Abstract
Order, symmetry and beauty constituted an urban aesthetical ideal painstakingly searched by diverse governors in Mexico City since the viceroys' times. Flowers, scents, fresh air, beauty and health were the ideals which motivated planners who dreamt about a clean city, with wide avenues, ordered meadows, rows of trees, fountains, bronze and marble statues. Characters such as the illustrated Bartolache or the editor-businessman Ignacio Cumplido, with his original "projects" contributed to try to reach that goal of public happiness. The Alameda, the Paso de Bucareli, the Plateros- San Francisco street and, among all, the Paseo de la Reforma, great scenery which commemorates the triumph of liberalism, prevail as finished exemplars of that urban ideal. However, —according to the author of this article—, the porfirian city pretended to be what it was not, giving itself up to the servile imitation of foreigner models, renouncing "not to the historical or political nation, but to the intimate nation" so much yearned by López Velarde.