How Mexico City?s urban innovation lab tackles the city?s challenges Until recently, no map existed for Mexico City?s peseros. The unofficial microbuses, united only by color?nearly all are painted some shade of green?sprout where they?re needed and shift course as necessary. The system is efficient, organic, unruly, and moves about 14 million people through the city every day.

You can see the peseros trawling the city?s transit arteries from the roof of the neocolonial 1948 Jeanne D?Arc building in downtown Mexico City, home of the city?s experimental Laboratorio para la Ciudad. It was here that winners of the lab?s Mapatón CDMX contest?an app that turned the mapping of the microbus routes into a competitive game?met Mayor Miguel �ngel Mancera in an award ceremony after the Mapathon ended. Over the course of two weeks in 2016, thousands of pesero riders played their way toward a map of 2,632 rides. It?s also up on the roof, where the lab has constructed an adaptable event space alongside a low garden of succulents, that it hosts its Roof Sessions: lectures and conferences on subjects from water use in the city to the maker movement to Italian designer Enzo Mari and much, much more. It?s held meetings on the roof that pull together government entities unaccustomed to collaboration to tackle such issues as, say, a particularly dangerous traffic intersection. It?s hosted working groups on community journalism and how to translate data into experience. Like the city ...