Mexico

Slowmadding CDMX

John Sanphillippo — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 20:28:58 -0400

One of my oldest friends from my youth moved to Mexico City after she finished university. I would visit her and we’d have adventures together. On one trip her mom was also visiting from Spain and we explored all the amazing spots in the region. The Zocolo at the center of the city, Frida Kahlo’s house in Coyoacán, the pyramids at Teotihuacan, museums, and so much great food. She eventually moved back to Spain after thirteen years. What remained for me was a deep fondness toward Mexico City. I thought… I could live here.

Then Covid hit. Our kitchen in San Francisco was ground zero for a fast and dirty mobilization as the work from home thing kicked in. The table became the home office, the Amazon box processing zone, the bicycle repair station, and absolutely everything except a proper kitchen table. What had always been a very pleasant and functional one bedroom apartment became a place I didn’t enjoy living in anymore. For months I kept trying to get things organized, but at the end of every day there was a new pile of stuff in the place I had just cleaned and sorted. Eventually things settled down and were less chaotic. But by then a new pattern had emerged. Dinner? Let’s get Chinese food around the corner. Guests? Noooooo. I relinquished my claim on the space. I stopped caring about it.

The “solution” presented by just about everyone at the time was to put on your big boy pants and move to the suburbs like a grown up. “Think of the joy of a generously proportioned home with a yard!” The thing is, neither of us have ever wanted to live in the suburbs. We like being in the city. We also like being in the country. The stuff in the middle just isn’t for us. I look at a cul-de-sac and I get depressed. Rural properties just about everywhere were both hard to find and suddenly ridiculously expensive. What we wanted was to stay more or less where we were, but with a bit more space.

We approached our trusted real estate agent, explained our needs, and she patiently showed us all kinds of properties around the city. But even during the worse moments of the pandemic getting even a tiny bit more space was going to cost an enormous amount of money. We kept running the numbers. While we “could” theoretically manage a jumbo mortgage if we liquidated everything… that was insane. The options presented to us were limited. We were going to have to give up on life in the kind of walkable mixed use neighborhood we love in order to get the price down. We weren’t interested in that.

Enter Mexico. We started the process of securing legal residency at the Mexican consulate in San Francisco. Most of the tricky part was getting the correct documents from various American government agencies. There was the official notorized marriage certificate from the state capital in Sacramento, renewed American passports from the feds, and so on. Once we had all our papers in hand the Mexican authorities processed us in one day. There were fingerprints, a criminal background check, and proof of solvency. We paid $51 each and we were in and out faster than a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles. You don’t need to be rich to immigrate to Mexico. You just need to prove you won’t cause trouble or be a burden. The average middle class American can meet the basic requirements. Once in Mexico City we attended our appointment at the immigration office and were issued our residency cards. $250. In order to navigate the system we paid a Mexican lawyer to smooth things out for us. $700. So for about $1,000 each we were good to go in three weeks.

Here in Mexico City we’re currently renting a 2,000 square foot / 186 square meter apartment. Two really big bedrooms each with a private bath. A third full bath next to the office. A generous living and dining area. A proper kitchen with a laundry room. And a wide terrace overlooking a quiet street lined with jacaranda trees. Mexico City has the same year round climate as Honolulu. And we’re paying less for this than our one bedroom place in San Francisco. It’s a classic arbitrage.

Read the rest of this piece at Granola Shotgun.

Johnny Sanphillippo is an amateur architecture buff with a passionate interest in where and how we all live and occupy the landscape, from small rural towns to skyscrapers and everything in between. He travels often, conducts interviews with people of interest, and gathers photos and video of places worth talking about (which he often shares on Strong Towns). Johnny writes for Strong Towns, and his blog, Granola Shotgun.

Photos: by the author.

Mexico City 2020: The Evolving Urban Form

Wendell Cox — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 20:28:58 -0500

The Mexico City metropolitan area (Zona Metropolitana del Valle de México) continues to grow, though has slowed somewhat from the previous decade. The metropolitan area is the functional or economic city.

The 2020 census of Mexico indicates that the metropolitan area had a population of 21.8 million. This growth was sufficient for Mexico City to remain the largest metropolitan area in North America, above New York’s 2020 census population of 21.4 million. However, the zona metropolitan has fewer residents than 23.6 million in the New York combined statistical area (a larger metropolitan definition).

The metropolitan population was up 8.4% from the 2010 Census but this represents a drop from 9.3% from 2000 to 2010, not to mention 18.2% growth between 1990 to 2000 growth (Figure 1).

Nor is Mexico City still a leader in the country’s growth. Over the last decade the annual growth rate of 0.81% was 30% below the 1.16% for the nation as a whole. The slow growth marks a considerable contrast with the 1980 United Nations (UN) projection that Mexico City would become the largest urban agglomeration in the world by 2000, amassing a 5.2 million lead over projected second ranked Sao Paulo and 7.6 million above third ranked Tokyo (Figure 2). However, what the UN could not predict was the devastating 1985 Mexico City earthquake, after which population growth dropped substantially.

The Mexico City metropolitan area is located in three state level jurisdictions, Ciudad de Mexico (CDMX, or Mexico City) and the states of Mexico and Hidalgo. CDMX replaced the former Distrito Federal in 2016, but, as the national capital, could not become a state under the Constitution of Mexico.

Suburban Growth Dominates

In the last decade, 93% of the growth in the Zona Metropolitana was in the suburbs, and 7% was in the urban core (Figure 3).

Ciudad de Mexico (city of Mexico City, CDMX): The Ciudad de Mexico includes the historic urban core and the area to the outside, or the inner suburbs (below).

Urban Core (CDMX): The urban core, made up of the delegations (wards) of Benito Juárez, Cuauhtémoc, Miguel Hidalgo and Venustiano Carranza added nearly 120,000 residents, or 7% of the growth. The annual growth rate was 0.66%, nearly 45% below the national rate.

