Several previous administrations have tried to decentralize Mexico, encouraging businesses to set up in the “periphery” away from the “core” of Mexico City and central Mexico. The incoming administration has announced its intention to move several federal government Secretariats away from Mexico City. The plans are discussed in some detail in this interesting article by Simon Schatzberg:
Katherine Kornei has just published an interesting account of the recent effects in Mexico City of ground subsidence on the city’s metro system:
Amazing what is possible using satellite technology!
In 2009 Feike de Jong walked the entire perimeter of Mexico City to capture the strange scenery of its fringes. The 800-km trek took him 51 days.
Spatial growth of Mexico City Metropolitan Area (Geo-Mexico Fig 22.2; all rights reserved)
These two Guardian articles tell the story of his trip:
The author’s ebook Limits: On Foot Along the Edge of the Megalopolis of the Valley of Mexico, with the full story and more images, is due to be released later this year.
Enjoy!
Want to learn more about Mexico City?
This index page has links to our more important posts about Mexico City. Other index pages include:
Administrative
Mexico City background / physical geography / hazards
Water supply / drainage
Sewers / Drainage
Aztecs – Food supply
History / Urban growth / Urban morphology / Housing
Megalopolis?
Mexico City air quality in 1980 (Photo: Tony Burton)
Traffic, taxis and air pollution
Metro/subway system
Sustainable Transport / Cable Cars
Airport
Urban revitalization
Other
Map of Mexico City urban system:
Map of Mexico City urban system. Click to enlarge. (Geo-Mexico Fig 23.1; all rights reserved).
Spatial growth of Mexico City Metropolitan Area:
Spatial growth of Mexico City Metropolitan Area (Geo-Mexico Fig 22.2; all rights reserved)
Locations in Valley of Mexico with high incidence of ground cracks:
Locations in Valley of Mexico with high incidence of ground cracks. Cartography: Tony Burton; all rights reserved.
General posts about Mexico’s urban geography
Mexico has some of the finest markets in the world. The variety of produce and other items sold in markets is staggering. But not all Mexican markets are the same. The two major groups are the permanent markets (mercados), usually housed in a purpose-built structure and open for business every day, and the street market or tianguis, usually held once a week.
Earlier this month, Mexico City passed legislation that gave the city’s 329 public markets Intangible Cultural Heritage status, and provided additional funding to ensure that their traditional activities are maintained for future generations.
Some of the markets are traditional, mixed markets, others are specialized. Between them, they are used on a regular basis by almost half of Mexico City’s residents and provide more than 280,000 jobs. The Mexico City commission established to preserve these traditional spaces and their practices has been allocated a budget in 2017 of $200,000,000 pesos (about $11 million).
Abelardo L. Rodriguez Market. Credit: Wikimedia. Creative Commons.
Beyond their regular role as a trading place, many of the markets in Mexico City have additional claims to fame. For example the La Paz market in Tlalpan in the southern part of the city occupies an architecturally impressive building, while the Abelardo L. Rodríguez market in the downtown area has fine decorative murals painted by students of Diego Rivera.
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At its 29th General Assembly in Gwangju, South Korea, a few months ago, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) announced that Mexico City has been designated World Design Capital (WDC) 2018. Mexico City is the first city from the Americas to hold the designation.
Alameda Park, Mexico City, with Palacio de Bellas Artes in foreground
ICSID President Professor Mugendi M’Rithaa stated, “Mexico City will serve as a model for other megacities around the world grappling with the challenges of urbanization and using design thinking to ensure a safer, more livable city.”
The WDC is awarded every second year to cities that are committed to using design as an effective tool for economic, social, and cultural development. Previous designated cities include Torino (Italy) in 2008, Seoul (South Korea) in 2010, Helsinki (Finland) in 2012, Cape Town (South Africa) in 2014, and Taipei this year, 2016.
