Mexico City has massively been expanding its urban fabric and population density, becoming the fifth largest city in the world. A combination of neoliberal policies, complex geographic location, socio-economic disparities and inefficient strategies have influenced the process of gentrification in the city. The combination of numerous megaprojects, inefficient city-planning strategies, and remote work after the COVID-19 pandemic have led to dysfunctions in circulation, community allocation and equal access to resources. In consequence, middle and low-income communities have been directly or indirectly alienated and challenged to adapt to a complex and evolving urban environment, and the culture erasure that comes with the process of gentrification.
History of Mexico City's development
The history of Mexico City starts with Tenochtitlan, a Mexica settlement built around 1325 A.D in the Valley of Mexico. Developed as a series of artificial islands on a lake, the village was connected by a system of channels, surrounding the Chapultepec aqueduct that served as the main resource of fresh water and therefore as the foundation for the evolution of the settlement. The Mexica Empire quickly grew after gaining control over surrounding land reaching a size of around 15 km2 and a population of around a million inhabitants. These people lived in low houses made of adobe, commonly attached to chinampas for cultivation. The dwellings were shared among families and grouped around a courtyard creating a diversity of neighborhoods that surrounded the central public buildings around the Templo Mayor. The main areas defined by the empire (Tepeyac, Tlacopan, Coyoacán, Iztapalapa and Texcoco) continue to be part of the modern city. The social divisions according to family status, wealth, occupation, age and gender were also already culturally predominant and influential to the architecture and urban planning of the time. For example, elites (or European settlers) often lived in large dwellings called haciendas while the rest of the indigenous communities would survive in small lots built informally.
The development of Mexico City as the urban environment that we recognize today, started to take shape with the arrival of the Cortes, the Spanish conqueror, to Tenochtitlan in 1519. When the Aztec Empire led by Moctezuma was overthrown, the Spaniards took control over the planning and organization of the city. The division of blocks in a grid, around a central plaza approached through four main streets created a practical layout that helped the Spaniards retain control, administer the division of lots, and maintain a unity of consolidated power. The placement of authority buildings, religious institutions and economic and social spaces, emphasized the plaza as the physical, cultural and commercial starting point of the city. The standardization of architecture and the creation of an urban fabric through a network of diverse settlements also speaks to the sense of permanence and expansion that the conquerors aspired. The construction of new sites was incentivized by giving the Spanish first settlers a status of urban elite and political power that would be carried throughout generations. The Ordinances of the Indies by Philip II, laid the ground for the founding of towns in the New World, following a set of strict rules of spatial arrangements and hierarchies, inspired by the Roman classical planning ideas. In this system of acquired wealth, other modes of exploitation came along such as forced labor, expropriation of land, control over mineral resources, imposition of high prices for goods and taxes, as well as more complex systems like the encomienda and latifundia, often related to the implementation of Christianity.
As the Spanish institutions generated wealth for the Spanish crown, the Mexican population experienced an extreme inequality, unable to benefit from its economic potential. From the Independence in 1821 to the Mexican Revolution in 1910, disparities among social groups persist and political instability is fostered through multiple dictatorships, corruption and rotations of power. Monopolies run by elites are supported by the government, while the majority of the population is left with inefficient public services with no access to education or economic incentives and little to no agency over how the country is run. The Industrial Revolution empowers the nation with economic growth based on the exportation of goods and external investments, yet the distribution of wealth remains centralized. This affects how the city is physically developing around a core, cultivating density of population, as well as a massive urban expansion that reflects its sudden economic and cultural global presence.
Urban development
Mexico City has been an iconic example of an extensive metropolitan area since the 14th century, when it became the largest city in the American continent. Its continuous population growth and concentration of economic and political power boomed in the 1930s when the country's involvement with global markets benefited the national financial industry. Currently the fifth largest city in the world, with a population of 21 million inhabitants (17.47% of national population) living in 16 districts and 59 municipalities, the urban area continues to expand receiving 1,100 new residents daily. The division of the city is derived from a strong socially and economically segregated population connected by its interdependence, that manifests into spatial arrangements where luxury areas coexist alongside slums. Its development around a core called "El Zocalo" derives from the historic, cultural and political relevance of a central plaza, as well as its contemporary concentration of economic power, currently housing 80% of all national firms.
