In Mexico City, the lack of a regional plan to order economic and social activities has impacted the built environment and spatial geography, allowing for class segregation to prevail across the ZMVM[1] Mexico City region. Population centers, where people live and leisure, are distant from employment centers across the ZMVM, with vast regions of the city functioning only as dormitories for the workforce. Thus, millions must commute for hours every day with insufficient public transit options.[2][3] Even the higher income households (15% of the population[4]) that own a car face daily gridlock in the traffic ridden streets and avenues of the city.
In 2002, to “help solve the congestion problem”, the Segundo Piso project[5] was presented to the public. This project called for building an elevated freeway on top of an existing one in the West of the ZMVM; because of its budget (around half a million USD) and its longitude (25 km)[6] it was the biggest infrastructure investment in Mexico City since 1978. It was also the first project in the history of the city to be voted on via a public referendum.[7]
The planning and cost of the project were warped in secrecy, but nevertheless, the Segundo Piso was approved with 66% of the vote. However, the participation rate was extremely low at only 7% of eligible voters.[8] Analyzing how particular districts voted revealed certain trends. The nay votes were concentrated in high income, highly educated sectors of the population and the regions closest to the project’s construction. The votes for the project were especially prevalent in districts far away from the construction zone, and with voters of lower income and education level, mainly partisans of the Mayor.[9]
More than 15 years later, the impacts of the Segundo Piso have not been positive. The total number of cars increased to the extent that Mexico City has the worst traffic gridlock in the world[10] and the Segundo Piso faces frequent congestion. Throughout 2017, the ZMVM has had no “clean air” days.[11]
These negative outcomes can’t be attributed only to the Segundo Piso, but projects like it (and its subsequent expansions) promote automobile usage, pollution, and incentivize further sprawl. And, this is according to the same government agency that designed the project.[12]
Who planned a project with so many paradoxical outcomes? Were those outcomes the ones that the planner foresaw? Who are the winners when a project like this comes to fruition?
In his book Urban Elites and Mass Transportation: The Dialectics of Power, J. Allen Whitt uses three different power models to explain how transportation projected are designed and implemented: the elitist, the pluralist, and the class-dialectical model. He states that the class-dialectical model is the most useful for understanding the evolution of urbanization and transportation means in the United States.
Class-Dialectical (Marxist approach) Model: In this model, transportation projects and policies would be the result of contradictory efforts to promote capital investment in cities, while appeasing the poor and minorities. Both are done for the sake of extending the dominance of the capitalist class – the class which owns the means of production. If this model is applicable, the study of transportation projects should reveal institutional biases in favor of the capitalists, a high involvement of the elites, and an outcome that reflects the clash with the working classes, even if the result mostly favors the capitalists’ interests.
The class-dialectical model is the most helpful in explaining the boom of the automotive industry in the United States and the evolution of urban planning as a response to this industry. Oil companies’ interest in accumulating wealth inspired lobbying activities which applied pressure on politicians to introduce public policies, programs, and projects that privileged the automobile. Automobile-centric policies resulted in an overhaul of our geography. It allowed and mandated the development of entirely new communities, which in turn would need more government-sponsored services and goods to be delivered.[13] The automobilization of life allowed for a clearer segregation of the social classes and a decentralization of cities (suburbanization) that has benefited oil and automobile industries. Lastly, these industries became the economic backbone of many communities and countries, both developed and not, creating a vicious cycle of economic dependence between oil and auto industries, mobile capital and goods, and a commuting population. Because public policies reflect the interests of the dominant class, transportation planning has remained almost incidental to the cities’ existence when not in tune to the capitalists’ needs.[14]
It’s interesting to study transportation infrastructure projects through the class-dialectical model in places such as Mexico – a developing country with megacities of millions of people and faulty transportation infrastructure. However, the class-dialectical model is not a good approximation for studying the Segundo Piso project, because the capitalist elites (the Marxist dominant class) seem to be reactive to the process and not leading it.
Unlike the United States, the real dominant class in Mexico City, at least during 2002-2006 period, are politicians in local government. The local government led the planning process, implemented a non-mandatory referendum, and saw its project win with the support of lower income districts inhabited by supporters of the Mayor.[15] At the time, the Mayor saw his image rise in the national media, which aided his political aspirations in contending for the Presidency in 2006 (an effort that was repeated on 2012, and will happen again in 2018, while he is now at the head of his own new political party). The major benefits of the Segundo Piso went to the politicians, and not the high or low-income population, capitalists or working class.