The bid was led by Design Week Mexico, a non-profit organization that promotes design as an engine of social change. Design Week Mexico intends to focus its actions on the borough of Miguel Hidalgo, introducing new health, communications and security programs, a bike sharing program, urban gardens, parks and playgrounds. Emilio Cabrera, Director General of Design Week Mexico said, “Our goal is to build a platform for collaboration not only between design disciplines, but also between countries. As WDC, we seek to create a hub of global creative industries that have an impact on their societies.”
The Mexico City bid was preferred over a rival bid from Curitiba (Brazil), well known for its innovative approach to urban sustainability.
For access to more than sixty articles about all aspects of the geography of Mexico City, see The geography of Mexico City: index page.
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The name “Distrito Federal” (Federal District) has been replaced by “Ciudad de México” (Mexico City). This is bad news for cartographers who need to relabel all those maps that say “Mexico D.F.”! The abbreviated form for the city’s name in Spanish will be CDMX.
The constitution for the new administrative entity, which will eventually enjoy full status as a state, will be drawn up by a group of 100 citizens (to be elected in June), expected to include some members of the federal Chamber of Deputies.
Among other advantages, the change of status means that Mexico City will no longer need federal approval when selecting its police chief and attorney general. Administration of Mexico City’s 16 delegaciones (boroughs) will change from borough chiefs and regidores to mayors and councils.
Mexico City will remain Mexico’s capital city and the seat of the federal administration. No changes are planned for the neighboring Estado de México (State of Mexico). The Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) includes Mexico City, but also extends well into adjacent areas of the State of Mexico.
Want to learn more?
For access to more than sixty articles about all aspects of the geography of Mexico City, see The geography of Mexico City: index page.
Line 12 of Mexico City’s Metro (subway) system was originally opened in October 2012. The new line, also known as the Golden Line, extended the city’s metro system into several lower income areas in the south-eastern part of the city, including Tlahuac, Milpa Alta, Xochimilco and Iztapalapa.
However, in March 2014, the elevated (above ground) 14-kilometer-long (9 mi) southern section of this line between Tlahuac and Atlalilco stations was closed for emergency repairs. A replacement bus system was established between those stations. According to a report in the Mexico City daily Reforma (citing a study by ILF Consulting Engineers), the design of tracks in that section had resulted in damage to the wheels of several metro trains. It also resulted in the failure of an electric cable and caused cracks and fractures in the track supports. Authorities have blamed some former city officials, together with the line’s builders, a consortium comprised of France’s Alstom and the Mexican companies ICA and Carso.
Metro Line 12 was finally fully reopened 20 months later, on 29 November, 2015. Line 12 is the longest line in the city’s metro network,extending 25 km (15.5 miles), with 20 stations, including four transfer points. In terms of network connectivity, it added an important east-west link connecting four lines that serve the southern section of the metro area. Line 12 runs from Mixcoac (Line 7) to Tlahuac in the southeast of Mexico City, intersecting with line 3 at Zapata, line 2 at Ermita and line 8 at Atlalilco.
Officials estimate that the line, which has both underground and overground sections, eliminates 860 buses from the city’s congested streets, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 22,000 metric tons a year. It cost about $1.8 billion to construct.
Between 400,000 and 450,000 passengers are now expected to use Line 12 daily. It is expected to cut the average daily commuting time from those parts of the city it serves by more than an hour a day, from 150 minutes to 78 minutes. The line is only accessible by using the new metropolitan smart transport card “Tarjeta DF”.
The complete network of 12 lines comprising Mexico City’s metro system, used by more than 5 million passengers a day, now has 195 stations and a total length of about 227 km (141 miles).
Will the line eventually be extended?
In January 2013, officials of Mexico City’s Metro system (Sistema de Transporte Colectivo, STC) announced that they were considering extending Line 12 westwards into the Álvaro Obregón district of the city. This is still being talked about. STC’s Managing Director Joel Ortega Cuevas also said that an analysis was needed of the viability of extending the Metro network to reach several major commuting routes in the State of México (see map), including Ecatepec-Coacalco-Zumpango; Chalco-Ixtapaluca; Naucalpan-Tlalnepantla-Cuautitlán; Atizapan-Naucalpan and Chimalhuacan-Nezahualcóyotl.
