The city read from directly above. Drone photography changed what a city looks like: seen from straight overhead, Mexico City stops being streets and becomes pattern. The Lithuanian photographer Karolis Janulis built a body of work on exactly that, shooting cities from above around the world, and Mexico City is in it.
What he looks for. Circles. Roundabouts, fountains and circular plazas, photographed from the vertical, so the geometry reads as graphic design rather than as architecture. The same eye produced series in Lithuania, Shanghai and Spain — and the roundabouts of Paseo de la Reforma turn out to be made for it.
Why this city rewards the aerial view. Because it was laid out in layers that are invisible from the ground: the Mexica grid under the colonial centre, the Porfirian roundabouts of Reforma, the 1920s oval of the Condesa tracing an old racecourse, the chinampa geometry of Xochimilco. From above, all four are legible at once.
If you want to try it yourself. Drone flying in Mexico is regulated: registration is required above a certain weight, and flights are prohibited near airports, over crowds and over much of the historic centre and federal buildings. Check the current rules with the civil aviation authority before packing one.
The view without a drone. The Torre Latinoamericana, the Mirador of the Monumento a la Revolución and the Cablebus lines over Iztapalapa and Gustavo A. Madero all give the overhead city for the price of a ticket.
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