This is part three of a series on capitalism, gentrification and the housing crisis.
 |
Gentrification
is not Progress, It’s Dispossession” Photo Foto: Moisés Pablo (Cuartoscuro) |
THE
TERMINOLOGY
The
trend in urban development that we have been describing in parts 01 and 02 of
this series has been dubbed “gentrification”, which is defined as “a process in which a poor area (as
of a city) experiences an influx of middle-class or wealthy people who renovate
and rebuild homes and businesses and which often results in an increase in
property values and the displacement of earlier, usually poorer residents”. The
term has had mostly negative connotations since it came into common use in the
60’s but seems to reflect contradictory world views: one in which it is a
normal kind of development and another which suggests that it is nearly criminal.
The phenomenon could just as well be and indeed has been variously described as
“progress”, “urban renewal”, “urban planning”, “densification”, “liberation”,
“housing shortage”, “housing crisis”, “displacement”, “dispossession”,
“colonization”, “social cleansing” or even “blanqueamiento” (“whitening” when
the victims of eviction are indigenous residents). The meaning of the
term we use to describe the phenomenon is determined by our relationship to the
phenomenon itself.
Nor
are the terms “housing crisis” or “housing shortage” adequate to describe the
phenomenon. As Madden & Marcuse (2016) argue,
The idea of a housing crisis is politically loaded…Discrete moments when
housing crises become acute tend to be interpreted away as exceptions to a
fundamentally sound system… [but] housing crisis is a predictable, consistent
outcome of a basic characteristic of capitalist spatial development: housing is
not produced and distributed for the purposes of dwelling for all; it is
produced and distributed as a commodity to enrich the few. Housing crisis
is not a result of the system breaking down but of the system working as it is
intended… homelessness exists not because the system is failing to work as it
should, but because the system is working as it must. [1]
For
the purposes of this investigation, we use “gentrification” to be
interchangeable with “displacement”, or depending on the context, with “housing
crisis” or “housing shortage”. We will argue that the slow and stealthy
transformation of Mexico City that is taking place almost imperceptibly before
our very eyes, but at an ever-quickening pace, is coming at a very high human
cost by displacing the original inhabitants of urban neighborhoods, thereby
destroying the cultural identity, character and sense of community that has
developed in these quarters over decades, generations or, as we shall see, in
some cases even centuries.
One
investigator sums up the situation in Mexico City in this way:
The urban peripheries have continued to grow while at the
same time, new exclusionary spaces are being built. These have included private
shopping centers, gated communities, and “megaprojects” such as luxury
apartment buildings. Urban displacement has also been a growing phenomenon,
with a growing number of poor inhabitants of the central areas of the city
being priced out and pushed towards the outer peripheries …The city’s building
boom has fostered mass real estate speculation across the city. Apartments are
increasingly sold for millions of pesos, a price unaffordable to most in a city
where the monthly income for the majority of the population is below 7,000
pesos (around 350 USD). Of particular note is a real estate boom in the central
boroughs of the city, especially the borough of Cuauhtémoc. [which] was cited
by an Oxfam study as a point of encounter where different social classes
inhabit the same spaces. Mexico City has become Latin America’s most expensive
city, based on relative cost of living. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2017
Worldwide Cost of Living Survey found Mexico City had the fastest rise in the
relative cost of living (up 23 percent) out of 133 cities surveyed. [2]
And
this is happening all over the city as real estate developers target certain
neighborhoods, mostly in the centrally located Cuauhtémoc borough, for
investment and development including not only the boroughs of Roma and Condesa
(two of the first boroughs in the city to be so transformed) but boroughs such
as Benito Juarez, Doctores, Obrera, Escandon, Guerrero, San Rafael, Tabacalera,
Santa María la Ribera, Tacubaya, and the list goes on. Some of these boroughs
are even being renamed to reflect their new upscale demographic. What makes
these areas attractive to investors is their location and proximity to work,
educational and recreational spaces, public services, transportation, the
presence of historic landmarks, and
even their green spaces such as parks and trees.
Furthermore,
this process of transformation in Mexico City often results in the violent
evictions of long-time residents from apartment buildings and houses whose
ownership is disputed or legally in doubt and which are sometimes carried out
illegally in the middle of the night by hired thugs with little or no advanced
warning or notice being given to the tenants of the building, robbing them of
any valuables they may have, and leaving the tenants and all their belongings
scattered helter-skelter in the street.