The dominant class in the ZMVM at the time was not strictly formed by the capitalists or the owners of production. Instead, Mexico City politicians are the elites that determine what the projects will be depending on the outcomes beneficial to them, relying on citizens who support them, possibly in exchange of public services, goods, patronage. The class-dialectical model doesn’t adequately explain the development of Mexico City, as corruption and interests of the local politicians are what leads the planning process, rending its capitalism too “immature” to study with these models.
Political and governmental elites must be studied as a distinct entity, one that is apart from the capitalist class, when analyzing major transportation projects. There is a need to develop and refine methodologies intended to analyze transportation projects in developing countries, which are rapidly urbanizing, and where the majority of world’s population will be born in the next 50 years.
Bibliography
Bahrampour, T. (2017, 05 25). Cities growing more slowly than suburbs for the first time in six years. The Washington Post.
FIMEVIC. (2002). Diagnóstico de la movilidad de las personas en la Ciudad de México. Retrieved from http://www.fimevic.df.gob.mx/problemas/1diagnostico.htm
Google Maps. (2017).
Iles, R. (2005). Public Transport in Developing Countries. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.
INEGI. (2017). Información por Entidad: Ciudad de México. Retrieved from Cuéntame INEGI: http://cuentame.inegi.org.mx/monografias/informacion/df/default.aspx?tema=me&e=09
ITDP. (2012). La importancia de reducción del uso del automóvil en México. Mexico City: ITDP.
Lopez, J. (2016, November 16). Se disparó el parque vehicular; 350% más autmóviles. Excelsior.
Medina Ramirez, S. (2015, April 07). El alarmante crecimiento de autos. Nexos.
moovit. (2016). Global Cities Public Transit Report: Latin America. moovit.
OECD. (2015). Territorial Reviews: Valle de México, México. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Pradilla Cobos, E. (2005). Zona metropolitana del Valle de México: Megaciudad sin proyecto. Ciudades: Revista del Instituto Universitario de Urbanística de la Universidad de Valladolid, pp. 83-104.
Ramirez, B. T. (2006, May 15). Pese a descalificaciones y malos augurios, ¡cumplimos!: el GDF. La Jornada.
SEDUVI. (2013). Programa General de Desarrollo Urbano del Distrito Federal 2013-2018. Mexico City.
Sosa, I. (2017, May 25). 2017: sin aire limpio en Valle de México. Reforma.
Vilalta Perdomo, C. J. (2007). El voto de oposición al segundo piso del Periférico Una contribución empírica sobre su geografía y posibles mecanismos causales. Gestión y Política Pública, pp. 381-420.
Whitt, J. A. (1982). Urban Elites and Mass Transportation: The Dialectics of Power. Princeton University Press.
Zamarron, H. (2017, February 21). http://www.milenio.com/df/trafico_vehicular-cdmx-congestionamiento_vial-tomtom-milenio_noticias_0_907109461.html. Milenio.
[1] The Zona Metropolitana del Valle de México (ZMVM) encompasses 76 districts from three different Federal entities in central Mexico (Mexico City, Mexico State, and Hidalgo State). The ZMVM comprehends a vast region where more than 20 million people coexist, concentrating approximately 16% of the population in the country and 23% of Mexico’s GDP.
[2] The 83% of the inhabitants of Mexico City use the subway, which can make for a daily commute of three hours. Pradilla Cobos, 2005. pp.97
[3] On average, Mexico City inhabitants commute 10 km, for an 88 minute total daily commute. Moovit, 2016.
[4] ITDP, 2012. pp.13-14.
[5] The Second Level Peripheric Highway (colloquially known as the Segundo Piso).
[6] Vilalta Perdomo, 2007. p. 388
[7] A referéndum that was not needed or legally binding. The referendum was promoted by the Mayor, who had the majority in the local congress. Vilalta Perdomo, 2007. p. 384
[8] Vilalta Perdomo, 2007. p. 391
[9] Vilalta Perdomo, 2007. p. 392
[10] Zamarron, 2017.
[11] Sosa, 2017.
[12] FIMEVIC, 2002.
[13] Whitt (1982) p.181.
[14] “Instead of comprehensive, long-term, publicly determined goals for city and regional development (with plans for transportation projects that complement and facilitate urban development) we have cities that grow haphazardly and transportation projects that provide inadequate service for many residents of the metropolitan area…” Whitt (1982) p.186.
[15] Vilalta Perdomo, 2007. p. 411
I discovered your blog site on google and verify just a few of your early posts. Continue to maintain up the very good operate. I simply further up your RSS feed to my MSN News Reader. In search of ahead to studying more from you later on!