Welcome to my blog exploring the urban political ecology of Mexico City. Urban political ecology “seeks to understand the ways in which our urban environments are produced and reproduced, focusing on questions such as who decides, how they decide, who benefits and who loses.”[1] As someone who is born and bred in the UK and has never been to South America let alone Mexico, it is logical to question why I have chosen to focus on Mexico City. I was prompted to look at Mexico City closer after reading a blog from a site recommended in a lecture (Situated UPE Collective[2]). Another academic reason for choosing Mexico city is that “some see Mexico City as a metaphor encompassing the whole spectrum of urban woes in the South”[3]. Besides academic ties to Mexico City, I have seen numerous references in popular culture such as documentaries on Netflix, but I really did not have any knowledge of the city at all. So, in that sense I was keen to delve into Mexico City’s UPE for a variety of reasons and learn that Mexico City is much more than just a set for crime documentaries.

Why is Mexico City interesting from a UPE standpoint? I will answer this question with blog posts dedicated to differing aspects of Mexico City’s UPE starting with green spaces and progressing onto topics such as informal housing, sanitation, water management, agriculture and urban space. Each blog post will broadly speaking start with the history of the problem, before then exploring the up-to-date scenario and looking at an in-depth case study from the city.

Here are the references I used in this post:

[1] Barcelona Laboratory for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (2020) ‘Global Urban Environments’, (WWW) BLUEJS: Spain (www.bcneuj.org accessed 31^st January 2020).

[2] Situated UPE Collective (2020) ‘About SUPE’, (WWW) SUPE: N/A (www.situatedupe.net accessed 31^st January 2020).

[3] International Institute for Environment and Development (2020) ‘Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability: The Case of Mexico City’, (WWW), IIED: London (https://www.environmentandurbanization.org/ accessed 31st January 2020).

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