Territorial massing and centralization in Mexico. The ever increasing difficulties of city and regional planning in Mexico

Abstract

The twin processes of territorial massing and political centralization have led, the paper maintains, to an accumulation of regional and city problems that little can be done to disentangle. The mushrooming of the capital has not only led to the growth of what will be the world's largest city by the end of this century but has been mirrored with all its consequential intractabilities in many other city groupings of a more recent founding, albeit on a lesser scale. Present day economic, political and ideological structures, trapped as they are within an international crisis, condemn inexorably vast social groupings to appear, burgeon and necessarily lack the most elemental promises of this life. Oddl y enough, these same spoil heaps of others misery have brought about a not inconsequential boom for home and, of late, transnational capital accumulations. The paper endevours to explain just how the regional and city problems of Mexico in their particularity make any system of overall planning all but impossible.