Building the Megalopolis

The central area of Mexico has been heavily populated since ancient times. ² In fact, many urban expressions associated with a number of different cultures and socioeconomic phenomena have come and gone over the past 2,000 years (cf. Schávelzon, 1983; Carrasco, 2000; Alcántara Gallegos, 2004; Escalante Gonzalbo, 2004a, 2004b; Martín Butragueño, 2010, pp. 999–1014). Mexico City (MC) replaced the Aztec capital and functioned immediately as an administrative center and as an enclave during the colonial era (Garza, 1985, 2003, pp. 18–19). Of course, MC played an important role in the formation of Mexican Spanish; the linguistic features of the first settlers are usually important (cf. Labov, 2001, pp. 45, 503–504). Towards the year 1790 it exceeded 100,000 inhabitants (Quiroz, 2005, p. 17), and by 1895 it reached 329,774 inhabitants, in the center of a country that remained basically rural during the 19th century (Garza, 2003, pp. 19–21). ³ The Mexican Revolution and its effects promoted the growth of cities, and by the 1940s MC exceeded 1.5 million people (Garza, 2003, pp. 25–34 and table A-1, 166–169, following Unikel, Ruiz, & Garza, 1976, pp. 377–380). In the final decades of the 20th century, the metropolitan area of Mexico City (MA) grew substantially (Garza, 2003, pp. 154–155), and the megalopolitan area of the center of the country is gradually emerging (Garza, 2003, p. 73). In 2015, MC had 8,918,653 inhabitants (INEGI, 2015a, 2016c), the MA had around 21 million people (INEGI, 2015b; United Nations, 2015; de Alba & Hernández, 2016, p. 16), ⁴ and the central Megalopolis had about 40 million according to some estimates. ⁵