Mahagonny, or the cultivation of toxic cities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4013/hist.2025.292.08Abstract
This article critically examines Special Economic Development Zones (SEZs) through an analogy with Brecht and Weill’s opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny. Both represent urban models built on the logic of capital, extraterritoriality, and social fragmentation. SEZs, presented as development solutions, operate under autonomous legal frameworks that undermine national sovereignty and deepen inequality. Using the concept of the “toxic city”, the article analyses how these zones promote a form of citizenship subordinated to capital, eroding social and environmental justice. Case stud- ies such as Próspera (Honduras), Bitcoin City (El Salvador), and La Rinconada (Peru) illustrate different forms of urban toxicity—from legal exceptionalism to unregulated exploitation. The text argues that these cities do not cultivate culture or community, but rather reproduce an agonising model of neoliberal urbanisation. The opera Mahagonny serves as a critical framework to show how art anticipates and denounces the pathologies of contemporary urbanism.
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