From a couple of years ago to date, Jardín Balbuena has become one of the favorite places for locals to live. Perhaps it is because of its privileged location (still in the limits of the Historic Center); because of the Californian palm trees and tree-lined walkways; or because of its captivating modernist architecture. It was named after the Spanish poet Bernardo de Balbuena who, in 1604, dedicated a poem to Mexico City in which he described it as "a town without a second, more full of treasures and beauties than of fish and sand in the deep sea".
Before urbanization, the region was used to feed the cattle of the indigenous people, and was known as Potrero de Balbuena. Many years and owners later, the land was bought by the powerful Braniff family and it is then that it acquired the alias of the Llanos de Balbuena. The owner, Alberto Braniff, in addition to being a businessman, was an absolute aviation enthusiast and in 1910, he made history by taking off the first recorded flight in Mexico City, from nothing more and nothing less than the Llanos de Balbuena. The event became part of national history, and is credited with the subsequent formation of the Mexican Air Force.
Then the Revolution happened, and the Braniffs had no choice but to cede some of their properties to the government. And so it was that, technically, the first airport in Mexico was established in the Balbuena until 1948, when its facilities were moved to other more distant wastelands. This move gave way to its urbanization, which began in 1952, in the context of a serious housing crisis. Jardín Balbuena was built under two fundamental pillars: the utopia of the modernist movement -which sought a better quality of life; and the nationalist ideals -which demanded decent homes and conditions for workers.
Although Jardín Balbuena boasts a wide diversity of housing typologies (multi-family buildings, single-family homes and duplexes), it is true that a large part of its identity is due to Mario Pani and Agustín Landa Verdugo. Following the pattern he set in other neighborhood cells, Pani continued to focus on high-rise vertical projects and superblocks, with all services and facilities included.
Each superblock was designed with the intention of being self-sufficient, with gardens, services, stores and elementary schools. In this neighborhood, as in others already mentioned, there are large structural axes (Av. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier) and residential streets in the form of cul de sacs, i.e., closed roads that give priority to pedestrians, something commonly forgotten in large cities.
Jardín Balbuena is one of the neighborhoods with the highest added value in all of Venustiano Carranza, since it has the largest and best amount of urban facilities. One only has to look at its southern border with the majestic Magdalena Mixhuca Sports City, which houses the Foro Sol, the Palacio de los Deportes, the Sala de Armas, the Hnos. Rodríguez Racetrack, the Olympic Velodrome and the Fray Nano Baseball Stadium. In terms of housing, the neighborhood remained almost intact from its construction in 1960 until 2008, when it began to allow the demolition of abandoned houses and the construction of new apartment buildings.
In retrospect, Bernardo de Balbuena was not wrong when he said that there are more treasures and beauties in the city than fish and sand in the sea; and the Jardín Balbuena perfectly embodies those colonial verses written more than 400 years ago, and which are still true today.
