Monterrey

Monterrey is Mexico’s third biggest city and the capital of Nuevo León. It is northern Mexico’s commercial, industrial, educational, and transportation centre, ranking third economically in significance after Mexico City and Mexico State. Although it has traditionally been an industrial and commercial city (in fact, the majority of foreign visitors come on business), travelers will be astonished by the city’s abundance of cultural and recreational activities.

Monterrey, in contrast to the majority of Mexico’s attractions, is an aggressively contemporary metropolis. Although it has some colonial-period architecture and the Barrio Antiguo sector retains a feeling of Monterrey in its former “sleepy town” days, the city is very much a product of the late nineteenth and twentieth century industrial boom.

Monterrey now has a culture that places a premium on education and corporate integrity. Frequently referred to as a “industrial behemoth,” the moniker is more accurate in the imagination than in actuality. For over two decades, Monterrey’s large steel and iron plants have been closed, and even the concrete, glass, and brewing sectors no longer dominate the economy as they once did. Rather than that, residents of Monterrey are more likely to work in retail, finance, telecommunications, information technology, health care, or education.

The city has one of the greatest levels of life in Mexico, and its residents are more educated and cultured than the national average.

Monterrey is a sizable city as well. The central business district has a population of around a million, but the metropolitan region, which encompasses all of its nearby suburban towns, increases the city’s total population to just under 4 million —- comparable to the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States.

While it is true that visitors seeking the traditional flavor of colonial Mexico will find nothing to admire in Monterrey, the city has established itself as a leading cultural center, with a preference for cutting-edge contemporary architecture (like the visually stunning Puente Atirantado or Puente Viaducto de la Unidad in San Pedro Garza Garcia, the new circular Tec business school in el Valle, or the physics-defying twin leaning bookends look of that shocking white concrete and black glass building that you see as you drive past the ITESM campus). Additionally, it is a young city that prefers cutting-edge rockeros such as Plastilina Mosh or Kinky to the cowboy-hat-wearing cumbia groups who developed the city’s music business in the 1970s and 1980s. Monterrey is a metropolis that embraces foreign cuisine and where high-speed broadband internet connections are becoming more prevalent than in many American areas. Monterrey is a progressive, contemporary city that values education, employment, and a weekend lifestyle.

Monterrey is situated in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León at 540 metres (1,770 feet) above sea level. The Santa Catarina River bisects Monterrey from east to west, dividing the city into north and south sections, and drains the city to the San Juan River and Rio Grande.

Monterrey is bounded on the north by San Nicolás de los Garza, Garca, and General Escobedo; on the east by Guadalupe, Juárez, and Cadereyta Jiménez; on the south by Santiago; and on the west by San Pedro Garza, Garca, and Santa Catarina. Their combined population exceeds 4,080,329 persons.

Monterrey is located north of the Sierra Madre Oriental foothills. Cerro del Topo and its lesser counterpart, Topo Chico, are situated in the San Nicolás de los Garza and Escobedo areas. The Cerro de las Mitras (Mountain of the Mitres) rises west of the city, resembling the profile of numerous bishops wearing their mitres.

Cerro de la Silla (Saddle Mountain) dominates the eastern vista of the city and is often regarded as the city’s primary emblem. South of the Santa Catarina river, the Cerro de la Loma Larga divides Monterrey from the neighborhood of San Pedro Garza Garca. The old Bishopric Palace is located on the crest of the Cerro del Obispado, north of the river. It was the scene of one of the most important engagements of the Mexican-American War.

Monterrey is a significant industrial hub in northern Mexico, with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 78.5 billion US dollars (2006). The city’s GDP per capita was 607,042 Mexican pesos (about $46,634 US dollars) in 2010. In 1999, Fortune magazine recognized the city as the best in Latin America for business, and it is now ranked third by América Economa.

The city is a leader in fields like as steel, cement, glass, automotive components, and brewing. Business prosperity has been ascribed in part to the city’s closeness to the US-Mexico border and economic ties with the United States.

Industrialization was fostered in the mid-19th century by the steel-processing business Compaia Fundidora de Fierro y Acero Monterrey. Today, Monterrey is home to multinational conglomerates such as Cemex (the world’s third largest cement company), FEMSA (Coca-Cola Latin America, the world’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler), Alfa (petrochemicals, food, telecommunications, and auto parts), Axtel (telecommunications), Vitro (glass), Selther (the leading mattress and rest systems company in Latin America), Gruma (food), and Banorte (financial services). The FEMSA organization possessed a sizable brewery, the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery (Cervecera Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma), which produced brands like as Sol, Tecate, Indio, Dos Equis, and Carta Blanca. At the start of the year, the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery was sold to Heineken, a Dutch company. By the end of the same year, Monterrey had over 13,000 manufacturing enterprises, 55,000 retail establishments, and over 52,000 service firms.

In 1994, the metals industry, which was dominated by iron and steel, accounted for 6% of manufacturing GNP. The steel industry in Mexico is based in Monterrey, which built the country’s first steel mills in 1903. In the early 1990s, steel processing factories in Monterrey, which were privatized in 1986, accounted for over half of Mexico’s total steel production.

Monterrey was rated 94th in the world and fifth in Latin America by Mercer Human Resource Consulting (2006), and second in 2005 and fourth in 2006 by America Economia.

Paseo San Pedro, Plaza Fiesta San Agustn, Galeras Monterrey, and Galeras Valle Oriente are only a few of the city’s retail malls that provide products and services to the Mexican populace.

Broadband internet access is generally accessible, and the majority of hotels provide complimentary wi-fi hotspots. Cyber cafés charge around US$1 per hour for short-term internet use. There are several internet cafes in Monterrey, and you can usually locate one off Morelos.