Spatial growth of Mexico City Metropolitan Area (based on Geo-Mexico Fig 22.2; all rights reserved)
Useful links:
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A recent OOSKAnews report says that Mexico City’s water authority (Sacmex) is seeking to purchase 27,835 more water meters that it plans to install in coming months. Sacmex supplies water to around 2 million separate addresses, of which 1.4 million are already metered. The latest purchase is part of Sacmex’s plan to ensure that 100% of connections to the water system are metered. Sacmex’s current budget includes $3.5 million for an additional 40,000 meters.
At present, users without a meter pay a fixed bi-monthly tariff based on the building category, and intended type of water use (domestic/industrial/commercial).
Funding for the meters will be part of a $200 million World Bank-supported “Program to Improve the Efficiency of Operating Organizations” (PROME) which has already financed various projects across the country for urban areas with populations over 20,000. Projects already funded by the Progam include more efficient pumps, the updating of user databases with geo-referencing technology, and studies to gauge the robustness of indicators such as water pressure, water quality and leak detection.
Sacmex is also working on other distribution issues. Earlier this year – see Water in Mexico: a human right that is currently subsidized and wasted – Sacmex CEO Ramón Aguirre Diaz said that the agency required $430 million to combat leakages in the system (currently estimated at around 40% of supply), and claimed that a long-term program to fix the problem would be introduced next year.
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The worst earthquake disaster in modern Mexican history occurred thirty years ago this week. On Thursday 19 September 1985 a magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck at 7:19 a.m. and lasted a full two minutes. It was followed by a 7.5-magnitude earthquake 36 hours later.
Mexico’s position in relation to tectonic plates.Map: Geo-Mexico.com; all rights reserved
These earthquakes resulted from the Cocos Plate (see map) pushing under the North American Plate. While the epicenters were 50 km off Mexico’s Pacific coast, near the Michoacán-Guerrero border, most of the damage occurred 350 km (215 mi) away in Mexico City because the city center’s subsoil, being former lakebed, is very unstable. The clay and silt beneath the city is up to 50 m thick in the area that received most damage. Geologists have likened the effects of the earthquake to the shaking of a bowl of jelly.
Further damage was caused by liquefaction, a process in which water is squeezed rapidly through the pore spaces in soil, dramatically reducing its cohesion. The sediments beneath Mexico City amplified the ground motions during the earthquakes and many buildings were stressed well beyond building code limits.
Damage from Mexico City’s 1985 earthquake. Photo: Tony Burton; all rights reserved
Damage estimates range upward to 10,000 deaths, 50,000 injured and 100,000 homeless. More than 500 buildings collapsed, and a further 600 of the 3000 damaged structures were subsequently razed to the ground. The destruction was concentrated in a relatively small area near the city center and included many public buildings, such as government offices, as well as 11 hospitals and clinics, numerous multi-story apartment blocks, 11 hotels and 10 banks. More than 1600 school classrooms were damaged.
Buildings of between 6 and 15 stories were especially hard hit. The underbelly of the city was exposed; dozens of textile sweatshops were destroyed. The damages revealed many instances of poor construction standards and of poor enforcement of building codes. Well-built high rises such as the Latin American tower, designed to be earthquake-proof, were unscathed.
The total cost to the Mexican economy was estimated to exceed $5 billion, equivalent to 2% of the country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
The disastrous 1985 earthquakes led to much tighter building codes, equal or superior to anywhere in the world, and to the formation of well-trained emergency search and rescue brigades. They also resulted in the establishment of a Seismic Alarm System which provides a 50-second warning for any earthquake measuring over 6.0 on the Richter scale occurring off the coast of Guerrero or Michoacán.
This is an excerpt from chapter 2 of Geo-Mexico: the geography and dynamics of modern Mexico. Many more details of Mexico’s geology and landforms are analyzed in other parts of the book; take a look using Amazon.com’s Look Inside feature before buying your copy today!
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