The Mexican Paradox

The landlord shows you the apartment. The price is in USD. You realise the local market stopped mattering here about three years ago.

Condesa has been gentrified by people who thought they were escaping gentrification. The New Yorkers who left Brooklyn for Mexico City because it was "still affordable" priced out the Mexico City residents who had moved to Condesa from other neighbourhoods because it was "still affordable." The city repeats itself in smaller and smaller fractals.

Elsewhere's data for Mexico shows a 3.4× overall multiplier. That number applies in the colonias that tourists don't visit — Iztapalapa, Neza, the vast working-class city that surrounds the postcard districts. In Condesa and Roma, the number is closer to 1.1× and declining. The globalised neighbourhoods have globalised prices.

This is not a problem with Mexico City. It is a clarification about what "living in Mexico City" means. If you live in the tourist infrastructure, you're not in Mexico City's economy. If you learn to live in the city the city actually is — further out, in Spanish, without a doorman — the 3.4× holds.

The food is the true north. Tostadas at the mercado de antojitos: $0.40. Carnitas from the cart that appears Thursday mornings at the corner near the school: $1.20 for a plate. Lunch for two in a restaurant where people are speaking Spanish, not English: $8. These prices don't lie.