Metropolitan Economic Development

The Political Economy of Urbanisation in Mexico

Alejandra Trejo Nieto, José L. Niño-Amézquita

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429850578
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Metropolitan areas are home to a significant proportion of the world's population and its economic output. Taking Mexico as a case study and weaving in comparisons from Latin America and developed countries, this book explores current trends and policy issues around urbanisation, metropolisation, economic development and city-region governance.

Despite their fundamental economic relevance, the analysis and monitoring of metropolitan economies in Mexico and other countries in the Global South under a comparative perspective are relatively scarce. This volume contains empirical analysis based on comparative perspectives with relation to international experiences.

It will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and policymakers in urban policy, urban economics, regional studies, economic geography and Latin American studies.

Part I
The rise of a metropolitan world

1 The intersection of the urban, the metropolitan and the regional

Concepts, theories and international experiences

Introduction

Today, around 55 per cent of the world’s population is urban, with some 70 per cent of the world’s inhabitants forecasted to live in cities by 2050. Also by 2050, cities in the developing world will absorb more than 2 billion new urban residents, representing 95 per cent of global urban growth (UN, 2014). The current absolute numbers of total urban population are substantial, as the world’s population crossed the 7 billion mark in 2011 (Yusuf, 2013). In 1950 there were around 750 million people living in cities, in 2018 there were more than 4 billion, rising to a predicted 6.3 billion by 2050 (UN, 2018). Also, more than ever, cities play an important economic role and are focal points for economic growth, innovation and employment (Fox & Goodfellow, 2016). It has been estimated that today up to 80 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) is generated in cities (Dobbs et al., 2011).

Humanity continues on an inexorable urbanisation path that commenced at the end of the eighteenth century in Europe and North America and will likely culminate in Africa at the end of the present century. Whereas in the year 1800 a small percentage of the world population lived in cities, with the Industrial Revolution the city became the main location of the inhabitants of the North. In the countries of the South the city is abruptly becoming the dominant way of life (Sellers & Hoffmann-Martinot, 2008). Cities are outgrowing, and small towns have become cities of several million inhabitants in a few decades.

The pace of recent change at the city level is unprecedented in human history. In both developed and developing countries urbanisation has been tied up with the geographical expansion of cities and urban sprawl. As a result metropolitan areas are emerging as the true functional economies, surpassing the administrative boundaries of the traditional city and exceeding the jurisdictional scope of local authorities, with labour markets that cover several municipalities, sometimes in different states or provinces. Large cities and metropolitan areas are the actual hearts of urban functioning, but tend to be challenged by the ‘boundary issue’ (Hoornweg & Pope, 2016). This trend explains the increasing percentage of the world’s population living in metropolitan areas. It has been estimated that the 300 largest metropolitan areas in the world account for 19 per cent of total population and around one half of production (Bouchet, Lius & Parilla, 2018). Yet cities in the developed world have been surpassed in size and growth by the megacities of the Global South, where cities of unprecedented size are multiplying.

This chapter has a twofold objective. First, it lays out some general principles by which to approach contemporary urbanisation and metropolitan areas. It provides a brief literature review and an account of the scientific debate in urban studies to explain urban and metropolitan patterns and their development. Although the literature includes efforts to incorporate elements particular to less-developed countries and regions, attempts have also been made to provide more universal concepts and explanations of urbanisation and urban patterns. Conceptual categories such as urban growth, urban sprawl, urbanisation and metropolitan areas will be explained. The concept of the metropolitan area, defined in territorial terms and as a complex interrelation of social, economic and institutional factors, occupies central place in this chapter. The overview of relevant explanations of metropolitan areas highlights the interpretation of the metropolitan phenomenon from the economic perspective. The chapter also delivers an overview of international patterns and trends in urbanisation and compares developing and developed countries.

Urbanisation-related concepts

To address the question of what we do and do not know about urbanisation, city growth, metropolitan expansion and economic development, and to consider how we might fill a number of the gaps in the empirical knowledge, a review of the basic conceptual categories is worthwhile. With such categories in mind, it is possible to develop interpretations of metropolitan areas in their connection to broad processes of urbanisation and economic development. As highlighted by McGranahan and Satterthwaite (2014), although there is a consensus that urbanisation is critically important to development, there is also considerable misunderstanding about what it actually involves. Furthermore, the notion of ‘urban’ remains transitory, changing over time and across political boundaries depending upon the purpose of the definition. A synthetic clarification of concepts is needed.

First, to define urbanisation definitions of the terms ‘city’ and ‘urban centre’ are required. Some of the most influential definitions refer to the demographic and physical conditions of the urban environment on the one hand and to the socioeconomic relationships typical of human settlements on the other. Population size, density, heterogeneity, economic functions and the division of labour are factors that have historically defined a city (Fox & Goodfellow, 2016). Whereas there is a general consensus about the essential features of cities, in practice there is no universally established definition. Even though several efforts are underway to produce globally comparable estimates of urban areas based on satellite imagery of land cover and nighttime lights, cities and urban areas are defined and classified very differently across countries, based mainly on administrative criteria or population size (see for instance Florida, Mellander & Gulden, 2009; OECD, 2012; Vargas et al., 2017). The variability shown in Table 1.1 complicates the evaluation and comparison of urban trends across countries in the world.

