Community mobilization and ecological outcomes in peri-urban Mexico City, 1989-1992

Beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1970s, Mexico City developed swiftly, thus engendering rapid urbanization and a demographic boom. The majority of population growth occurred on peri-urban agricultural and ecological conservation lands and manifested as irregular settlements: illegal and structurally precarious urban developments without well-defined property rights. Today, almost a third of the metropolitan area's population-5.1 million people-continues to live in irregular settlements. Because irregular settlements are not legally recognized they do not receive urban services such as sewerage, and are forced to release their effluent haphazardly, often contaminating the groundwater that supplies 57% of the city's water. And this is where the problems begin. The continuous and illegal urbanization of peri-urban ecological conservation lands has bedeviled planners in Mexico City-in an atmosphere of opaque government, political clientelism, and unique ecological conditions in the Basin of Mexico, how can urbanization be controlled and how can environmental planning be implemented?This thesis examines the processes and conditions that enable environmental planning in rapidly urbanizing cities by studying the Project for the Ecological Rescue of Xochimilco (PREX), a government environmental remediation project in southern Mexico City in 1989 that was intended to halt widespread environmental degradation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• DuBroff, Nicholas (Nicholas Jarad)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Diane E. Davis.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49686

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/49686