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Human Settlements
Mexico City sprawls over 950 square miles, receives 25,000 tons of food daily and has an economy with a GDP of $63.6 billion dollars - equal to that of Argentina or larger than that of Panama, Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras combined. It is this megalopolis that comes under scrutiny in the excellent new book by Keith Pezzoli, Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability (MIT Press, 1998, 437 pages, $40).
Reflecting on the notion that the world cannot afford to manage human settlements development through crisis responses, Pezzoli looks at the urban centers of the world and asks, "Why then does management by crisis continue to be so pervasive? Are worthwhile alternatives so difficult to locate, define or implement?"
Subtitled "The Case of Mexico City" this book explores the questions related to
sustainability. The author recounts numerous field trips to the Ajusco, a
mountain range on the southern edge of the city. While designated for rural use
and as the city's "greenbelt," it has been the a victim of urban encroachment.
Pezzoli writes: "For months at a time, I lived with people in the illegal settlements I studied. Then enabled me to develop close and lasting relations with many families and to follow the careers of local grassroots activists. At the same time, I observed the emergence, and in some cases, the demise of cooperatives, popular movements and government programs."
Case in point was the Colonia Ecologica Productiva (CEP) movement, which he details from beginning to end. It aims of creating an ecological village in the Ajusco were never realized, as the utopian vision was mismatched with the problems of daily life.
Fieldwork is balanced with academic research. The author seemlessly integrates both micro and macro viewpoints. Besides the chapters on the Ajusco, Pezzoli provides one of the best overviews of contemporary Mexico City as well as an overview of the valley's environmental history. The author ties development and history together in the "co-evolution" of the city's urban ecology. Both thoughtful and creative, this vision of political ecology offers readers a great deal of food for thought.
Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability is packed with maps, photos, a comprehensive index and references. A visual record of urban growth, Pezzoli's photos document the development of Bosques del Pedregral and the steady upgrading of living conditions in the "irregular settlements."
If I have any complaints, it is that the book could certainly use a list of key players and a timeline in its appendix, but that's minor quibbling, given the amount of useful information this book delivers.
Pezzoli's masterpiece is one of the most important books of 1998 and it easily ranks with Lane Simonian's history of conservation in Mexico, Defending the Land of the Jaguar: Natural History of Mexico,, as one of the must-reads for anyone interested in Mexico or Latin American environmental issues.
Ron Mader is the host of the Eco Travels in the Americas website (http://www.planeta.com). He travels extensively the borderlands and Mexico. He is also the author of the new guidebook, Mexico: Adventures in Nature (John Muir Publications, 1998).
Jorge Legorreta, an investigator working out of Mexico City's Center of Ecodevelopment (Cecodes), estimates that 29 percent of Mexico City's total urbanized area currently has an illegal land tenure status. This amounts to 348 square kilometers, roughly the same area that makes up the city of Guadalajara. (p. 13)
Mexico City is the only one of the great pre-Colombian urban centers that has maintained its political and administrative importance into the contemporary era. (p. 34)
On clear days, the panorama from the heights of Ajusco is breathtaking. The sprawl of development fills the great Valley of Mexico like an ocean The views are especially impressive on clear evenings when the gray city sprawl of daytime fades into a sea of colorful night lights. It is no wonder then that Ajusco is also a coveted site for those able to build expensive estates and upper-class housing projects. Indeed, the contest for the land between the rich and the poor had a central place in the story line that community organizers first gave me as I began my fieldwork. (pp. 201-202)
The contradictions in state policy were angrily noted in grassroots bulletins circulated throughout Los Belvederes. One such bulletin voices a scathing critique:
"If we let them relocate us, in our place they are going to build upper-class residential developments, worth many thousands of millions of pesos - including luxury hotels, Swiss chalets, elegant offices, clubs for tennis and golf - all for the officials and politicians, corrupt thieves, who without shame have come to enjoy what they have robbed from the nation... They want us to believe that we are contaminating the underground water supply, and that we are damaging the 'lungs' of the city by chopping down trees - when in reality it is the authorities who are contaminating the zone, for example, with the garbage dumps they have placed near our colonia... Or how about the thousands of trees that the paper company Pena Pobre cut down in Ajusco? Or the thousands of trees plowed over to make room for Adventure Kingdom... Don't the rich pollute? Why have they singled us out?" (pp. 273-274)
Through resistance, popular movements can help redefine concepts of development, economic values, technological efficiency, and scientific rationality; they can even help create a new economics. However, as the case of the CEP illustrates, the struggle for social transformation is strained by the general level of organization and consciousness in the broader process of political conflict. In Mexico City, opposition movements have shaken PRI apparatus to its core, but the power to disrupt social and political relationships is not symmetrical with the power to establish new relationships ad new social meaning. (p. 351)
To order Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability from Amazon.com, click here.
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