Understand
Monterrey traces its modern history to its founding in 1596, when Diego de Montemayor founded the city, together with 12 first families. The story is told by a mural on one of the modern grey concrete and black glass government office towers downtown, just off the Macroplaza. The mural seems odd in its juxtaposition of Spanish conquestadors set next to a modern city of skyscrapers and factories. It does capture the spirit of Monterrey though --- a city that isn't so much a product of its past as it is a product of its future.
Monterrey is an aggressively modern city, unlike most destinations in Mexico. Although it does have some colonial era sights, and its Barrio Antiguo district preserves a sense of Monterrey as it was in its once "sleepy town" days, the city is very much a product of the industrial age of the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Today, Monterrey has a culture that values education and business ethics. Often referred to as "an industrial giant", the label is more true in the imagination than it is in reality. Monterrey's big steel and iron works have been shut down for almost two decades, and even the concrete, glass, and brewing industries don't dominate the economy as they once did. Instead, people in Monterrey are today more likely to work in retail, in banking, in telecommunications, or in health care or education.
The city enjoys one of Mexico's highest standards of living, and the population is more educated and cultured than average.
Monterrey is also a large city. The central downtown has a population of about a million, but the metropolitan area that includes all of its adjacent suburban municipalities brings its total city population to just under 4 million --- similar in size to the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S.
While it is true that visitors seeking the traditional flavor of colonial Mexico find little to love about Monterrey, the city has emerged as a leading cultural center: it likes 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. It's also a youthful city that tends to prefer cutting edge rockeros like Plastilina Mosh or Kinky to the cowboy-hat wearing cumbia groups that built the city's music industry in the '70s and '80s. Monterrey is a city where international cuisine finds a welcoming reception, and where high-speed broadband internet connections are actually becoming more commonplace than in many U.S. communities. Monterrey is a progressive, modern city that likes to learn, likes to work, and likes to live for the weekend.