Typical of many world metropolitan areas, urban core populations have fallen. These delegations combined for a population of 2.2 million in 1950, peaked at 2.9 million in 1970 and now have more than a third fewer residents (1.8 million). The population loss bottomed out in recent decades, reaching a low of 1.7 million in 1990, about 40% below the 1970 peak (Figure 4). The population density peaked in 1970 at 20,500 per square kilometer (53,900 per square mile), and was down to 13,200 per square kilometer (34,100 per square mile) in 2020. Zocolo, the historic core of Mexico City is located in Cuauhtémoc. The newer commercial core, Reforma, is located in Miguel Hidalgo.

Inner Suburbs (CDMX): The suburbs outside the urban core, but within CDMX added nearly 250,000 residents, or 14% of the growth. The 0.33% annual population growth rate was more than 70% below the national rate. The strongest growth in the inner suburbs was in municipios (municipalities) on the urban fringe, where CDMX backs up on mountainous terrain. Cuajimalpa de Morelos (2020 population 218,000, grew 16.8%, while Milpa Alta (153,000 grew 16.9%).

The newer suburban commercial centre, Santa Fe, is located in Álvaro Obregón, along the freeway to Toluca, the capital of the state of Mexico (approximately 50 kilometers/30 miles to the west). Appealing to many foreign businesses, the area looks more like LA’s Century City to what one would expect in the capital of a developing country.

Suburbs Outside CDMX: The suburbs outside CDMX are divided in this analysis between the Middle Suburbs and the Outer Suburbs.

Middle Suburbs: The middle suburbs, located in the state of Mexico and adjacent to CDMX added about 200,000 residents, or 11% of the growth. The middle suburbs accounted for the least percentage of population growth from 2010 to 2020. The annual population growth rate was 0.30%, nearly three quarters lower than the national rate of 1.16%.

The three largest municipios (municipalities) had virtual stability in their population over the decade. The largest, Ecatepec de Morelos (1.65 million in 2020) lost 0.6% of its population. Nezahualcóyotl (1.08 million) lost 3.0%, while Naucalpan de Juárez (0.83 million) lost 0.1%.

Outer Suburbs and Exurbs: Between the two censuses, the outer suburbs and exurbs, located in the states of Mexico and Hidalgo, grew by 1.1 million and captured 68% of the population growth. Municipios on or near the urban fringe (edge of the continuously developed urban area) have grown the most. Tecámac (547,000 in 2000) grew 50.2% and Zumpango (281,000 grew 75.7%. Huehuetoca (163,000, up 63.2%) and Tizayuca (168,000, up 72.7%). Tizayuca is in the state of Hidalgo, while the other three are in the state of Mexico.

The highest percentage population increase during the decade was in the Outer Suburbs, with an annual growth rate of 2.06%. This is almost 80% above the national rate and the only sector of the metropolitan area that grew faster than the nation as a whole (Figure 4).

Fitting the International Metropolitan Growth Pattern

As with nearly all metropolitan areas in the world, most growth in Mexico City has been in the suburban and exurban areas in recent decades, as opposed to the urban core. The urban core has lost population from its peak, as in other metropolitan areas like Paris, inner London, Lisbon, Vienna, and Boston. Like Paris inner London, Vienna and Boston, some, but not all of the recent population loss of recent loss has been recovered.

Typical of the international experience, Mexico City’s inner and middle suburbs have tended to grow more slowly than the suburbs on the urban fringe (continuously built up area) and the exurbs (beyond the continuously built up area). Although there has been a modest resurgence of population growth in the urban core, as in other major international cities, the preponderant growth has taken place on the urban periphery, where the cost of land is generally more affordable.

Related Articles

Expanding, Productive Mexico City Urban Form

The Evolving Urban Form: Suburbanizing Mexico

The Evolving Urban Form: The Valley of Mexico

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Photo: Santa Fe business center in the western suburbs, via Wikimedia under CC 4.0 License.

Focusing on World Megacities: Demographia World Urban Areas, 2021

Wendell Cox — Thu, 29 Jul 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The 2021 edition of Demographia World Urban Areas includes current population estimates for the 985 identified built-up urban areas (Note 1 describes the background and methodology) with at least 500,000 population.This is a smaller number than last year, due to a methodology that rendered somewhat lower populations for some urban areas. Demographia World Urban Areas has largely converted (80%) to estimates based on the 250-meter grid square population estimates from the European Commission Global Human Settlement (GHS2015) 250-meter database.

The 500,000 and over urban areas have a combined population of 2.24 billion, about 51.4% of the world’s urban population or 28.9% of the combined world urban and rural population.

The Megacities

The most populous urban areas are the 36 megacities, each with more than 10 million residents. Megacities receive outsized attention due to their influence in media, finance and tourism, but they have only 14.8% of the urban population and 8.3% of the world population. The other urban areas in Demographia World Urban Areas (between 500,000 and 10 million) account for 20.5% of the world population, while smaller urban areas have 27.3% and rural areas 43.9% (Figure 1).

Figure 2 shows the 2021 estimated population for the megacities. The three largest megacities are considerably larger than the others. Tokyo continues its lead as the world’s largest urban area, with 39.1 million residents.Tokyo has been ranked as the world’s largest urban area since 1955, a 75 year record that falls somewhat short of London’s century long primacy, but is more than double the three decade reign of New York (below).

Tokyo holds a nearly 10% lead over second ranked Jakarta, at 35.4 million. Population estimates for the Jakarta urbanhave usually not reflected the entire built-up urban area (Note 2: Underestimation of urban area densities), Jakarta is nearly 10% larger than third ranked Delhi (31.9 million), which has emerged over the last decade as India’s largest, now holding a 10 million (30%) lead over perennial leader Mumbai.

There is a much larger 25% gap between Delhi and fourth ranked Manila (24.0 million), an urban area that, like Jakarta, has often had its population substantially under reported (Note 2). Manila is six percent larger than fifth ranked Sao Paulo, with a population of 22.5 million), which is South America’s largest urban area as well as in the Western Hemisphere.

