A City on a Lake: Urban Political Ecology and the Growth of Mexico City

Radical Perspectives

by Matthew Vitz

In A City on a Lake Matthew Vitz tracks the environmental and political history of Mexico City and explains its transformation from a forested, water-rich environment into a smog-infested megacity plagued by environmental problems and social inequality. Vitz shows how Mexico City's unequal urbanization and environmental decline stemmed from numerous scientific and social disputes over water policy, housing, forestry, and sanitary engineering. From the prerevolutionary efforts to create a hygienic city supportive of capitalist growth, through revolutionary demands for a more democratic distribution of resources, to the mid-twentieth-century emergence of a technocratic bureaucracy that served the interests of urban elites, Mexico City's environmental history helps us better understand how urban power has been exercised, reproduced, and challenged throughout Latin America.

Genres: History, Cities

352 pages, Paperback

Published April 27, 2018

Reviews

[Mario · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuando lo conseguí pensé, erróneamente, que se trataba de una historia lineal sobre la evolución geográfica de la Ciudad de México. Esperaba encontrar información sobre cómo fue asentada la ciudad en las ruinas de Tenochtitlán, y cómo fue comiéndose poco a poco el gran lago sobre el que había sido construida.

Grata sorpresa me llevé al encontrar un muy profundo análisis sobre la ciudad a fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX: la relación que tuvo la política, las desigualdades sociales, el caciquismo, el porfiriato, la revolución, el periodo posrevolucionario, las dificultades sanitarias, el drenaje, los costos de la vivienda, la fundación de asentamientos irregulares (colonias en las que cien años después viví como foráneo), entre otras muchas cosas más incluyendo una muy extensa comprensión sobre los bosques aledaños y los remanentes de los grandes lagos (Texcoco y Xochimilco).

Fascinante reflexión, fundamentada en una extensa y rica base bibliográfica, que nos transporta a una ciudad que ya se sentía pletórica desde entonces, con escasez del agua potable, especulación inmobiliaria, abusos de autoridades, y demás problemas que siguen vigentes en esta gran ciudad.

Punto aparte merece el papel de personajes históricos de la ciudad (que ahora solo se recuerdan como nombres de calles y colonias): no fueron los "héroes" que nos han vendido.

[Roberto Hidalgo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was born and have lived many years in Mexico City and the perspectives and relationships in this book have helped fill in a lot of gaps in my understanding of the city, many that I didn’t realize I had.

[Iván Guzmán · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book that explains a very complex subject with great narrative: the history of Mexico City's metropolitan environment through a very turbulent context for the country, from around the end of the XIX century to the 1940s.

Intertwining history, geography and politics it explains the visions different actors had about the natural processes that surrounded, threatend and supplied the city. It goes well beyond a simple recount of the urban evolution of the city, studying the evolution of policies, laws, organizations and infrastructure projects regarding Mexico City's forests, sewers, waters, the management of Lake Xochimilco and Lake Texcoco and the construction of new urban developments.

It turns out that this city's history has always been full of corruption, political fights, and an accumulation of wrong technical decisions and environmental visions, which have only reinforced the vision of a technical elite with no regards for social environmental equality and an enormous inequality on the distribution of services like water and drainage that remains to this day.

It's amazing how complete this book is, giving a very detailed recount of fights and conflicts to gain control over the territory, and an extended list of colonias, haciendas, pueblos, politicians, caciques, laws, authorities, politicians and their contribution on the construction (or destruction) of Mexico City and its very intertwined hinterland.

(Also after reading this you'll realize Miguel Ángel de Quevedo was kind of a dick and not really "el apóstol del árbol" as he is usually recognized)

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such an excellent 20th-century history of Mexico City—told through the lens of rolling political disputes over access to and designs on the water, forest and agricultural resources surrounding it—that it makes me want to seek out similar books on other major world capitals, including the one where I reside. Reading it beforehand also massively enhanced my first visit.

[Salvador Ramírez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aquí escribí una pequeña reseña del libro: https://labrujula.nexos.com.mx/?p=2336