix the News:
<
https://fixthenews.com/good-news-healthcare-americas-smoking-in-indonesia-hunger-in-brazil/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
