Governing the metropolis : the evolution of cooperative metropolitan governance in Mexico City's public transportation

What enables cooperation at the metropolitan scale? This thesis explores public transportation planning in the Mexico City metropolitan area (MCMA) for empirical evidence to better understand what institutional, financial, and political conditions encourage and deter cooperative metropolitan governance. The MCMA, made up of several state-level jurisdictions, predominantly the Federal District (DF) and the State of Mexico (Edomex), continues to expand rapidly, surpassing their jurisdictional capacities and putting pressure on infrastructure like public transit, which carries almost two-thirds of daily traffic. Unhindered and even instigated by transportation and land use decisions, growth has spilled over from the historic downtown area, concentrated in the northern half of the DF, into Edomex, complicating the development, implementation, and enforcement of policies across the two jurisdictions. Using three cases of recent metropolitan-scale transit projects - Linea B, the Tren Suburbano, and Méxibus Linea 4 - as a lens, this thesis investigates how institutions and actors approach the jurisdictional and functional divides between the states, and how they have done so in the past. By examining the interactions of the various actors and institutions around the planning and implementation of each case, this thesis argues that the broadening of the transportation policy network reflects a more effective approach to metropolitan governance, auguring a future in which cooperation and competition in fact coexist at this scale not only within the realm of public transportation but also as part of overall urban dynamics.

Department dc:contributor.department

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

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Cenizal, Callida

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gabriella Y. Carolini.

• 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/1721.1/98927

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/98927