Article: Pollution, crime, earthquakes: so what?

Mexico City is a city of squiffy buildings. But if you plant a metropolis of some 20 million people on a huge bowl of jelly, the bed of Lake Texcoco, and throw in the San Andreas fault for good measure, you can hardly expect perfect lines. I arrived burdened with misconceptions: that the city was largely levelled by the 1985 earthquake, and that the air was like rarefied minestrone soup. True, the government has counselled its citizens not to take outdoor exercise, but the air seems no worse than in London and the city has a remarkably intact historic centre.

Its heart is the main plaza, the Zocalo. This is flanked by the colonial Baroque facade of the Palacio Nacional and dominated by the ...

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