These evictions in the city follow a certain
fixed modus operandi on the part of what is called a “mafia” or a “real estate
cartel” which involves threats against tenants, corporate fraud, government
complicity and general corruption. Criminal elements find disputed, poorly
maintained properties in the city that have been abandoned, or whose ownership
is in question and whose tenants are often elderly, and then falsify deeds or
contracts which they validate in court. They sell the property to an unwitting
buyer and obtain court orders for eviction.
“Across the city”, says Bloomberg News, “roughly 2,000
evictions take place every year. Neighborhood displacement can be a violent
process. Since 2014, academics have seen an increase in violent evictions,
which can involve hundreds of “granaderos” (riot cops)—who arrive to evict
residents, often without an official eviction notice from the courts. [3]
 |
Massive eviction in the
historic center of the city on August 27, 2025 when several families were
violently evicted from a large old apartment building without warning early in
the morning |
As one of the victims of a violent eviction is quoted as saying, “No temenos donde ir.” “We have nowhere to go”.
In
short, we can say that there is nothing that better illustrates the
ever-widening inequality gap in Mexico City than the gentrification process by
which the future of the city is being shaped and determined by real estate
developers and the city government in such a way that favors a social sector
with greater purchasing power than the original residents thereby raising the
cost of living in the area and forcing original residents out. The city has
become a sort of visible expression for class struggle in Mexico under
capitalism.
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Mitikah Towers under construction Photo Alejandro Saldivar |
THE PHENOMENON
Shortly after the debacle of the Mortgage
Debt crisis of 2008, I looked out at the skyline of Reforma Avenue, the main
business corridor of Mexico City visible from the rooftop of my modest
three-story walk-up apartment building in Colonia Santa Maria la Ribera from
where I could see two high-rise office buildings that had long been under
construction and wondering if they would now ever be completed. How little did
I understand what was happening!
In the
years that have since passed, not only have those two high-rise buildings been
expeditiously completed, but more than a dozen others have sprouted up like
mushrooms after a rain along Reforma Avenue and around the city, and even more
“mega-projects” are being planned.
MITIKAH
vs XOCO
The Mitikah
Towers
The
latest of these high-rise mega-projects is a monstrous 65-story structure, a
“mixed-use” commercial center, (i.e. part-commercial and part-residential)
luxury tower called Mitikah, now the tallest skyscraper in Mexico City beating
out what had been the tallest, Torre Reforma at 57 stories, which was completed
in 2016. (Mitikah is not the tallest building in the country, however.
That distinction goes to El Obispado in Monterrey.) The Mitikah Tower, part of
a larger complex called “Mitikah Ciudad Viva”, was initiated in 2009 and
officially opened to the public thirteen years later in 2022 after construction
was halted for a year in 2015 because of financial problems , protests
and opposition from the inhabitants of the local neighborhood, and issues with
government building permits. The financial and bureaucratic problems were
solved when Fibra Uno, a real estate development
trust, stepped in and rescued the project.
According
to Wikipedia, Fibra
Uno, now the sole owner of the Mitikah Tower is, is one of the largest
real estate investment trusts (REIT)[4]
in Mexico, which acquires,
develops, and operates real estate projects. It was founded in 2010 and was the
first to be listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange. The real estate portfolio of
investments lists more than 600 properties including shopping centers,
industrial parks and corporate buildings. It has also been accused of
defrauding its stockholders and as of 2020 is under investigation by the city
government for possible money laundering and tax evasion.
The website
of Pelli Clarke & Partners, one of the participants in the Mitikah
Tower project, goes into raptures describing it as an architectural feat -- an
example of sheer technological prowess:
Torre Mítikah soars above the Mexico City skyline and
landscape, commanding views from every direction with its striking silhouette
and elegant façade, creating an iconic landmark for the city of 21 million
residents. Mítikah is the signature residential high-rise building of Ciudad
Viva in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City…a mixed-use commercial center
of the city, hub for world-class food and entertainment, Class-A office space,
and a state-of-the-art hospital. A cultural milestone in the greater metropolitan
region, beloved and admired by many, Torre Mitikah has elevated Mexico City in
its evolution into a leading world capital.
An Architectural Website does not describe the
project in quite such glowing terms referring to it as a project:
that encourages the segregation of the population and
promotes limited interaction among its residents [which] can lead to resentment
on both sides, potentially exacerbating existing conflicts, especially if it
intensifies problems related to access to water and quality public spaces.
