Photo of Palmitas neighbourhood, town of Palchuca, Mexico. Photo from Wikiwand.
Problem
How do you transform the city's atmosphere, the ambiance? Two things I want to change everywhere.
1 Lack of colour
2 Untidy graffiti, when the same people could use their paint spray to create lovely colours, curves, patterns, pictures of people, rainbows and magnificent murals, turning their homes and home area into an inspiration and a tourist attraction.
Answer
Today I was delighted to hear about a project in Mexico, a government initiative, employing youths who were unemployed and/or gang members, to renovated a poor area, transform their own lives and actually cut crime. (I have the word actually, which is overused, but here it fits.) I looked up the place names Palmitas and Palchuca.
Palmitas
Palmitas is the Mexican neighbourhood (as Americans say - in the UK we would say urban area, local area). However, my initial simple searches on Google and Wiki only found other places of the same name in the USA and Uruguay.
Palchuca
Palchuca is the town, about 55 miles from Mexico's capital, Mexico City.
If only we could copy them. Soon!
We have too much graffiti in London, as you see from the window of trains.
It is a worldwide problem. Earlier this year I was horrified by too much graffiti in Bucharest, capital of Romania, ruins the wonderful old buildings. (See pictures in my earlier post.)
Berlin has artists transforming
Brasov's landmark String Street ruined by graffiti. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
graffiti swastikas. Would somebody please start a campaign to clean up London and Bucharest. In fact, link up everybody, in the same way as international sports associations and Toastmasters International. Then people involved could take holidays in other cities to start movements doing the same there.
Pachuca - what else to see
I looked up Pachuca, Mexico, in Wikipedia. The BBC article featured the transformed shanty town. Pachuca itself is worth visiting because of its attractive architecture and several points of interest:
Firstly, the place was settled by Cornish miners.
See
1 The clock tower.
2 Football.
3 Eat the Mexican version of the Cornish pasty. I was most interested to see that the thick crust was to keep dirty hands away from the filling.
Clock Tower (or Reloj - Spanish for clock), Pachuca, Mexico, photo from Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachuca
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-40959839# (Mexican murals cut crime.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_graffiti
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-40809266/berlin-street-artist-group-cleverly-undo-swastika-graffiti
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-39101558/could-banksy-s-city-rid-itself-of-graffiti
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_area_graffiti_and_street_art (Graffiti in Sydney, Australia)
Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my previous posts. Please follow me here or on Facebook and LinkedIn and share links to your favourite posts.
