The city under constraint: International migrants’ challenges and strategies to access urban resources in Mexico City

Author(s):  
Laurent Faret ◽  
Andrea Paula González Cornejo ◽  
Jéssica Natalia Nájera Aguirre ◽  
Itzel Abril Tinoco González
2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 663
Author(s):  
Martha De Alba

En el presente artículo se estudia el imaginario urbano de la Ciudad de México valiéndose de la comparación de la perspectiva de una muestra de residentes del Distrito Federal con otra muestra de funcionarios encargados de la gestión de la metrópoli. Se parte del supuesto de que las imágenes que esta gran ciudad suscita corresponden a dos registros distintos: por un lado la experiencia urbana captada a través del discurso sobre la ciudad y por el otro las imágenes cartográficas que se materializan en mapas cognitivos del espacio. Se presentan aquí los resultados de estas dos perspectivas complementarias de análisis de las representaciones de la ciudad y se propone una metodología para su estudio. Asimismo se analiza si la vivencia y la representación de la ciudad corresponden a las propuestas teóricas que plantean que la metrópoli contemporánea ya no es más un lugar de convivencia, sociabilidad e identidad, sino que se ha convertido en un espacio únicamente funcional. AbstractThis article studies the urban imagination in Mexico City, using the comparison of the perspective of a sample of residents from the Federal District with another sample of functionaries in charge of managing the metropolis. It begins with the assumption that the images this great city evokes correspond to two different registers: on the one hand, the urban experience recorded through the discourse on the city and on the other, the cartographic images materialized in cognitive maps of space. This article presents the results of these two complementary methods of analyzing the representations of the city and proposes a methodology for studying them. It also analyzes whether the experience and the representation of the city correspond to the theoretical proposals suggesting that the contemporary metropolis is no longer a place of coexistence, sociability and identity but has become a purely functional space.


ZARCH ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 138-153
Author(s):  
Lorena Bello Gómez

Using Mexico City (CDMX) as a paradigmatic example of seriously unbalanced water regimes, our project Resilient Code helps strengthen and communicate CDMX’s government efforts toward risk reduction and water resilience in marginal communities. Our project does so by bridging otherwise separate agents in the government towards a common goal: equitable resilience. Resilient Code provides design solutions that link the social infrastructure of PILARES (a network of 300 vocational schools distributed throughout the city) to CDMX’s environmental and risk reduction initiatives, including their Risk Atlas. This strategic program of design-based solutions began with “water resilience” as a Pilot to repurpose public space throughout underserviced barrios as a network of “water-commons”. Resilient Code helps partners in CDMX implement projects to reduce environmental risks and complement socio-economic programs, fostering growth of the “water-commons”. Resilient Code is socialized through a participatory game-based workshop, and through an online Atlas of Risk Reduction.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Sosa López

Study of the struggle of a social movement, the Frente Amplio contra la Supervía, to stop the construction of an urban toll road in the southwestern end of Mexico City reveals that investments in transportation assumed to benefit the larger public are in fact creating new landscapes of infrastructural and democratic exclusion. Examination of the forms of citizen mobilization, alliances among diverse actors, and the role of accountability institutions as spaces for democratic experimentation suggests that struggles against large infrastructure projects allow citizens and the state to redraw the limits of authoritarianism and the meaning of sustainability and democracy in the city. El movimiento social Frente Amplio contra la Supervía se organizó para detener la construcción de una autopista de peaje urbana en el extremo suroeste de la Ciudad de México. El análisis de las luchas del Frente revela que las inversiones en la transportación que se suponía que beneficiarían a un público amplio en realidad están creando nuevos espacios de exclusión infraestructural y democrática. El análisis de las formas de movilización ciudadana, de las alianzas entre diferentes actores y del rol de las instituciones de rendición de cuentas como espacios de experimentación democrática sugiere que las luchas contra los grandes proyectos de infraestructura les permiten a los ciudadanos y al estado volver a trazar los límites del autoritarismo y el significado de la sostenibilidad y la democracia en la ciudad.