From sixth rank on, the margins between adjacently ranked urban areas is smaller. The population gap between fifth ranked Sao Paulo and tenth ranked Guangzhou-Foshan is less than five percent. Seoul, ranked sixth with 22.4 million has also been characterized by other sources as having a much smaller population (Note 2).

Mumbai, which some predicted would become the world’s first or second largest urban area, ranked well below that, at 7th in 2021. Mumbai’s 2021 population was a full three million short of a 2020 forecast made in the mid-2000s.

Shanghai is eighth, with 22.1 million. This is well below the United Nations 2020 projection made mid-decade (27 million), population growth was virtually stopped by public policy. The Guardian attributes “gentrification” to be a major cause both in Shanghai and Beijing (below), as lower income areas are redeveloped with newer, less dense housing.

Mexico City, another urban area that had been predicted to become the world’s largest had been forecast before 1980 to reach 31 million residents by 2000. Yet, Mexico City’s 2021 population is only 21.5 million and still ranks only 9th largest in the world.

Guangzhou-Foshan continues to grow strongly and is now estimated to be China’s second largest urban area and 10th largest in the world at 21.5 million. New York, which was the world’s largest urban area for about three decades (starting in the 1920s). ranks 11th, at 20.9 million. New York is a combined urban area that includes the continuous urbanization stretching to New Haven, Connecticut.

Cairo, at 19.7 million ranks 12th and is the largest urban area in Africa. Beijing ranks 13th, with 19.4 million and like Shanghai, had its population growth slow due to population control policies.Beijing had been the world’s largest agglomeration in the early 19th century, and reached one million residents at that time.

Kolkata, which had been India’s largest urban area until 1975, ranked 14th, at 17.8 million. Moscow ranked 14th has 17.7 million, and is the largest urban area in Europe.

Los Angeles ranked 21st, at 15.5 million, dropped out of the top 20 for the first time since before 1950. Los Angeles stood as 12th in 1950, and reached as high as 6th largest from 1965 to 1975. London, with all of the urban area inside the greenbelt (urban growth boundary), has been growing in recent years and achieved megacity status for the first time. London ranks 34th and has a population of 11.2 million, having replaced #35 Paris as the largest urban area in Western Europe. London had been the world’s largest agglomeration for about 100 years to the 1920s.

Highest and Lowest Megacity Densities

Megacity urban population densities (Figure 3) range from a high of 36,900 per square kilometer in Dhaka (95,700 per square mile) and Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) at 33,200 per square kilometer (83,600 per square mile) to the least dense megacity (Figure 2, above), New York, at 1,700 per square kilometer (4,500 per square mile). In recent years, considerable peripheral development has been occurring in Dhaka, which used to have a population density well above 40,000 per square kilometer (100,000 per square mile).

Seoul has the highest urban population density among the high-income megacities, at 8,100 per square kilometer (20,900 per square mile). The highest density urban areas in the high income world are in China, Macau (27,300 per square kilometer or 70,600 per square mile) and Hong Kong (25,500 per square kilometer or 66,100 per square mile).

Largest and Smallest Urban Footprint (Urban Land Area)

New York --- often seen as the epitome of dense urbanism --- in reality has the largest urban footprint of any built-up urban area, covering 12,100 square kilometers (4,700 square kilometers). New York covers nearly 50 percent more land area than much larger Tokyo-Yokohama and 90 percent more land area than Los Angeles and 27 times the land area of Dhaka.

Dhaka has smallest urban footprint, at 456 square kilometers (176 square miles), followed closely by Kinshasa, with 466 square kilometers and 180 square miles (Figure 4).

Disruptions: The Pandemic and Remote Work

There are reports that the Covid-19 pandemic has severely impacted large urban areas, with many households relocating to smaller urban areas elsewhere or nearer the urban fringe. Much of this has to do with the rise of remote work, the practicality of which was proven by its success, and muted the economic losses that would have occurred had remote workers lost their jobs rather than continuing to work. In the years to come, pandemic related disruptions to the world’s largest urban areas will become clearer. We will continue to follow these developments.

Description of Tables

Demographia World Urban Areas contains five tables that provide summary and ranking information:

Schedule 1: World Summary: Built-Up Urban Areas Over 500,000

Schedule 2: Largest Built-Up Urban Areas in the World
Schedule 3: Built-Up Urban Areas Ranked by Land Area (Urban Footprint)

Schedule 4: Built-Up Urban Areas Ranked by Urban Population Density

Schedule 5: Alphabetical List of Built-Up Urban Areas

Note 1: Demographia World Urban Areas is in its 17th year of publication. It was established to provide consistency to the estimation of urban density, in the all too frequent erroneous anecdotal data. The built-up urban area is the only level at which there is sufficiency consistency and sufficient data to estimate the densities of the urban organism at anything approximating international standards.

There continues to be considerable confusion about the measurement of urban densities. The key is in comprehending the differences between urban areas and metropolitan areas. Built-up urban areas are continuously built-up development that, by definition excludes rural lands (all of the world’s land is either in urban areas or rural). This is illustrated by the Paris built up urban area and the Paris metropolitan area in Figure 5. Built-up urban areas are the city in its physical form, as opposed to metropolitan areas, which are the economic or functional cities (the labor and housing markets). These terms are defined by Cheshire, et al. of the London School of Economics (see: “People rather than places, ends rather than means: LSE economists on urban containment”).

Demographia World Urban Areas uses base year population estimates, principally from the European Commission Global Human Settlement (GHS2015) 250 meter database (grid square estimates). National statistical authority base year estimates are used where identified and consistent with international definitions.These figures are then adjusted to account for population change forecasts, principally from the United Nations and the national statistics bureaus for a current year estimate.

Demographia combines extensions of continuously built-up areas, where they are a part of a larger labor market (such as New York, Bridgeport-Stamford and New Haven, Los Angeles, Riverside-San Bernardino and Mission Viejo and Toronto, Hamilton and Oshawa).

