Socio-economic Characteristics, Land Use and Travel Patterns of Mexico City

摘要

Over the last sixty years, Mexico City has grown from an agreeable city with a population of a million people to an expanding megalopolis of around seventeen million. The metropolitan area extends across two distinct, self-governing, administrative areas (the Federal District and the State of Mexico). The Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) comprises the sixteen boroughs in the Federal District (DF) plus twenty-eight municipalities in the State of Mexico (SM). This region is known collectively as the Valle Cuautitlan Texcoco (VCT), where about 17 % of the country's total population live in an area of 4,945 km~2. While these two areas are part of the same urban region, they have different policies and resources, which result in different standards, costs and varieties of transport. Dealing with the economic, environmental and transport problems arising from continuing population growth and severely limited resources is the major challenge facing management of the metropolitan area of Mexico City. Prior to 1940, Mexico City grew slowly and almost all its population lived in the central area of the DF. With a population of 1.7 million in an area of 100 km~2, the 300-km streetcar network promoted expansion towards the south which, with its associated industrial and tertiary activities, established Mexico City as the center of the nation's economic development. By 1950, the city began extending to the north and east across the DF boundaries into the SM. This has continued to such an extent that most of the DF is now urbanized with most growth occurring in the VCT. Average annual growth in the conurbation municipalities over the 1995-2000 period would be approximately 3%, in contrast to a figure of 0.3 per cent in the DF for that same period.