2006 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enriqueta Quiroz

The object of this article is to illustrate that in the eighteenth century there existed-at least in Mexico City-a much more active monetary circulation than was previously thought. To this end, minting levels during that period have been analyzed and a basic difference has been established between coined pieces and their worth. The volume of small currency has received special attention, because this is the currency that circulated in the daily market and was used to fix the prices of foodstuffs as well as to pay daily wages in the capital. In this article, the quantities of small currency have been estimated to be significantly large, which, together with the high volumes of basic goods sold in the city as well as the prices and consumption levels among its inhabitants, has cast doubt over the validity of a shortage of circulating currency during this time period. El artíículo intenta demostrar que existióó en el siglo XVIII-al menos en la ciudad de Mééxico -una circulacióón monetaria mucho máás activa de la que hasta ahora se ha aceptado. Con ese propóósito se revisan los niveles de acuññacióón y se establece una diferencia báásica entre valor y piezas acuññadas. De manera particular se identifica el volumen de moneda menuda acuññada, claro estáá, porque esta moneda era la que circulaba en los mercados cotidianos, y bajo la cual se fijaban los precios de los comestibles y se pagaban los jornales diarios en la capital. En el artíículo se estiman importantes volúúmenes de piezas de moneda menuda acuññada que junto a los altos volúúmenes de productos báásicos vendidos en dicha ciudad, los niveles de precios y de consumo entre los capitalinos, se pondríía en duda la escasez de circulante.


1997 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret E. Harrison ◽  
Clare E. McVey

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (0) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Ryan A. Whitney

This research explores the role of trendy urbanists in best practice uptake within an innovation laboratory in Latin America. Trendy urbanists are the privileged professionals who aspire to be on the cutting edge of urban planning, frequently referencing best practice policies and programmes that they see as supporting ‘livable’ and ‘sustainable’ city building. Taking the case of the Laboratory for the City in Mexico City, I illustrate that the preferred best practices of trendy urbanists are reflective of their own privilege. I conclude that, by relying on best practices and trendy urbanists, innovation laboratories are susceptible to fostering inequitable planning outcomes.


1996 ◽  
Vol 86 (6) ◽  
pp. 1655-1666 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. K. Singh ◽  
M. Ordaz ◽  
L. E. Pérez-Rocha

Abstract The description of the great earthquake of 19 June 1858 is unusual: damage and high intensities were reported both in the state of Michoacan and in Mexico City. Although a coastal epicenter for this earthquake cannot be ruled out, the reports agree better with an intermediate-depth (about 50 km), normal-faulting event in the subducted Cocos plate. A careful examination of the reports of this event and other normal-faulting events below the Mexican altiplano suggests that a likely location is 18.0 °N, 100.8 °W, near the epicenter of the 6 June 1964 (M7.3, H = 55 km) event. This location is 220 km SW of the city. The magnitude of the earthquake is estimated to be about 7.7. We synthesize expected ground motions in CU, a hill-zone site in the city, from an event similar to that of 1858, using records from the 23 May 1994 earthquake (18.0 °N, 100.6 °W, H = 50 km, M5.7) as an empirical Green's function and stress parameter, Δσ, of 50, 160, and 300 bar. The expected peak horizontal acceleration in CU of Δσ = 160 bar is about 30 gals. Similar acceleration was recorded in CU during the 1985, Michoacan earthquake (M8.0). We compute expected ground motions at many sites in Mexico City using empirical transfer functions and random vibration theory and compare these motions and the expected damage in the city with those from the 1985 Michoacan earthquake. Results show that the overall expected damage during the postulated earthquake is ⅔ and 1⅓ of that during the Michoacan earthquake for Δσ = 160 and 300 bar, respectively. A greater percentage of low-rise construction, which constitute about 80% of the total in the city, will be damaged during the postulated earthquake than during the Michoacan earthquake. The expected ground motions for Δσ = 50 bar are smaller at all periods than those from the Michoacan earthquake. As the present building code for Mexico City contemplates coastal earthquakes of magnitude greater than 8.0, the case of Δσ = 50 bar is not of interest in this article. This preliminary study suggests a need for a more careful evaluation of expected ground motion in the Valley of Mexico from the postulated earthquake and its impact on the current design spectra of the city.


Author(s):  
DIANE E. DAVIS

What constitutes modern Mexico? Is there a clear distinction between the historic and modern Mexico City? And if there are, does this distinctions hold up throughout the twentieth century, when what is apparent is a mix of legacies coexisting overtime? This chapter discusses the semiotics of history and modernity. It discusses the struggle of the Mexico City to find its own image including its struggle to preserve historic buildings amidst the differing political alliances that either promote change or preserve the past. However, past is not a single entity, hence if the preservation of the rich history of Mexico is pursued, the question arises as to what periods of history represented in the city are to be favoured in its future development. In this chapter, the focus is on the paradoxes of the Torre Bicentenario and on the pressures to preserve Mexico’s past, the ways they have been juxtaposed against the plans for its future and how the balance of these views has shifted over time. It determines the key actors and the institutions who have embraced history as opposed to progress, identifies the set of forces that dominated in the city’s twentieth-century history, and assesses the long-term implications of the shifting balance for the social, spatial and built environmental character of the city. The chapter ends with a discussion on the current role played by the cultural and historical authorities in determining the fate of the city.


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