Abstract: Fast-track Redevelopment and Slow-track Regularization: The Uneven Geographies of Spatial Regulation in Mexico City

 

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Fast-track Redevelopment and Slow-track Regularization: The Uneven Geographies of Spatial Regulation in Mexico City

 

by  Jill Wigle

Some of the increasingly evident contradictions between spatial planning and social policy in Mexico City are apparent in the way land use regulation folds into and articulates with exclusion and marginality. In downtown areas, regulatory approvals and various planning measures have facilitated the escalation of land and housing prices and more exclusionary forms of urban development. At the periphery, land use regulation now conditions access to urban services, property titles, and even some social programs for settlement areas designated as “informal.” Comparing the state’s role in planning at these distinct sites uncovers a pattern of selective and uneven spatial regulation in different socioeconomic territories of the city, characterized by “fast-track” development approvals in downtown areas and “slow-track” regularization of settlements in peripheral areas. The analysis suggests how this pattern of uneven spatial regulation contributes to (re)producing urban space in ways that call into question the local government’s stated support for the “right to the city.”

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Abstract, The Uses of Informality: Urban Development and Social Distinction in Mexico City

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The Uses of Informality: Urban Development and Social Distinction in Mexico City
by Frank Müller and Ramiro Segura                                   


“Urban informality” is a signifier that is disputed by real estate developers, politicians, and residents in undertaking strategies of social distinction and gaining particular political and economic benefits. Research in the western periphery of Mexico City distinguishes three cases of such use of informality. First, real estate developers employ informality as a threat to valorize and justify an enclosed “First World” lifestyle in gated communities. Second, informality motivates homeowners’ associations to take on a neighborhood-defending and state-monitoring role. Third, besides its function in reconstituting class frontiers, it serves as a referent for broader social mobilization against the perceived informality of the local elite. By facilitating social distinction, informality continues to marginalize communities as it influences planning decisions and access to land in urban Latin America.

Abstract, Urban Mobility and Politics in Mexico City The Case of the Frente Amplio contra la Supervía

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Urban Mobility and Politics in Mexico City
The Case of the Frente Amplio contra la Supervía
by Oscar Sosa López


Study of the struggle of a social movement, the Frente Amplio contra la Supervía, to stop the construction of an urban toll road in the southwestern end of Mexico City reveals that investments in transportation assumed to benefit the larger public are in fact creating new landscapes of infrastructural and democratic exclusion. Examination of the forms of citizen mobilization, alliances among diverse actors, and the role of accountability institutions as spaces for democratic experimentation suggests that struggles against large infrastructure projects allow citizens and the state to redraw the limits of authoritarianism and the meaning of sustainability and democracy in the city.

Abstract, "New Forms of the Relationship between Politics and Religion: Ecclesiastical Base Community Activists in Mexico City" by Hugo José Suárez

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New Forms of the Relationship between Politics and Religion: Ecclesiastical Base Community Activists in Mexico City 
by Hugo José Suárez

Beginning in the 1960's, new forms of living the faith emerged in Latin America that linked it with a political dimension. The Catholic Church changed its pastoral orientation, and ecclesiastical base communities were established as part of an “option for the poor.” The reflection that accompanied this process was known as liberation theology. By the end of the 1970's these communities were organizing conferences, publications, and theological reflections with strong international links and included hundreds of believers both in the countryside and in the city. During the following two decades, they were active participants in the construction of leftist political alternatives. While a minority pastoral practice today, they continue to hold national gatherings and maintain their international contacts. In-depth interviews with three members of ecclesiastical base communities in a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City show how these individuals have built their socio-religious practice and their religious beliefs. Their experience is part of a global reconstitution of belief systems in Mexico that affects all of the salvation enterprises in their various expressions.

Abstract, "New Forms of the Relationship between Politics and Religion: Ecclesiastical Base Community Activists in Mexico City" by Hugo José Suárez

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New Forms of the Relationship between Politics and Religion: Ecclesiastical Base Community Activists in Mexico City 
by Hugo José Suárez

Beginning in the 1960's, new forms of living the faith emerged in Latin America that linked it with a political dimension. The Catholic Church changed its pastoral orientation, and ecclesiastical base communities were established as part of an “option for the poor.” The reflection that accompanied this process was known as liberation theology. By the end of the 1970's these communities were organizing conferences, publications, and theological reflections with strong international links and included hundreds of believers both in the countryside and in the city. During the following two decades, they were active participants in the construction of leftist political alternatives. While a minority pastoral practice today, they continue to hold national gatherings and maintain their international contacts. In-depth interviews with three members of ecclesiastical base communities in a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City show how these individuals have built their socio-religious practice and their religious beliefs. Their experience is part of a global reconstitution of belief systems in Mexico that affects all of the salvation enterprises in their various expressions.

Abstract, "New Forms of the Relationship between Politics and Religion: Ecclesiastical Base Community Activists in Mexico City" by Hugo José Suárez

:::::: Abstract ::::::

New Forms of the Relationship between Politics and Religion: Ecclesiastical Base Community Activists in Mexico City 
by Hugo José Suárez

Beginning in the 1960's, new forms of living the faith emerged in Latin America that linked it with a political dimension. The Catholic Church changed its pastoral orientation, and ecclesiastical base communities were established as part of an “option for the poor.” The reflection that accompanied this process was known as liberation theology. By the end of the 1970's these communities were organizing conferences, publications, and theological reflections with strong international links and included hundreds of believers both in the countryside and in the city. During the following two decades, they were active participants in the construction of leftist political alternatives. While a minority pastoral practice today, they continue to hold national gatherings and maintain their international contacts. In-depth interviews with three members of ecclesiastical base communities in a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City show how these individuals have built their socio-religious practice and their religious beliefs. Their experience is part of a global reconstitution of belief systems in Mexico that affects all of the salvation enterprises in their various expressions.