Mexico City

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Mexico City

From the earliest settlement to the present day, the site of Mexico City has been an impressive one. The Anáhuac Valley in which it is located is more than 7,000 feet above sea level, and is surrounded by volcanic mountains, two of which rise a further 12,000-16,000 feet above the valley floor. The origins of Mexico City date to the former Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, located, according to legend, where the Aztec tribe saw an eagle perched on a cactus devouring a snake—now the escudo (emblem) on the nation's flag. While many other civilizations had flourished before the Aztecs, Tenochtitlán was the city that Cortés and his followers conquered and razed, and it provided the foundations for their city. In the early twenty-first century, little is left of the Aztec ruins except for some foundations and lower levels of temples that have been excavated and exposed to public view, most notably at the Templo Mayor located behind the central plaza, and at the Plaza of the Three Cultures (Aztec, colonial Spanish, and modern).

THE COLONIAL AND INDEPENDENT PERIODS

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Mexico City flourished as the political and economic center of New Spain, ruled through a series of viceroys until independence in 1821. Thereafter, the city was the seat of power for a series of rulers whose legitimacy was sometimes dubious and spurious—such as the self-proclaimed emperor Agustín de Iturbide (1822–1823) and Archduke Maximilian, imposed by a French expeditionary force in 1864. They were succeeded by a series of elected presidents, the most notable of whom was Benito Juárez, whose death in 1872 was followed by the rise of the dictator Porfirio Díaz (1876–1880, 1884–1911), who was ultimately overthrown during the Revolution.

The central city ground plan reflects the grid pattern prescribed by the Spanish monarchy and later embodied in the Laws of the Indies established by Philip II in 1573. The central plaza, or (STET) Zócalo, was the seat of the principal council buildings, the treasury, and the cathedral, while the rich lived in mansions and palaces on the main streets running east and north. Once established, the colonial city expanded slowly, growing from 2.5 to 4 square miles between 1700 and the mid-nineteenth century. Not until the relative stability and economic growth experienced during the Porfiriato (the reign of Porfirio Díaz) did physical expansion begin in earnest, largely to the south and west of the primer cuadro (the central historic core of the city).

TWENTIETH-CENTURY GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

The years after the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917) saw a sharp rise in population. Between 1921 and 1930 the city grew from around 615,000 to more than 1 million. And as the pace of economic growth and industrialization quickened, so did the rate of city expansion, from 4 percent per annum during the 1930s to more than 6 percent annually between 1940 and 1950. Until the 1970s, when the growth rate began to decline appreciably, annual growth rates were steady, averaging around 5.5 percent—approximately doubling the city population every twelve to thirteen years. Thus Mexico City grew from 1.64 million in 1940 to 5.4 million in 1960 and 9.2 million in 1970. In 1990 the total metropolitan population was 17.3 million, and in 2005 it was 19.2 million, with growth rates more or less steady, and with just over one-half of the population living outside the Federal District in the surrounding municipalities of the state of México, such as Ecatepec (1.69 million) and Netzahualcóyotl (1.14 million).

Particularly during the earlier phases of this rapid growth, in-migration was the key factor, accounting for approximately 70 percent of the decennial increase. However, this quickly led to a population age structure dominated by young adults with most of the family-building part of their lives ahead of them, so that natural increase took over as the principal component of growth. Since the mid-1970s Mexico's active population control policy has begun to take effect, and the annual rate of city growth has declined significantly, although it still exhibits a high degree of urban primacy, with just over 18 percent of the total national population living in the metropolitan area (down from 20 percent a decade earlier). Since 2000, net migration is slightly negative, as people move out of the central core and the inner suburbs to new provincial locations or to peri-urban townships in nearby municipalities that have become relative hot spots of economic and servicing activity tied to the core.

Mexico City is one of the largest metropolitan regions of the Americas and has experienced enormous problems associated with rapid growth and change of spatial and functional orientation as its structure shifted from being one of city and central plaza to city and suburbs to that of a mega-city. Physically the city grew from 47 square miles to nearly 300 square miles between 1940 and 1970, and in the early 1990s covered approximately 500 square miles. Spatially, population growth has led to a wave of settlement moving outward, first across the Federal District area itself, and then into the surrounding state of Mexico. For several decades the population of the city center has been declining, and from the 1960s onward the peripheral municipalities in the east and north began to experience dramatic growth.