Demographia World Urban Areas is a continuing project providing “state of the art” data. Revisions are made as more accurate satellite photographs and population estimating resources become available. As a result, Demographia World Urban Areas is not intended for trend analysis.

Note 2: Underestimation of urban area populations: Demographia World Urban Areas was the first to identify the under-estimation of population in some of the largest urban areas, by other sources. For example, Demographia’s early population estimates for the Jakarta, Delhi, Manila, Seoul-Incheon and Kuala Lumpur built-up urban areas were far higher than reported by others at the time. Other sources have revised their estimates upward. The earlier, lower estimates of others were, in actuality, municipal estimates that did not sufficiently take into consideration the spread of urbanization beyond city or other geographical limits. Demographia’s larger population estimates resulted from satellite map examination to determine the extent of individual built-up urban areas.

Photograph: Cover, 17th Annual Demographia World Urban Areas: Buenos Aires: Retiro Railway Station with the Rio de la Plata in the background (by author)

Expanding, Productive Mexico City: The Evolving Urban Form

Wendell Cox — Mon, 11 Nov 2019 20:28:58 -0500

Much of the media has been fascinated by the growing number of megacities (built up urban areas with at least 10 million residents). Not only are megacities regularly covered but various reports have them becoming denser. They’re not, as has been demonstrated by Professor Shlomo Angel, who leads the Urban Expansion Program at New York University’s Marron Institute.

A recent article in The Economist summarized Urban Expansion program research on Mexico City, noting that from one 1990 to 2014, the population had increased 82%, while the urban land area had increased 128%. The Urban Expansion Program compiles data for built up urban areas, which largely ignore municipal or other jurisdictional boundaries, recognizing that organic urbanism usually takes little account of borders, unless otherwise prohibited. This is the same general approach as we use in Demographia World Urban Areas, which is published annually.

The Case of Mexico City

The Mexico City example warrants elaboration. This article examines the recent population history of Mexico City, both its built-up urban area and the larger metropolitan area (the “Zona metropolitana del valle de México”). The difference between a metropolitan area and a built up urban area is that the metropolitan area includes rural territory as well as urbanization that is separated from the principal urban area. As a result, metropolitan areas are always much larger than urban areas and have far lower density (except in very unusual cases like Male, in the Maldives, and urban area that virtually fills up all of the available island territory).

The Mexico City Urban Area

The United Nations provides estimates of population for the Mexico City Urban Area going back in five year increments to 1950. Seventy years ago, in 1950, Mexico City was comprised of four core “delegations” (districts) Mexico City – Cuauhtémoc, Miguel Hidalgo, Venustiano Carranza and Benito Juarez had 2.23 million residents. They comprise 65% of the urban area population (Figure 1). Another approximately 650,000 residents lived in other parts of the federal district (Distrito Federal as then constituted), and another half million outside the federal district. In 2016, the Distrito Federal became the Ciudad de México (Mexico City), however this article will continue to use the term “federal district,” to avoid confusion. The federal district (including the urban core) had 85% of the urban area population.

An earlier article (“The Evolving Urban Form: The Valley of Mexico”) described the evolution of population from 1950 through 2010.The spreading out of the population, and lesser densities, has been nothing short of remarkable.

By 1970 the population of the four core delegations rose to a peak of 2.85 million, and a peak population density of 53,000 persons per square mile (20,500 per square kilometer).”At this point a steep decline in population began, as the area lost more than 1.1 million people to 1.68 million by 2005. This was the low point, and population has risen since then.The urban core population dropped to approximately one half its 1950 share of the urban area (32%). Much of the population growth occurred in the balance of the district including the urban core still had 78% of the urban area population.

The 1970 population outside the federal district was approaching 2 million residents. By 1980 this had risen to 5 million and was nearly double that of the four urban core delegations. By 1990, the population reached 7.4 million residents, exceeding that of the federal district outside the four core delegations. Finally, by 2000, the population reached 9.9 million, exceeding that of the federal district.

This pattern has continued. The 2015 Intercensal Survey of the national census authority (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática or INEGI) indicates (Figure 2).

By 2015, the share of population in the four urban core delegations had dropped to 8%, one-eighth of its 1950 level. The balance of the federal district had 34% of the population and areas outside the federal district had 58% of the population (Figure 3).

While the population of the urban core has recovered somewhat, the population increase of 50,000 is less than 5% of the more than 1.1 million resident loss (Figure 4). Since 1980, 90% of the population growth in the Mexico City urban area has been outside the federal district.

Zona metropolitana del valle de México

The urban core accounted for 2.6% of the larger metropolitan area growth from 2010 to 2015. Another 6.1% occurred in the balance of the federal district. The municipios (municipalities) that border on the federal district accounted for 17.8% of the metropolitan area growth. Included in this area are the huge suburbs of Ecatepec de Morelos, Naucalpan de Juárez, Nezahualcóyotl and Tlalnepantla de Baz, which range in population from 600,000 to 1.7 million residents. Finally, nearly three-quarters of the population growth (73.5%) occurred in the balance of the metropolitan area. These are the outer suburbs and the area also includes rural expenses (Figure 5).

To give an idea of the intensity of lower density growth, one municipality, Tizayuca in the state of Hidalgo, added 22,000 residents. This municipio of 97,000 residents in 2010 added slightly more than were added by the entire urban core of Mexico City, despite its 2010 population of 1.7 million residents. The population growth in Tizayuca was impressive, at an annual rate of 4.2%. But that growth rate was dwarfed by the outer suburb of Tultepec, in the state of Mexico, which had an annual growth rate of 10.3%.

Overall, the Zona metropolitana del valle de México grew by an annual rate of 0.76%. The outer municipios grew at nearly three times that rate (2.17%) and nearly ten times that of the urban core (0.24%). The balance of the federal district, which dominated growth within the former Distrito Federal for decades, grew at a rate of only 0.13% (Figure 6). Figure 7 depicts the expansion of urbanization in Mexico City from 1807 to 2014, as indicated by the Marron Institute Urban Expansion Program.