In addition to the concept of the city, a collection of related notions about urban evolution is present in the literature, including urban growth, urbanisation, urban expansion and sprawl. Among specialists it is generally understood that urbanisation involves a population shift from rural to urban locations. This is a demographic perspective from which urbanisation levels are measured by the urban population share. However, confusion arises when the term ‘urbanisation’ is used to refer to urban growth or the expansion of urban land cover (McGranahan & Satterthwaite, 2014). ‘Urbanisation’, ‘urban growth’ and ‘urban expansion’ are three distinct terms that describe different phenomena in the urban transition process (Fox & Goodfellow, 2016). Likewise, in some countries, ‘urbanisation’ has been used to refer to the expansion of built-up areas, to the process of rural–urban migration and to the development of physical infrastructure in cities. A series of misconceptions can emerge when terms describing different but related phenomena are used without caution. Figure 1.1 summarises the fundamental differences between the core concepts of urbanisation, urban growth and urban expansion.

Urbanisation, understood in a static sense, denotes the proportion of the total population living in urban areas, that is, the level or degree of urbanisation. From a dynamic perspective, urbanisation is the speed of change in that level, that is, the urbanisation rate. Thus, urbanisation is simultaneously a process of change and a state of being. Urban growth, on the other hand, represents the increase in the absolute number, rather than the proportion, of urban inhabitants. In contrast, urban expansion is the increase in the physical built-up area of a city or urban area (Fox & Goodfellow, 2016).

Table 1.1 Varying definitions of urban centres

Country	Criteria to define urban centres
Germany	Population density of 150 or more per square kilometre.
Angola	2,000 inhabitants or more.
Australia	Population of at least 1,000 inhabitants.
Botswana	Agglomerations of 5,000 inhabitants or more with 75 per cent of economic activity non-agricultural.
Canada	Areas with 1,000 inhabitants or more and a population density of at least 400 per square kilometre.
Nigeria	Towns with at least 20,000 inhabitants.
Vietnam	Places with a population in excess of 4,000.
Zimbabwe	Urban centres are defined in two ways, as places that are officially designated ‘urban’; and places with 2,500 inhabitants or more with at least 50 per cent of employment non-agricultural.

Source: UN (2014).

Figure 1.1 Urbanisation-related concepts

Source: Author’s own elaboration.

Urbanisation, urban growth and urban expansion do not necessarily go hand in hand. Indeed, the problem with applying the same term to changes along these different dimensions is that they do not occur together. Moreover, shifts in any of these dimensions can have very different drivers and implications. According to McGranahan and Satterthwaite (2014), if urban and rural populations grow together at the same rate, urbanisation does not necessarily take place, and urbanisation does not involve urban expansion if land cover around the city remains the same, but increases in density. This is not the place to describe the diverse and complex ways in which these processes intertwine; however, as the terms are often used loosely it is important to highlight that the differences are analytically important if we are to understand the dynamics of urban change (Fox & Goodfellow, 2016). Finally, even though the demographic criterion is at the heart of the definition of urbanisation, important economic, spatial and social connotations of the phenomenon are implicit.

Drivers and explanations of urbanisation

Factors such as agricultural surplus, non-agricultural production, technological development, transport systems, specialisation and division of labour and the establishment of social and political power hierarchies appear frequently as factors explaining the appearance of cities (Mumford, 1966; Bourassa, 2007). The first towns that emerged, perhaps during or after the Neolithic Revolution (some of which were probably part of the Sumer culture in Mesopotamia), responded to primal technological advancements and economic specialisation, basic transport technologies and storage methods, the division of labour and technologies for the management of water and sewage. Emerging institutions in the form of cultural norms, governance structures and economic mechanisms were also necessary in the rise of urban concentrations. These institutional structures had to be sufficiently sophisticated to enforce internal rules and organise the protection of the city against external threats (OECD, 2015; Fox & Goodfellow, 2016). For instance, cities located close to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, such as Ur, were characterised by a sociopolitical order that included divine kingship and developed basic state functions such as taxation, military conscription, policing and bureaucratic administration. Centuries later cities emerged independently in Phoenicia, India and China with more developed sociopolitical structures and diverse economic functions (Fox & Goodfellow, 2016).

It is more or less accepted that over time, urbanisation has been driven by a combination of key factors during different waves of urbanisation. Sectoral transformations and technological changes in production and transportation also play a prominent role in accounting for the dynamics of urbanisation and urban change by making cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants possible.

The Industrial Revolution set a first wave of urbanisation in motion. At the time, technical change, including the widespread introduction of the steam engine and improvements in iron and smelting techniques, allowed increases in agricultural productivity. Labour demand in this sector decreased, and workers were released and moved to cities. This helped to satisfy the demand for labour at a single location caused by the onset of larger-scale manufacturing. Additionally, with more efficient forms of transport such as shipping, road-based transport and the first railway line, which opened in 1836 in London, the transportation of larger quantities of goods into cities was made possible and port cities grew in importance. Other major innovations in production techniques and urban transport – such as underground steam, electric railways and horse-drawn omnibuses – occurred throughout the nineteenth century, feeding urbanisation and allowing cities such as London to reach a million or more inhabitants by 1900. At the onset of the twentieth century new construction technologies such as the deve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I The rise of a metropolitan world
• Part II Metropolitan economic development in Mexico: patterns, trends and drivers
• Part III Local experiences: metropolisation, governance and public policies
• Conclusions
• Index