In recent years, there has been a large uptick in new development in Mexico City, funded by state and private investments. These urban developments have been catered to elite communities mainly because this group economically supports the country (38% of the total national income is produced by the top 10%) and because the government, predominantly led by PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), has maintained a profit-oriented policy perspective. Thus, these developments have not only led to an increase of population, traffic and pollution due to inefficient urban planning, but have also pushed great amounts of low-income families to the edges of the city and have challenged the safety of the 11.5 million people that economically depend on the underground sector. This issue adds to the already critical condition of 40% of the population living in informal settlements, often without access to sewage network and clean water. The geology of the city, located in a mountain valley, further contributes to unhealthy living conditions, concentrating high levels of air pollution.
The reality currently faced by the city is that of a historic rapid urban growth that has been unable to be adequately controlled and planned for, because of a corrupted and economically driven government, as well as a complex society that is strongly segregated. The negative effects of gentrification in Mexico City have been overlooked by the authorities, regarded as an inevitable process and argued to be in some cases nonexistent. In recent years, however, an array of proposals have been developed as a way to continue the gentrification of the city in a way that integrates and respects the rights of all citizens.
Causes
Neo-liberal policies and renovations
The displacement of people in Mexico City started in the 70s and 80s in the form of symbolic and exclusionary gentrification causing direct (pre-conditioned) and indirect (consequence) displacement. Neoliberal policies adopted in the 1980s, favored private investments to redevelop the city's infrastructure, in order to attract new users, residents and tourists, as well as new global capital motivating multiple drastic urban renovations. The vision was to embrace a market competitiveness that would make the city economically attractive for both local and foreign investments. The urban projects that derived from these conditions, however, significantly increased the prices of land, rents, services and taxes, intensified and transformed the uses of land and only benefited the government, developers and a minimum elite population. Lower-income populations were highly affected by the expensiveness of these areas and some were even evicted or relocated as part of a masterplan for a "cleaner" urban environment. The concept of an ideal urbanity was further emphasized by the prohibition of informal commerce in 1993. In some cases, the Popular Commerce Program achieved the relocation of street vendors into indoor commercial plazas, minimizing the impact of labor gentrification. Either way there are arguments against the informal commerce relocation or invisibility like the criminalization of poverty and the exclusion of local popular activities.
Clear examples of new urban areas run by private investments are Santa Fe, Interlomas and Polanco, all three undergoing massive transformations in the last twenty years, becoming popular areas for rich residentials, offices and commercial centers. Megaprojects like the Mitikah Progressive City in Benito Juarez have affected the culture of original communities and displaced thousands of people as the property taxes increased by 500% and cost of services tripled. Other traditional "barrios" that have been affected by the rehabilitation of once obsolete infrastructures are Colonia Condesa and Roma, which have had a great increment of population, shift of demographics, and increase of public activities that contribute to noise, traffic and violence. Many of these developments are also linked to levels of corruption where illegal occupation and selling of land occurs, as well as the exploitation of public land by the government without declaring taxes.
The most symbolic and important urban transformation of the city is the Historical Center renovation. After a group of elite communities, in the 50s and 60s, moved to the edges of the city were cheap industrial land could be transformed to luxurious residentials, the center became populated by lower-income families and filled with high levels of informal and formal commerce, causing the rapid deterioration of the zone in terms of public infrastructure and safety. The 1985 earthquake destroyed thousands of structures, causing the displacement of multiple families away from the center of the city, leaving the door open for redevelopment. Many of the buildings in this area were populated with banks, offices and commerce in the lower floors but severely underused on upper levels. With the neoliberal policies, the biggest Mexican entrepreneur Carlos Slim through his financial group Carso, radically transformed the morphology of the city by investing over 5 million dollars in renovating around 100 historic baroque buildings, as well as constructing new vertical structures to be occupied as housing units, offices, plazas and museums. Other urban facilities such as biking circuits, pedestrian corridors, entertainment activities, safety programs and technological infrastructure were implemented. The value of the zone tripled in 10 years, with prices of buildings going from 100 dollars per sf to 2, 176 in six years (2000–2006). Now the center is visited by more than one million people daily, regaining its symbolical, cultural and social value as the core of a nation. Yet again, El Zocalo has become a zone only feasible to live and work for a small percentage of the population, especially with the creation of Norm 26 that allowed the elevation of prices in the center to increase competition for urban land.
Housing regulation