Inside will be the largest shopping mall in Latin
America, with over 120,000 square meters of leasable area spread across five
levels, representing an investment of 22 billion Mexican pesos, approximately
1.1 billion euros [1.15 billion USD].
The complex is not just a shopping mall; it also includes
office towers, the tallest tower at 267 meters high, dedicated to more than 600
apartments, a tower housing medical offices, a private hospital, and a hotel.
Furthermore, the residential building…will feature an event hall, movie
theater, swimming pool, spa, gym, and a variety of other amenities.
In numerous YouTube videos about the Mitikah/Ciudad Viva
complex on the Mitikah website and here, here, here and in Proceso magazine
designers and promoters of the project boast that the Mitikah complex:
·
will change the
whole area of the city where it is located
·
is especially
designed to resist earthquakes
·
is a
self-contained city making it unnecessary for residents to ever leave
·
will serve as a
model for the future development of the entire city
·
incorporates the
latest advances in technology and is a watershed in the history of the city’s
development.
Two
more large buildings (but not as tall as Mitikah) are planned for the Ciudad
Viva complex, but their construction has been halted, at least temporarily, first
by Claudia Sheinbaum during her term as city mayor and now by her successor,
Clara Brugada, for violating ecological guidelines for construction.
As Proceso says,
the Mitikah Tower is emblematic of how the government has been giving free rein
to private real estate developers to determine the future of the city without
regard to the will or needs of the people who reside in it:
[The Mitikah tower is emblematic] not for being a real
estate development per se, but for the way Mexican authorities have facilitated
huge projects with government instruments at the service of the developers… The
[government] authorities and the developers decided to insert the tallest tower
in the city in a small barrio as part of its plan without taking into account
the residents of the area or the severe impacts on its environment. [5]
Again,
according to Proceso, the abdication of urban planning by the city
government to private real estate developers has been going on since at least
the year 2000 when Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, then the PRD mayor of the city,
quietly passed decrees without consulting the city legislature, supposedly
facilitating the construction of “social housing”, but which in reality gave
private contractors more freedom over what and where to build within the city.
According to one government insider, this initiated a virtual boom in real
estate speculation in the city. This policy continued through the successive
city administrations of Marcel Ebrard, Miguel Ángel Mancera and Claudia
Sheinbaum, a specialist in sustainable development. Sheinbaum, though opposed to the construction of the
Torre Mitikah, found herself compromised because it was too late to stop
construction, and because members of her own political party, Morena, had been
involved in giving it the green light.
As Proceso says:
Since [the decrees of Lopez Orador], the city government
has been at the service of urban developers. Aside from the problems of
financing, there have been no obstacles that haven’t been resolved in their
favor…The Mitikah complex is the clearest example of how real estate developers
have been favored by [government] decisions through opaque mechanisms that have
resulted in constructions that are “red flags” for the capital because of their
impact on the urban environment. [6]
Xoco
The
local residents of Xoco (pronounced Hoko in the dialect of the local residents)
were never consulted or even informed of the plan for the megaproject
negotiated between the government and the developers and as Proceso describes
it, they only realized what was happening in 2009 when heavy equipment began
circulating in their narrow streets. As one commentator says, nobody informed
them of what would be the beginning of the biggest building project in Latin
America until it was already under way. For the residents of Xoco it was also
the beginning of a years-long battle involving
law suits, protests and passive resistance for which they were little prepared.
Xoco
is one of the oldest and most traditional residential areas of the city, in the
Benito Juarez borough, which has been continuously inhabited for centuries
dating from before the rise of the Aztec Empire in the Valley of Mexico and is
included in a list of 141 areas in the city which have been denominated “Pueblos Originarios” of the city, a dispensation which guarantees
them certain rights and privileges. The Mexico Desconocido website states that according to COPRED, the
governmental department designed to prevent discrimination, “Pueblos Originarios
are defined as those groups that existed before colonization and have inhabited
the area continuously since then, preserving their own socio-cultural
structures, habits and customs. In the case of Mexico City these groups exist
and developed autonomously in respect to the central urban area. Nevertheless,
with the demographic explosion and growth of the city these groups have ended
up by being absorbed.” [7]
Like
many of the small “barrios” or neighborhoods that compose Mexico City, Xoco has
its own particular character and identity and even the atmosphere of a small
rural Mexican village. One local YouTube reporter and other anecdotes [8] depict
the colorful character of the neighborhood which includes a resident who breeds
roosters for cock fights thereby exercising the patience even of his neighbors in the barrio when they crow in the
morning; a colonial church dating from the 17th century
dedicated to San Sebastian, the barrios’ patron saint; annual celebrations of
San Sebastian Saint’s Day on January 20 complete with the traditional
fireworks, rockets and noisy processions in the street which characterize
Mexican celebrations and manage to annoy Xoco’s neighbors in the Ciudad Viva
complex and the surrounding areas.