Indeed, much of the built-up area of Mexico City, such as Netzahualcóyotl, began as illegal settlement, which was the only way low-income groups could own homes, because their needs were not met by the government and their incomes were too low for them to be considered creditworthy by formal housing institutions. Between 40 and 50 percent of the built-up area developed without authorization and initially without basic services. Through community mutual aid, household self-help, and personal home-building, combined with incremental government assistance to provide services and legal titles, these initial shantytown settlements were consolidated and upgraded into brick-built working-class neighborhoods (colonias proletarias). By 2007 the urban frontier for newly established settlement was in the distant periphery of places such as Chalco, some 25 to 30 miles east of the center.

Mexico City's social ecology shows a broad pattern of rich residential sectors in the west and southwest, and rings of old and newly established "irregular" (i.e. illegally developed) working-class settlements in the north and east. Nevertheless, opportunities for illegal land occupation by poorer groups in the south and in parts of the west, together with the attraction of living in old village centers absorbed into the city as it grew outward, means that spatial segregation is neither absolute nor rigid. Indeed, segregation seems to be declining at least in macro terms, although there has been a notable hardening of segregation lines between neighborhoods at the micro level, as gated neighborhoods separate the rich from the poor irregular settlements that abut them. Rising violence and insecurity became major concerns in the 1990s both as a result of intensifying social inequality and as the country democratized and sought to improve the efficacy of its policing and criminal justice systems, both of which required complete overhaul. In the short term this led to intensification of insecurity and conflict as corrupt police officials were sidelined and were replaced by new cadres of criminal justice personnel.

ECONOMY AND THE LABOR MARKET

Economically the importance of the city relative to the nation is disproportionately large. As a result of state-led investment programs during the 1940s and 1950s that favored Mexico City, the rate of return on the production of industrial goods produced in the city was systematically higher than elsewhere. Almost two-fifths of the national gross domestic product (GDP) is generated by the city, and while it accounts for slightly less than one-third of industrial production, approximately half of all manufacturing activities are located here. Much of this production is oriented to national and local markets, and other areas of the country are more geared to meeting Mexico's increasingly important export-led strategy of industrial and manufacturing production. After the relative stagnation and economic instability of the 1980s, economic recovery in the early 1990s has emerged from two principal sources: the restructuring of the city's economic base and efficiency, with growth rates of more than 3 percent per annum from 1993 to 1997; and growth in the service sector, which is now the second most important sector in terms of GDP as well as job creation. High-level services (professional services, finance, real estate, etc.) grew dramatically (by more than 60 percent) during the decade.

Unfortunately, due to industrial restructuring the growth of new and well-paid jobs in manufacturing has declined significantly, and the slack is increasingly taken up by informal sector activities (such as street trading, unregulated services, and domestic labor). Always a bellwether to macroeconomic conditions, the informal sector increased from around 34 percent of the economically active population in 1981, when there were labor shortages in many formal industries and activities, to almost 40 percent in 1987, as workers shifted from one sector to another due to the recession and as participation rates of household members increased in order to generate an income that might adequately support the family. Wages in the early 2000s continued to be generally low, and statutory wage levels declined to half that of their 1982 level. But rising household participation rates, and the fact that most firms pay considerably more than the statutory minimum, have cushioned the social costs of austerity and recession to a certain extent. In the 1990s the average wage stood at around seven dollars per day and remained around that level a decade later. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Mexico City has become an important exporter of labor to the United States, and this flow generally comprises a rather more educated and skilled labor force than that of the traditional rural regions of west-central and southern Mexico. Mexico City is an important receptor of remittances, and Chilangos (natives of the Federal District) are increasingly found within the emerging transnational community.

GOVERNMENT AND PLANNING

Despite an apparently serious commitment to decentralization during the early 1980s, little was done to reduce Mexico City's economic and social dominance, although at the political level some measure of deconcentration and devolution was attempted. Nor do people appear to want to leave the congestion and pollution of a city that many years ago lost its status as La región más transparente (Where the Air Is Clear, the title of a novel by Carlos Fuentes). Not even the earthquakes of September 1985, which caused great destruction and loss of life, especially in the downtown tenement areas, led to a decentralization of population to the provinces—although it offered a clear opportunity to do so. Quite the contrary: Most of the reconstruction of dwellings was undertaken in situ. However over the past decade, a greater commitment to decentralization and the democratic opening that has led to greater autonomy for regional and city governments have led to some centrifugal loosening of population, politics, and economic activity, making life outside of the primary metropolitan center both viable and often quite attractive.

