Howard Cline once stated that research on Mexico City had been neglected in contrast to village studies. While this problem has been redressed to some extent in recent years, the comment still carries much validity. One of the three largest metropolitan areas in Latin America, Mexico City has lacked a broad analysis along the lines of the Scobie and Sargent studies of Buenos Aires or the Morse and Dean studies of São Paulo. Furthermore, as the authors note, Mexico City is distinctive as it is the only one of the three major cities that is a direct descendant of a pre-Columbian capital city, and thus has a much more varied historical and cultural past, and it is the only one located far from the coastal areas in a more central location.
While La ciudad de México is a welcome addition, it focuses on Mexico City in the early 1970s and does not provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of the historical and spatial evolution of the city so valuable in the previously mentioned studies. The first section of the book touches briefly on the historical location factors and aspects of urban growth over time, but the major thrust of the book is to outline current structures and problems rather than to reveal the processes that have evolved those structures. The second section examines population growth through both natural increase and in-migration, while section three briefly considers a range of urban activities. The fourth section on real estate and land use looks at population growth and concentration in the urban core, social class residential patterns, and horizontal extensions of the city. The last two sections analyze the functioning of the urban facilities and the effect of Mexico City on the surrounding economic and natural hinterlands. The book is richer for the inclusion of maps, even if they are often printed on only half the page.
Clearly the book has strengths and should be quite useful in the classroom because of its size, price, and contemporary nature. This latter point can be appreciated more when we consider that Mexico City has grown twenty times in size since 1900. Overall, while awaiting a definitive study on one of the world’s great cities, this small paperback serves as a useful addition to the literature on urban Latin America.