 |
| The Church of San Sebastian with Mitikah Tower in the background Photo by the author |
There
have been conflicts between the new residents of the neighborhood and the old
in which the inhabitants of the towers have not only complained, but have
harassed, confronted and even attacked these celebrations by throwing stones,
bottles and glass on them from the towers above. There have even been physical confrontations
in which the residents of Xoco have blocked the entrances to the complex in
protest.
 |
Demonstration by residents of Xoco against Torre Mitikah complex Photo Benjamín Flores Proceso
The
complaint of the local residents of the barrio, on the other hand, has been not
only that construction of the Mitikah Tower has destroyed the character and
sense of community in their neighborhood, but that it has tripled its
population density, that it has caused serious problems with traffic as the
subterranean parking levels are built to accommodate 13 thousand automobiles,
that the main street of the community has been privatized and appropriated as
an auto entrance into the parking structure, which, in turn, has
complicated pedestrian traffic in the area and resulted in the illegal
felling of dozens of trees, that the new structure has interfered with
Xoco’s access to electricity and water, the latter which is monopolized by the
tower, that it adds to an increase in sewage disposal in the area, that the
towers either block the sun entirely or its smart windows reflect the sunlight
into the barrio, which becomes unbearably hot, and worst of all, that it has increased the cost of
living and property taxes in the barrio to levels that the residents cannot
afford.
Jorge
Pigeon, vice president of a capital markets investment firm, argues that while
property taxes have risen, the nearby properties have actually benefitted from
the construction of the Mitikah Tower complex because the value of their own
property has risen. That, of course, is precisely the problem if you think of
it in human terms instead of profits. The residents don’t want to sell their
properties. They want to live in them. What is happening with the construction
of such mega-projects as Mitikah Tower is that the public nature of the urban
space is being privatized and the original residents are now faced with three
possible choices: to leave, to stay and adapt, or to stay and resist. Many have
chosen to stay and resist.
The
huge, outsize dehumanizing scale of Mitikah Tower which looks down in contempt
on the residential district below like an alien enclave from another planet can
almost be considered a symbol of how the city government is at the service of
powerful real estate developers in search of profits rather than of the
residents of the city who consider the neighborhood of Xoco their ancestral
home.
As the president of the Xoco neighborhood
Citizen’s committee contesting the Mitikah project says:
They didn’t notify us. That is one of our greatest
complaints. Never did they inform us of anything in spite of legal norms that
mandate [consulting] the opinion of the residents. Everything was done between
the government and the developers. [9]
The
Violence of the Vertical
As Alejandro Porcel Arraut argues, Mitikah
represents a kind of gentrification that
is distinct from that which takes the form of “exclusive, affluent gated communities on
the city's outskirts—aimed at privileged classes seeking areas removed from the
anxieties of urban life”, or those older historical boroughs in the inner city
which have become fashionable and occupied by affluent outsiders seeking
“authenticity”, or those isolated urban islands like shopping centers or
exclusive condominiums scattered throughout the city accessible only by
automobile.
[The Mitikah complex] tries to be a city unto itself, as
the name of the project suggests, Ciudad Progresiva (the former name for Ciudad
Viva)….This constitutes the basic contradiction that arises between the
neighbors in Xoco, between physical proximity and the enormous socio-cultural
distance that separates them. This creates a place of passive hostility and
conflicting visions of the city, which like other great social, urban centers,
has lost its socializing function. [10]
Giant
high-rise megaprojects such as Mitikah represent what Porcel Arraut calls the “violence
of the vertical”:
[G]iant real estate developments vulgar and arrogantly
tall, inserted into dense, central spaces of the city
amid older residential areas next to single-family homes, extremely
exclusionary, surveilled and completely directed to life within [a space] ‘you
will never have to leave’ because all of the amenities you need are inside.