Figure 6 Illustration: Evolution of the Mexico City urban area, 1807 to 2014. Used by permission of the New York University Marron Institute.

An Expanding, Rather than Compact Metropolitan Area

Urban expansion in Mexico has produced a more productive metropolitan area, according to recent recent Lincoln Institute of Land Policy research (see: “The Costs and Benefits of Urban Expansion: Evidence from Mexico, 1990–2010”) by Jorge Montejano (Centro de Investigación en Geografia y Geomática), Paavo Monkkonen (UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs), Erick Guerra (University of Pennsylvania) and Camilo Caudillo (Centro de Investigación en Geografia y Geomática). They concluded:

One of the principal findings is that the benefits of urbanization are strong, and unexpectedly, urban compactness is not associated with economic productivity in Mexico. On the contrary, more sprawling cities are more productive.

The rewards of that productivity are clear, in the new single-family dwellings spread around Tizayuca, Tultepec and other outer suburbs that can be seen on satellite imagery, such as Google Earth.

Top Illustration: Santa Fe: An edge city on the western edge of the Mexico City urban area (15 kilometers/8 miles from the historic center of Zocalo). Photo credit: Fernando montes17 via Wikimedia under CC 4.0 License.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the "Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey" and author of "Demographia World Urban Areas" and "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life." He was appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. Speaker of the House of Representatives appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

A New Good Neighbor Policy

Joel Kotkin and Luis B. Torres — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 01:33:38 -0400

Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump’s proposal to build a “beautiful wall,” it is unlikely to resolve the crisis sending ever more people—largely from Central America—to America’s borders. The problems that drive large numbers to leave their homes and trust their families to criminal gangs will not be solved by bigger fences but better thinking. Fundamentally, the United States should regard Mexico and Central America not as adversaries but as economic partners in a world increasingly defined by competition between the U.S. and an ever-more aggressive China determined to establish global hegemony—even in our hemisphere. In this context, a strong policy of investment and aid to our southern neighbors makes both economic and political sense.

The American relationship with Mexico and Central America is implicitly complementary. The U.S. and Mexico not only exchange products and services; they also produce them jointly. American manufacturing or value-added inputs represent 40 percent of every dollar Mexico exports to the United States. Chinese exports to the U.S. represent only one-tenth as much.

Read the entire piece on City Journal.

Joel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, director of the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism in Houston, Texas. He is author of eight books and co-editor of the recently released Infinite Suburbia. He also serves as executive director of the widely read website www.newgeography.com and is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, Real Clear Politics, the Daily Beast, City Journal and Southern California News Group.

Luis B. Torres is research economist at Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center, which studies the U.S. economy, world economy, and real estate markets. Formerly with Mexico’s central bank, Banco de Mexico, he has published articles in academic and nonacademic publications about banking, international economics, trade, real estate, and applied econometrics.

Photo Credit: Martin D, via Flickr, using CC License.

Is Climate Change Really the Cause of Mexico City’s Water Problems?

Aaron M. Renn — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 00:33:38 -0500

A couple weeks ago the New York Times ran a gigantic front-page Sunday article by architecture critic Michael Kimmelman on Mexico City’s water crisis.

This piece was billed as the first installment in a series on the effect of climate change on cities. Which is a head-scratcher, since Mexico City’s problems don’t seem to have anything to do with that.

Mexico City is a megacity of 21.2 million people, making it roughly the size of greater New York. It’s also a mile and a half above sea level on a former lake bed in a valley among the surrounding mountains. So it’s at a significantly higher elevation than even Denver.

This creates huge problems. A gigantic city has huge water needs. At high elevation, using a gravity feed for water is complicated to say the least. This necessitates costly pumping to delivery water from remote sources. The city is surrounded by mountains making even drainage complex. Much of the city’s water supply has come from its own ground water, and the city is sinking from the subsidence as a result of pumping.

And of course Mexico and its capital are in the developing world, and so do not have the wealth to construct and maintain New York City style infrastructure.

All of this is basically covered in the Kimmelman piece, which is good in many ways. But it’s not clear where climate change comes in. All of these problems would exist apart from any climate change. At best, he simply argues that climate change will make things worse, though without citing any real specifics. He only says:

"It is a cycle made worse by climate change. More heat and drought mean more evaporation and yet more demand for water, adding pressure to tap distant reservoirs at staggering costs or further drain underground aquifers and hasten the city’s collapse."

Why in the world would the Times want to make this into a climate change story? It’s manifestly obvious from the article itself that the core water problems in Mexico City have nothing to do with climate change, but come from geography, size, and bad decision making.

Trying to make it a climate change story only draws attention away from the need to make local changes to address the water situation. It also won’t convince anybody of anything. People who already believe in climate change don’t need any convincing. Those who don’t are never going to be convinced by this article. What’s the point?

It seems to me that too many urbanist writers today simply can’t resist trying to make every single thing some manifestation of climate change. In that regard, they simply link more and more policy areas to something which is politically gridlocked in the United States. So what people do when they make things about climate change is to implicitly state that they don’t actually want to do anything about it.

Many changes are eminently justifiable on their own merits. Bringing in climate changes only poisons the waters politically. And it’s a cop out. If you can’t make the case for, say, transit, without resorting to climate change, then your case is simply weak.

When it comes to things like Mexico City’s water, where there’s a real problem and some action should be taken, better to avoid talking about climate change if you actually want to get anything done.

Aaron M. Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and an economic development columnist for Governing magazine. He focuses on ways to help America’s cities thrive in an ever more complex, competitive, globalized, and diverse twenty-first century. During Renn’s 15-year career in management and technology consulting, he was a partner at Accenture and held several technology strategy roles and directed multimillion-dollar global technology implementations. He has contributed to The Guardian, Forbes.com, and numerous other publications. Renn holds a B.S. from Indiana University, where he coauthored an early social-networking platform in 1991.

