It's been a long time since I've been downtown and honestly I hate downtown, I find myself in a very small city compared to other cities, plus everything is very different here, actually there are no buildings so emblematic as to go out and admire its beauty, the pace of life in this place is very different compared to Guadalajara for example, however seeing this post by @ewkaw made me want to go out and do street photography, so here we go.
The new buildings
I would really like to start talking about the new places to visit, sincerely it seems ridiculous what the current government does about this city, for example a few days ago was inaugurated what is called the city of indigenous arts, and that is a space recovered from what was once a totally abandoned square where alcoholics and drug addicts did the things they always do at any time of day, so is the indigenous culture in many occasions although sometimes no one wants to talk about it.
In addition an old market was demolished where I almost didn't take pictures because it didn't really catch my attention, but what I could observe is that the buildings despite having been inaugurated even with the presence of the current president of Mexico and the future president for the next 6 years, are closed to the public, I understand that they would be a kind of viewpoints but as I say, apparently they inaugurated them long before finishing the work, so I'll go back in a few days to see if we can already pass and see if it's really worth all that money that was invested in the place.
Two years with traffic because of Cathedral.
Almost two years ago, on September 19, the city was shaken by an earthquake that collapsed one of the cathedral towers, the building is located on the main avenue that crosses from the north to the south of the city, and it seems incredible that two years after the event they still can not finish repairing the structure or to enable the passage for pedestrians and vehicles transiting trying to reach their destination.
I guess I have already shown pictures of the place, but today's pictures show the little progress they have made and probably will not finish in maybe another two years, and each time they mention that more and more money is needed to repair the damage, I guess the next earthquake (which will probably happen this month as usual) will end up collapsing the structure.
One of the mistakes I made today was taking only one lens with me, so at certain moments I felt I lacked of space to be able to show everything I wanted to include in the pictures, but I see it as an opportunity to go back and improve the images.
What I could realize is that the police and obviously the government of Nayarit do not like much talk about the matter, if you look at the picture in detail you can see the policeman watching me from a distance, they don't like much documentation about the site, or so it seems.
Back to the city of indigenous arts.
I am not very good with architecture so my opinion is probably useless at this point, but I can assure you that when I see something beautiful I recognize it, and of all these new buildings the only thing I really like is the amount of green areas they have, many plants of different types that decorate the pedestrian walkway, so that is what they inaugurated, what would be the pedestrian areas but not the buildings themselves.
By the way in the following image we can see in the background the Cerro de la Cruz, I will see if I can go up again this week, also on this side of the buildings is where the market I mentioned before was located.
In this picture I was also on the side of the old market, as I say the city is small since at this point I was leaving the area considered the center of the city, but I hope you can appreciate how close I was actually with the cathedral in the background.
In the following pictures we can appreciate part of the green areas, the truth is that the site is large and I only took some pictures to show the place.
Something that I really liked is that in the green areas we can find information about the plant that is in the place, that was a good detail to learn about the care of each of these plants, knowledge is power.
I really liked that they left some of the larger trees although that may also be a problem in the future.
There are some parts that have nice potential, some of my nieces will want a picture here.
And again what I have mentioned before, we can see the unfinished light wires, to confirm the lighting I would need to go back at night, but from what we can see there must not be much light on the site yet, and it was already inaugurated.
Something that has me very concerned is the fact that where the children's play area ends there are stairs that go almost to the river bank, and in fact when it rains the level rises so much that some steps are under water and we can confirm it with the mud accumulated on them, the problem is not this, the problem is that there is no protection to prevent me or any child from going down to this area, and believe me, today I observed almost all the moms and dads with their eyes on the cell phone and not on their children.
Some color ones
Every time I do this kind of pictures I ask myself if I should leave them all in black and white or in color, of course when I edit I do it with my own style although sometimes that can change a lot, previously I had my presets in Lightroom but now that I am working with Darktable I need to create new styles for the software, so I leave you a few pictures in color, I hope you liked all the pictures and see you in the next post.
Thank you
Beautiful and clean city, even though you hate the city center, but I see that your local city seems very comfortable and peaceful.
Hello and thank you, the truth is that I tried to portray the best of the moment and I avoided the streets of the bars where drugs are sold, although to be honest that's almost a worldwide problem.
These are very interesting buildings, I love that they have designs out of the ordinary. Great pictures!
I'm glad you liked them, I'll be going again soon with a different lens and a more open perspective, I think it's worth a second try.
Thank you @visualshots and @wilfredocav