[The] vertical city is a product for those
seeking a central location … without …encountering neighborhood life, with its
challenges, and unsavory low-life. Verticality [insures] a different kind of
distinction. … with walls, fences, surveillance cameras, security guards, and
identification systems: an exclusionary architectural design... The populations
that inhabit them are generally unaware of the businesses next door, do not
walk the streets of the neighborhood, and constantly look toward the main
avenues, which they use to reach other enclosed spaces within the island city.
[Its] verticality [exresses] …an overwhelming
power sustained by money, real estate speculation and economic rationality. The
developers of the vertical city are not interested in adapting to the locality
or in modifying their projects by reason of their environmental and urban
impact. [[11]]
CONCLUSION
But
despite it particular characteristics of gentrification as manifested by Mitika
Tower we can also see it as the general tendency towards the privatization of
public space which also demonstrates what is happening to democracy under
capitalism, in which large corporations are dictating how we live rather than
vice versa. What we see is that the concept of progress implies the imposition
of a model of development which is completely alien to the resident communities
requiring that entire populations in these communities who have inhabited these
urban spaces for decades if not centuries be displaced and dispossessed from
what has become their home.
Lastly,
in the case of Mexico, we see that the city is unusual in the respect that it
is really the product of the “clash of two civilizations”, the European and the
indigenous Americans, and that what has evolved over a period of centuries is a
sort of syncretism in which traces of pre-Columbian peoples and culture have
not only survived but shaped the character of the modern capital of Mexico and
that these peoples and cultures will continue to struggle for their rightful
claim to form part of the urban space.
As
Barbara E. Mundy (2015) says:
…While the Conquest changed an indigenous New World
capital, and it was remade into the hub of the global empire of the Habsburg
kings in the sixteenth century, it did not destroy indigenous Tenochtitlan,
either as an ideal, as a built environment, or as an indigenous population
center. Instead, indigenous Tenochtitlan lived on. Looking beyond the
triumphant accounts of Cortés and the despairing accounts of Las Casas to other
representations of the city, and focusing on ones created by and about its
indigenous occupants, will reveal the endurance of the indigenous city once
known as Tenochtitlan within the space of Mexico City. [12]
In the
next instalment of this series we will look at some of the other possible
immediate causes of gentrification as it is evolving in Mexico City.
NOTES
[1] In Defense Of Housing The Politics of Crisis by
David Madden Peter Marcuse VERSO London. « New York First published by
Verso 2016
[2] Anti Gentrification Activism in Mexico City’s Digital Public Space
(2016) Paula Martín Jason Pagan Tamara Velasquez The New School International
Affairs
https://mxc.com.mx/2025/09/08/estas-son-las-colonias-mas-gentrificadas-de-cdmx-por-airbnb/
[3] The Restaurant at the Center of a Gentrification War: Rising
housing costs have triggered a wave of displacement in Mexico City’s Centro
Histórico. But residents are finding creative ways to resist. By Martha
Pskowski Bloomberg June 4, 2019
[4] According
to Investopedia REITs allow investors to
own shares in income-producing real estate without managing the properties
themselves leading to steady income streams for investors. REITs are mostly
traded publicly like stocks, providing liquidity and accessibility not commonly
found in direct real estate investments.
[5] Un “Foco
Rojo” Para La Ciudad Jorge Carrasco Araizaga Y Juan Carlos Cruz Vargas Proceso
Agosto 2019
[6] Mitikah, un gigante que impone su
ley en la Ciudad de México Proceso no. 2234 August 25, 2019
[7] Pueblos originarios de
la Ciudad de México, cuáles son y dónde están (mapa y listado)
https://www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx/pueblos-originarios-de-la-ciudad-de-mexico-cuales-son-y-donde-estan-mapa-y-listado.html
[8] La
crónica como antídoto / No. 203 Las batallas en Xoco Juan Paulo Pérez Tejada
[9] Mitikah, un gigante que impone su ley en la Ciudad de
México Proceso no. 2234 August 25, 2019
[10] Desarrollo inmobiliario en Xoco: relato
de ciudades enfrentadas Alejandro Porcel Arraut Nexos, octubre 16, 2018
[11] Ibid
[12] Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, The Life of Mexico
City Barbara E. Mundy (2015) by University of Texas Press p. 3
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