City of Repair

“Written like a novel that you can't put down, this voyage through the streets—past and present—of Mexico City uncovers a living history of popular practices of care and repair that have never gone away. Beneath the pretensions of planners, autocrats, and revolutionaries, Julie-Anne Boudreau names and valorizes a tradition of future-making in the cracks of urban dispossession that endures and whose poets, healers, artisans, and community organizers offer another urban promise. In an age of comprehensive urban appropriation by the powerful and their lackeys, it's promising to find another way of living the urban that has always been there, rooted in micro-acts of curation waiting for horizontal arts and politics of amplification. This marvelous book bristles with inventiveness, detail, and warmth."—Ash Amin, author of After Nativism: Belonging in an Age of Intolerance

“City of Repair offers an original and compelling account of how urban futures emerge from the cracks of the contemporary city. Moving through Mexico City’s streets, homes, infrastructures, and bodies, Boudreau beautifully reveals how everyday practices of care and repair sustain collective life and open possibilities for alternative urban futures.”—Sofia Zaragocin, Associate Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

“Boudreau weaves together a rich array of different sources about her adopted home of Mexico City. Yet this is far more than a book about one city; it is an invitation to regard all cities differently.”—Matthew Gandy, Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography, University of Cambridge

"An invaluable addition to the many volumes devoted to the Mexican capital in both Spanish and English. Its novelty will ensure that it is appreciated by readers across the social sciences and humanities for at least several generations."—Ben Gerlofs, author of Monstrous Politics: Geography, Rights, and the Urban Revolution in Mexico City