Photo: Fidel Gonzalez [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

TruMpISSION: Impossible - Border Wall

Susanne Trimbath — Fri, 17 Feb 2017 00:33:38 -0500

While running for office, President Trump said the border wall would cost about $8 billion, a figure widely recognized as an unreasonably low estimate". This week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimated the cost of construction at $21.6 billion. Figuring out what the wall would cost has been a source of debate for longer than the last election cycle. In 2013, the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" senators set aside $1.5 billion for a plan to add 700 miles of wall - also a completely unrealistic budget.

In this edition of TruMpISSION: Impossible we examine the numbers behind building a wall along the U.S.- Mexico border. There are five main reasons why this mission is impossible.

1. It will be hideously expensive. The un-walled portion of the border covers the most difficult terrain, a lot of which could cost $17 million per mile. Historically, building on flat land cost about $4 million per mile. The government spent $2.4 billion between 2006 and 2009 to build a stretch of wall along 670 miles of easy terrain (Secure Fence Act of 2006). A 2009 attempt to build along one rugged stretch of the border was budgeted at $58 million for just 3.5 miles.

Since most of the easier stuff is already built, I calculated that the cost for the next 1.289 miles could easily run $19.3 billion - I think the new DHS estimate is close to the mark. To put the number into perspective, the cost will be about seven times the entire 2016 budget of the U.S. Border Portal. Construction isn't the only expense. Section 10 of the Executive Order basically "deputizes" local law enforcement - at the expense of local taxpayers - to act as immigration officers for carrying out deportations.

2. More than 1,000 of the open border is under water. Building a wall in the water would be wildly expensive and would have to be replaced frequently. In February 2012, construction began to extend began to extend an 18-foot high border fence 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean to seal off the gap that opened at the beach between Tijuana and San Diego during low tide. The private contractor who built it (Granite Construction Company, NYSE:GVA) gave the government a 30-year warranty. The budget for that Surf Fence Project was $4.3 million (I did not find the final cost in any public source). Based on that budget, the cost of building the wall in water could run $75.9 million per mile or about 4.5 times the cost of building on rugged land and nearly 20 times the cost of building the parts on more level ground. Building a fence on the water part of the border would cost close to $9 billion alone.

3. Maybe Trump does not really mean to build on the border that lies underwater. The Executive Order defines the "Southern border" as only the "land border". To avoid the extra expense of building in the ocean, the gulf, and two rivers, we can build on the land outside the flood-plain/tidal-zone. It is likely the Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto has heard of the "adverse possession". Along the border, state laws transfer rights to abandoned property to the possessor in 5 to 10 years. Building just one half mile from the rivers means the United States could relinquish at least 657 square miles to Mexico. Are we prepared to cede to Mexico an area 1.5 times the size of Los Angeles?

Fox News has noted that "[w]hile 1,254 miles of [the] borders is in Texas, the state has only 100 miles of wall". At least 65 miles of the 100 mile route proposed through Texas in 2008 sat a half mile from the border. In some places, like the McAllen area of Texas, the proposed track separated a water reservoir from the pumping stations that bring water to US citizens. Building up to a mile into the US side has already stranded the property of US citizens on the Mexico side of the wall.

4. The border land that is not under water or already fenced is mostly in private hands. In a January 2016 story Fox News recognized that finishing the wall along the border in Texas could require hundreds of lawsuits by the federal government. The Washington Post also reported going into the 2009 expansion of the wall that much of the planned route would slice through private property. Private property adds an average of $61,491 per mile (based on actual costs in 2012). During the 2009 expansion, 135 private landowners refused to let surveyors onto their property. Seventy percent of the landowners who held out were in Texas. Anybody remember Jade Helm 15 when part of Texas was labeled "hostile territory" during military exercises? The Governor ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor the exercises. What do you think will happen if bulldozers show up uninvited to begin claiming 1,000 miles of Texan's private property? The federal government can use eminent domain, but it is costly, takes a long time and holds an uncertain outcome.

5. There may not be enough brick and mortar to build a wall along the US/Mexico border, especially if Trump keeps talking it up. During the 2009 expansion of the wall, cost estimates ballooned as a Border States construction boom led to labor shortages and rising costs for construction materials (e.g., steel and cement). Try building more than 1,000 miles of border wall while re-building transportation infrastructure, the strain will be beyond the global peak in prices seen when shovel-ready projects were initiated under post-financial-crisis stimulus spending.

The Executive Order gave DHS 180 days (until about the second anniversary of Jade 15) to come up with a plan. DHS also has to figure out how to return deportable aliens “to the territory from which they came” – imagine millions of aliens lined up along the US/Mexico border. DHS has less time (until March 26) to figure out how to pay for the wall by withholding “all bilateral and multilateral development aid, economic assistance, humanitarian aid, and military aid” that the US may be planning to send to Mexico. That sounds like it could actually work to balance the budget outlay. Except that it won’t actually work. Total U.S. foreign aid to Mexico disbursed from all agencies in 2015 was $338.5 million (that’s “million” with an “m”). At that rate, it will take 54 years to recover the cost!

Aid to Mexico includes $215 million for international drug and law enforcement plus $50 million more for in-country drug enforcement. The other hundred million or so was for justice projects, legal reform, crime prevention and military support. According to former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, “…experience teaches that border security alone cannot overcome the powerful push factors of poverty and violence that exist in Central America. Ultimately, the solution is long-term investment in Central America to address the underlying push factors in the region.”

[After I calculate the costs for several more truMpISSIONs, I will calculate the cost of financing with debt. Just because something is impossible, doesn’t mean Trump won’t spend your money on it.]

Susanne Trimbath, Ph.D. is CEO and Chief Economist of STP Advisory Services. Dr. Trimbath’s credits include appearances on national television and radio programs and the Emmy® Award nominated Bloomberg report Phantom Shares. She appears in four documentaries on the financial crisis, including Stock Shock: the Rise of Sirius XM and Collapse of Wall Street Ethics and the newly released Wall Street Conspiracy. Her newest book, Lessons Not Learned: 10 Steps to Stable Financial Markets, was published in November by Spiramus Press (UK). Dr. Trimbath teaches graduate and undergraduate finance and economics.

Photo: ourfunnyfarm, CC License

America's True Power In The NAFTA Century

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 11:01:39 -0400

OK, I get it. Between George W. Bush and Barack Obama we have made complete fools of ourselves on the international stage, outmaneuvered by petty lunatics and crafty kleptocrats like Russia’sVladimir Putin. Some even claim we are witnessing “an erosion of world influence” equal to such failed states as the Soviet Union and the French Third Republic. “Has anyone noticed how diminished, how very Lilliputian, America has become?” my friend Tunku Varadajaran recently asked.

In reality, it’s our politicians who have gotten small, not America. In our embarrassment, we tend not to notice that our rivals are also shrinking. Take the Middle East — please. Increasingly, we don’t need it because of North America’s unparalleled resources and economic vitality.

Welcome then to the NAFTA century, in which our power is fundamentally based on developing a common economic region with our two large neighbors. Since its origins in 1994, NAFTA has emerged as the world’s largest trading bloc, linking 450 million people that produce $17 trillion in output. Foreign policy elites in both parties may focus on Europe, Asia and the Middle East, but our long-term fate lies more with Canada, Mexico and the rest of the Americas.

Nowhere is this shift in power more obvious than in the critical energy arena, the wellspring of our deep involvement in the lunatic Middle East. Massive finds have given us a new energy lifeline in places like the Gulf coast, the Alberta tar sands, the Great Plains, the Inland West, Ohio, Pennsylvania and potentially California.

And if Mexico successfully reforms its state-owned energy monopoly, PEMEX, the world energy — and economic — balance of power will likely shift more decisively to North America. Mexican President Pena Nieto’s plan, which would allow increased foreign investment in the energy sector, is projected by at least one analyst to boost Mexico’s oil output by 20% to 50% in the coming decades.

Taken together, the NAFTA countries now boast larger reserves of oil, gas (and if we want it, coal) than any other part of the world. More important, given our concerns with greenhouse gases, NAFTA countries now possess, by some estimates, more clean-burning natural gas than Russia, Iran and Qatar put together. All this at a time when U.S. energy use is declining, further eroding the leverage of these troublesome countries.

This particularly undermines the position of Putin, who has had his way with Obama but faces long-term political decline. Russia, which relies on hydrocarbons for two-thirds of its export revenues and half its budget, is being forced to cut gas prices in Europe due to a forthcoming gusher of LNG exports from the U.S. and other countries. In the end, Russia is an economic one-horse show with declining demography and a discredited political system.

In terms of the Middle East, the NAFTA century means we can disengage, when it threatens our actual strategic interests. Afraid of a shut off of oil from the Persian Gulf? Our response should be: Make my day. Energy prices will rise, but this will hurt Europe and China more than us, and also will stimulate more jobs and economic growth in much of the country, particularly the energy belts of the Gulf Coast and the Great Plains.

China and India have boosted energy imports as we decrease ours; China is expected to surpass the United States as the world’s largest oil importer this year. At the same time, in the EU, bans on fracking and over-reliance on unreliable, expensive “green” energy has driven up prices for both gas and electricity.

These high prices have not only eroded depleted consumer spending but is leading some manufacturers, including in Germany, to look at relocating production , notably to energy-rich regions of the United States. This shift in industrial production is still nascent, but is evidenced by growing U.S. manufacturing at a time when Europe and Asia, particularly China, are facing stagnation or even declines. Europe’s industry minister recently warned of “anindustrial massacre” brought on in large part by unsustainably high energy prices.

The key beneficiaries of NAFTA’s energy surge will be energy-intensive industries such as petrochemicals — major new investments are being made in this sector along the Gulf Coast by both foreign and domestic companies. But it also can be seen in the resurgence in North American manufacturing in automobiles, steel and other key sectors. Particularly critical is Mexico’s recharged industrial boom. In 2011 roughly half of the nearly $20 billion invested in the country was for manufacturing. Increasingly companies from around the world see our southern neighbor as an ideal locale for new manufacturing plants; General Motors GM -0.96%, Audi , Honda, Perelli, Alcoa and the Swedish appliance giant Electrolux have all announced major investments.

Critically this is not so much Ross Perot’s old “sucking sound” of American jobs draining away, but about the shift in the economic balance of power away from China and East Asia. Rather than rivals, the U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies are becoming increasingly integrated, with raw materials, manufacturing goods and services traded across the borders. This integration has proceeded rapidly since NAFTA, with U.S. merchandise exports to Mexico growing from $41.6 billion in 1993 to $216.3 billion in 2012, an increase of 420%,while service exports doubled. MeanwhileU.S. imports from Mexico increased from $39.9 billion in 1993 to $277.7 billion in 2012, an increase of 596%.

At the same time, U.S. exports to Canada increased from $100.2 billion in 1993 to $291.8 billion in 2012.

Investment flows mirror this integration. As of 2011, the United States accounted for 44% of all foreign investment in Mexico, more than twice that of second-place Spain; Canada, ranking fourth, accounts for another 10%. Canada, which, according to a recent AT Kearney report, now ranks as the No. 4 destination for foreign direct investment, with the U.S. accounting for more than half the total in the country. Over 70% of Canada’s outbound investment goes to the U.S.

Our human ties to these neighbors may be even more important. (Disclaimer: my wife is a native of Quebec). Mexico, for example, accounts for nearly 30% of our foreign-born population, by far the largest group. Canada, surprisingly, is the largest source of foreign-born Americans of any country outside Asia or Latin America.

We also visit each other on a regular basis, with Canada by far the biggest sender of tourists to the U.S., more than the next nine countries combined; Mexico ranks second. The U.S., for its part, accounts for two-thirds of all visitors to Canada and the U.S. remains by far largest source of travelers to Mexico.

These interactions reflect an intimacy Americans simply do not share with such places as the Middle East (outside Israel), Russia, and China. There’s the little matter of democracy, as well as a common sharing of a continent, with rivers, lakes and mountain ranges that often don’t respect national borders. Policy-maker may prefer to look further afield but North America is our home, Mexico and Canada our natural allies for the future. Adios, Middle East and Europe; bonjour, North America.

This story originally appeared at Forbes.

Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, and a member of the editorial board of the Orange County Register. He is author of The City: A Global History and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. His most recent study, The Rise of Postfamilialism, has been widely discussed and distributed internationally. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

NAFTA logo by AlexCovarrubias.

Rethinking Risk During a Financial Crisis: Learning from Mexico

Andrew Kirby — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:39:56 -0500

Last month I visited a small town in southern Mexico. It is a quiet and modestly prosperous place. Outside some of the homes are older Suburbans, Jeeps and Explorers; the license plates show that their owners have recently returned from the US, driven out by the collapsing economy and heightened nativist anxieties. Almost every family, it seems, has some member who has spent time up north; only a very few of them are still hanging on through the recession.

For the most part, Mexicans are innocent by-standers in the current financial debacle. They didn’t allow themselves to be talked into strange mortgages or multiple credit cards; whether north or south of the border, this is for them still predominantly a cash economy. Even for those who went to the US, their key goal was to accumulate dollars and send them south, where, as pesos, they provide the basics and even a few luxuries for many families. Until recently, these remittances have been second only to oil income in importance for Mexico; now both are shrinking fast.

There is something more than a little unfair in the manner in which the recession is hurting our southern neighbor. Mexicans, for the most part, have a personal risk calculus that is the complete reverse of ours. Like most people who have experienced hard times, they are not obsessed with the little things that might go awry; they don’t place little flags around puddles in the grocery store, and most dogs have never received a rabies shot. The sidewalks often look as though a tree is trying to push its way through the ground and electrical cables are frequently visible. It’s not unusual to see a local butcher frying up vast cauldrons of meats in front of his carnecineria, something that would drive American health inspectors to apoplexy.

In contrast to their wealthier Northern neighbors, Mexicans seem quite happy to take responsibility for themselves and don’t expect to sue someone every time they stub their toe. But their collective view of risk is also the reverse of ours. Property is, for most people, something to live in and not something for speculation. Building one’s own home is common but it’s usually done in stages, whenever there is cash to spare. The results may be untidy, with streets perpetually possessing the appearance of construction zones, but there is no evidence of any foreclosure crisis—forests of ‘for sale’ signs are absent, in Veracruz, at least.

Nor is that the only visual difference between nondescript Mexican and American cities. Antiseptic zoning is much less common in Mexico, with the result that families live above the store, or behind the workshop, or even on the roof of some buildings. Affluent homes may stand next to literal ruins. In most American cities, this would be evidence of a neighborhood slipping into decay, causing realtors to flee to more ordered areas. But for Mexicans, this juxtaposition simply adds to the sense of being in an organic place rather than on a Disney set. What it means for neighborliness is hard to judge, but it would certainly make an interesting comparative research project.

Of course, there are some equivalents to the homogenous subdivisions that dominate the American housing market. I saw several large up-scale gated communities that were standing idle, waiting for better times. I was also shown several housing developments, where government agencies were building terraced homes for state workers. What is striking to the visitor is that these would never be offered in the US housing market, as they would be judged to be unacceptably small. At approximately one thousand square feet, they are half the size of the average American home, (approximately 2200 square feet) and significantly smaller than most new houses.

Even though Mexican families are, on average, larger (with more children and more generations living together), the expectation is not that every member of the family gets a bathroom or even a bedroom. It is also common to buy small and build out, or up, as needs dictate and finances permit. Anyone who has traveled in Asia will also be familiar with this phenomenon, which manifests itself in ground floor apartments that encroach upon the street, balconies that become bedrooms and so forth. High density and modest means lead to invention, if not the kinds of appearance mandated by Home Owner Associations or preferred by the fusspot New Urbanist designers.

In the past, the Mexican financial system has been criticized for maintaining a tight hold on credit. Even before the current crisis, high interest rates were unfriendly to the consumer, slowing the pace of both urban development and speculation. Given our current crisis, perhaps it’s worth asking whether this points to how the American market may develop in the future. Certainly, we can expect that credit will remain tight for a significant while. The rules for obtaining a mortgage will become more onerous; interest rates will be fixed, appraisals will be exact. McMansions will be of little interest except to large families of means; smaller and older homes will be at a premium. Definitions of overcrowding may change; design expectations will be downsized, and home maintenance will become more usual. As opportunities in the formal labor marketplace shrink, perhaps for an extended period, more Americans will work from their homes and garages, much as occurs in many developing countries.

There may also be significantly less mobility, with little or no speculative purchasing. This is likely to have the greatest impact on the condominium market. Even affluent parents will be obligated to keep their college-age kids on campus rather than in condos that they hope to flip after graduation. And even when they have a degree, these young adults – with large student loans, minimal credit and no cash for a down payment – will become used to staying with their parents for longer periods, as is frequently the case in Mexico and other developing markets. This could extend into marriage and even family formation. The condos themselves will, for the foreseeable future, revert to rental properties, catering to those who can no longer maintain a foothold in the owner market.

This does not imply that American cities are going to turn into Mexican ones any time soon. But there is much to be learned by studying the ways that Mexicans calculate risk. We might have fewer families borrowing beyond their means, and continually trying to beat the market. And with less aggregate risk in one part of our lives, we might then view other parts of our daily world with a little less obsession with control. We might be a little more relaxed about who lives next door; we might also be a little more tolerant about the age of their truck or the color of the drapes. After all, they might be Mexican, in which case we know that, if they are there, they can probably actually afford it.

Andrew Kirby is the editor of the interdisciplinary Elsevier journal “Cities.”This is his 20th year as a resident of Arizona.