Pollution, contamination, and traffic gridlock have accelerated the desire of some to leave the city. Local authorities have responded positively in their attempts to reduce levels of air pollution, closing down noxious industries and servicing and paving many peripheral irregular settlements, thereby reducing the dust blown across the city from desiccated eastern lake-bed areas. But the fact that 85 percent of pollution emanates from vehicles, particularly from private cars, often goes unrecognized by the city's critics. Measures including tighter controls on exhaust emissions, a well publicized one-day-per-week ban on cars without new emission regulators, and wider utilization of unleaded gasoline have been introduced since the late 1980s and have had a significant effect in controlling pollution. Ironically, however, the more effective and accurate daily monitoring systems of the 2000s actually makes it appear that conditions are getting worse, which is not the case. Pollution tends to be most intense during the winter months, when temperature inversions prevent the dispersal of pollutants. While there have been significant improvements in public transportation, with an excellent subway system, most middle-income residents continue to use their private car without heavy financial penalty; indeed, the 2002–07 major project in the Federal District has been the construction of a second tier (segundo piso) to the western perimeter motorway (perférico), which almost exclusively benefits private transportation.

Governance of the city is divided between two political entities: the Federal District, which is split into sixteen boroughs or delegaciones, and the twenty-one of the fifty-eight municipalities in the state of Mexico, as well as a single municipality of the state of Hidalgo, all of which form part of the contiguous urban area. Inevitably this division of governance generates its own problems, such as lack of overall planning control, poorly integrated provision of services, a lack of connection of transportation networks in the two entities, and sharp fiscal imbalances and budgetary appropriations. In terms of political weight, the mayor (or Jefe de Gobierno as he is called) of the Federal District is the dominant actor. Until the 1996 constitutional reform allowed for direct elections from 1997 onward the mayor (then called the Regente) was always a senior cabinet position appointed by the President and loyal to him. That changed in 1997 when elections led to the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) taking control of the Federal District, as well as a number of the internal boroughs and surrounding municipalities. Since that time the other two major parties, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), have also shared the spoils, although the PRI lost much of its influence in the 2006 elections. However, the state of Mexico, the richest state in the country, forms a large part of the city and remained in the hands of the PRI.

This means that Mexico City's metropolitan area is a patchwork of different party-led executive governments, in which the two dominant figures since 2000 have been from different parties than the national president, and who must work with their respective local congresses. No executive tier of metropolitan government exists, making effective integration of planning extremely difficult. Until either the political-administrative structure of Mexico City is reorganized, or until some level of metropolitan authority is established, it seems unlikely that city politicians will have the mandate or the authority to bring citywide vision to the key development tasks: job creation, housing, planning land use for future growth, the development of infrastructure and public transportation systems, the reduction of pollution and maintenance of ecological stability, and effective policing and safeguards for personal security and property. Without such changes the city will survive but is unlikely to thrive.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aguilar, Adrían G., and Peter M. Ward. "Globalization, Regional Development, and Mega-City Expansion in Latin America: Analyzing Mexico City's Peri-Urban Hinterland." Cities 20, no. 1 (February 2003): 3-21.

Davis, Diane E. Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.

Garza, Gustavo, ed. La Ciudad de México en el fin del segundo milenio. México: El Colegio de México y el Gobierno del Distrito Federal, 2000. This huge and impressive text is a revised and updated version of El atlas de la Ciudad de México, 1987. See especially Gustavo Garza, "Servicialización de la economía metropolitana 1960–1998," pp. 178-181; María Eugenia Negrete Salas, "Dinámica demográfica," ch. 4.3, pp. 247-252; Brígida García and Olandina de Oliveira, "El mercado de trabajo, 1930–1998," ch. 4.6, pp. 279-283; Arturo Alvarado, "La seguridad pública," ch. 5.11, pp. 410-419; Carlos Martínez Assad, "Gobierno en transción," ch. 8.4, pp. 667-671; and Gustavo Garza, "La megalópolis de la Cd. de México, según escenario tendencial 2020," ch. 10.3, pp. 753-762.

Gilbert, Alan, ed. The Mega-City in Latin America. New York: United Nations University Press, 1996.

Kandell, Jonathan. La Capital: The Biography of Mexico City. New York: Random House, 1988. An interesting journalistic account, but will not satisfy most scholars.

Ward, Peter M. Mexico City, revised 2nd edition. New York: Wiley, 1998. See also the revised and extended edition: Mexico megaciudad: Desarrollo y política, 1970–2002, 2nd edition. México: Colegio Mexiquense y Miguel Angel Porrúa, 2004.

Ward, Peter M. "Mexico City in an Era of Globalization and Demographic Downturn." In World Cities beyond the West: Globalization, Development, and Inequality, ed. Josef Gugler. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Peter M. Ward

C.B. Smith Jr.

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture