This is part two of a series on capitalism, gentrification and the housing crisis.
 |
| By Gary Todd from Xinzheng, China - Painting of Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco on Lake Texcoco, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=108790696 |
Mexico City, or Tenochtitlan as it was called upon
the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, was a city whose center was built on a high
plateau called the Valley of Mexico on a system of five lakes surrounded by
mountains & volcanoes. The center had a population of around 150,000 and
was the hub of an urban network numbering a half a million.[1]
The geography of the valley and the lake beds, the largest of which is Texcoco,
have had serious consequences for the growth and development of the city. The
subsoil and the extraction of water from the aquifers below the urban area are
causing it to sink unevenly at a rate of about 20 inches a year. [2]
The location of the city in an enclosed
valley with no natural outlet for water causes the city to suffer
from flooding,[3] but because of inadequate
infrastructure, it also suffers from a lack of a reliable supply of water. CDMX,
as it is now known (formerly Distrito Federal), is, in fact, at the top of an
international list of those cities that are presently suffering or will soon
suffer a critical water shortage.[4]
 |
| Greater Mexico City |
The metropolitan area of CDMX today consists of the
city proper, which is divided into 16 administrative divisions called
“alcaldias” or burroughs, 58 municipalities in the State of Mexico, in which
the city is embedded, and two municipalities in the State of Hidalgo[5]. The
population of the city proper numbers about 9 million while the population of
the other 60 municipalities numbers about 14 million for a total population in
the metropolitan area of around 23 million[6], making it one of the five or six most
populated cities in the world, and the most populated city in North
America.
|
Historical
population |
||
|
Year |
Pop. |
±% |
|
1950 |
3,365,081 |
— |
|
1960 |
5,479,184 |
+62.8% |
|
1970 |
8,830,947 |
+61.2% |
|
1980 |
13,027,620 |
+47.5% |
|
1990 |
15,642,318 |
+20.1% |
|
2000 |
18,457,027 |
+18.0% |
|
2010 |
20,136,681 |
+9.1% |
|
2019 |
21,671,908 |
+7.6% |
|
Table 1 Source: Wikipedia |
||
The
population has grown from around three million in 1950 to what it is today
(Table 1). This rapid growth has been fueled by a massive influx of inhabitants
from rural areas seeking employment. The rate of this immigration has levelled
off somewhat due to efforts by the city government to decentralize the
concentration of activities located in the city.
It is also a city where the social inequalities are stark. The
poorer areas of the city tend to be located in the northeast and the more
affluent areas in the west and south. According to Wikipedia, as of 2006, the world’s largest shanty town covers the area of the
municipalities of Nezahualcóyotl, Chalco and Ixtapaluca located on the lake beds
of Chalco and Texcoco, which even as late as the 1930’s was a lake that
supported fishing, with a combined population of
about 1.9 million. In this same area is the alcaldía of Iztapalapa, with a
population of 1.8 million. According to Wikipedia, these areas suffer from a lack
of access to clean drinking water and are afflicted with high rates of violent
crime and drug trafficking.
Each of the 16 alcaldias
is divided into “colonias” or neighborhoods. Some of the traditionally wealthy colonias
of the city are located to the west and the south and include Santa Fe, San
Angel, Coyoacan, Condesa, Bosque de Lomas, Roma Norte, Lomas de Chapultepec,
Pedregal, and Polanco. [7]
 |
| Santa Fe |
The
site of the project went from a natural recreational area popular with the elites
at the turn of the last century in the time of Porfirio Diaz, to a sand mine
where workers were housed, to a large landfill with heaps of garbage collected
from the city and where some of the locals eked out a living as “pepenedores”
or scavengers who collect and recycle salvageable materials, an occupation that
still contributes to the “informal economy” of the city. These and other locals had to be relocated through
financial operations which were sometimes fraudulent and many of the former
residents still live in impoverished conditions in the immediate environs. The
landfill and poor planning of the urban area are now causing problems for Santa
Fe, among which are poor traffic conditions, the pollution of the groundwater
and poor transport communications with the city and the surrounding areas even
though its isolation from the rest of the city has been described and even
promoted as a “world apart” and less favorably as a walled enclave for
comfortable and “cowardly” residents, which will never be integrated into the
city and is equivalent to “gated communities”, which are a denial of the city
as a place of collective life and the expression of an unequal society.[9]
 |
| Museo Soumaya New Polanco |
NEW POLANCO
New Polanco is another such recently developed area of CDMX dating
from the beginning of this century which transformed an industrial/working
class residential area into an exclusive new complex of high-rise office spaces
and luxury apartments. Among the developers of this area is Carlos Slim, the
richest man in Mexico, who funded Plaza Carzo, a complex of business and
apartment towers, a shopping center, a branch of Saks Fifth Avenue, a theater,
movie houses, two art museums, one of which, the Soumaya Museum, named after
Slim’s wife, is widely known for its avant-garde design and a valuable
collection of art. The Wall Street Journal described the museum with these
words in 2011:
Encased
in glimmering aluminum, the building rises up 150 feet, before it canopies like
an oversize mushroom thought up by Magritte. The facade is a honeycomb of shiny
silver hexagons. The structure is top-heavy, almost threatening to tip itself
over in this city of earthquakes…It will soon be a contemporary home to an
eclectic private collection of some 66,000 pieces: Da Vincis and
Toulouse-Lautrecs, Picassos and Dalís, Riveras and Renoirs, religious relics
and even a treasure of coins from the viceroys of Spain. A Rodin collection—the
second-largest in the world, the largest in private hands… boasting works like
"The Kiss." [It is] Mexico's biggest hope yet to create an art museum
worthy of international buzz. [10]
As with Santa Fe, New Polanco has been criticized as being
poorly planned and a clear example of “gentrification”, which Luis Alberto
Salinas Arreortua, of the Geography Institute of UNAM defines as:
…[An] urban
process by which poor and neglected neighborhoods are transformed by the
arrival of people with greater purchasing power causing the original residents
to be expelled. This phenomenon occurs in areas with especially attractive
features such as green areas, a nice location, good infrastructure and/or sites
of particular cultural or historical interest which make the area the target of
real estate investment dedicated to constructing housing, and office spaces for
upper middle-class clients.[11]
But there are many more colonias in the centrally located
alcadías of Cuauhtémoc, Miguel Hidalgo, Benito Juarez and Coyoacan which are in
the crosshairs of real estate developers and are in the process of being rapidly
transformed by the gentrification process. These colonias are being labeled as “areas
of tension” by the city government because they are sparking anger and resentment
among the “original” residents of these areas as was manifested in the “anti-gentrification”
demonstrations that took place in Mexico City this past July.
It is in these areas where urban development is being hotly
contested.
(To be continued)
NOTES:
[1]
The
Death of Tenochtitlán The Birth of Mexico City
Barbara Mundy University of Texas Press 2015 The full text reads:
In 1518, the Aztec capital of
Tenochtitlan was one of the world’s largest cities. Built on an island in the
middle of a shallow lake, its population numbered perhaps 150,000. It was the
hub of an urban network clustered around the lake whose total population was
perhaps half a million, as well as the cynosure of an indigenous empire that
held power over much of central Mexico. The collective size of these lakeshore
cities exceeded European contemporaries: in the early sixteenth century, Paris
had about 260,000 residents, Naples about 150,000, Seville and Rome, 55,000
each
[2] “Mexico City Is Sinking at an Alarming and
Largely Unstoppable Rate, New Data Finds” Science Alert 07 May 2021 By CARLY
CASSELLA https://www.sciencealert.com/mexico-city-is-sinking-at-an-alarming-and-largely-unstoppable-rate-according-to-data
Without a widespread system for reusing
wastewater or collecting rainwater, the city is struggling to meet demand.
Already, 1.1 million houses in the sprawling city lack access to safe water,
and most of the ground's fissuring and fracturing is occurring in areas of low
socioeconomic status.
[3] “The Valley of Mexico” Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_Mexico
[4] “2 Billion People Are at Risk of a "Day Zero"
Crisis—Here's How We Can Solve It” XPrize Mar 22 2024
https://safety.xprize.org/prizes/water/articles/water-scarcity-day-zero-crisis
[5] There is little difference administratively between the
alcadías and the municipalities besides the name.
[6] World Population Review Mexico City https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/mexico/mexico-city
[7] 9 Richest Neighborhoods in
Mexico City Alvin Goodley | April 26, 2023 |
https://rarest.org/houses/richest-neighborhoods-in-mexico-city
[8] “Santa Fe, México City” Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe,_Mexico_City
[9] Entrevista en Revista
Replicante No.7, “Ciudades Ideología y poder”, Abril 2006. Quoted in “Santa Fe
(México): Megaproyectos Para Una Ciudad Dividida” Alfonso Valenzuela
The complete quotation is as follows:
Santa Fe is an example of what not to do, at
least from the public sector, since it is also an enclave. It's what they call
“gated cities” in the United States, comparable to closed neighborhoods like
those found in Brazil, Colombia, or Chile, where a social group (or a socially
homogeneous group) encloses itself and walls itself within a city with which it
confronts, expressing both its dominance and its fear of the city. In other
words, "I can wall myself in here" as an expression of power, but
also as an expression of protection, given the fear that is the product of
enormous social inequality. Santa Fe is a pitiful spectacle; going out to the
west of the city and seeing that neighborhood closed in on itself, proud,
isolated, and, to a certain extent, aggressive with respect to its
surroundings. It's a neighborhood where you can't even see where you're
entering, and everything that can be found in terms of collective life is right
there, for those who live there, that is, for a certain sector that can afford
it; even to enter, you have to be connected to the people who live there. These
types of gated communities are a double expression: on the one hand, they are a
denial of the city as a place of exchange for equals (or at least formally
equals), of the city, therefore, as a place of collective life, but they are
also an expression of an unequal society, in which privileged groups manifest
this injustice precisely because they express it with their fear, because they
know they are complicit in a terribly unjust society.
[10] “The
Emperor's New Museum” The Wall Street Journal 03/03/2011 Nicholas Casey
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703300904576178381398949942?
[11] ¿Qué es la gentrificación y a quiénes afecta? Luis Alberto Salinas Arreortua Boletín
UNAM-DGCS-1080 agosto 2, 2024
https://unamglobal.unam.mx/global_revista/que-es-la-gentrificacion-y-a-quienes-afecta/#:~:text
.jpg)
